Township 10 in range 6 of New Connecticut, as surveyed under the direction of Moses Cleaveland for the Connecticut Land Company, was to be named Thompson Township.  The township was divided into forty-two lots of approximately 385 acres each.  These lots were then offered for sale by the Connecticut Land Company.  The original buyers of Township 10 were land speculators primarily from Connecticut who purchased the township by about 1799, shortly after its original survey.  Most of the original purchasers never saw the township, but instead subdivided their land holdings and sold smaller parcels to the first settlers. Thompson Township was named by and for Matthew Thompson of Suffield, Connecticut, who was one of the original purchasers of land from the Connecticut Land Company.  History does not record anything more about Matthew Thompson.  He apparently never came to the township, which bears his name.