Alexander Thomson, Jr., a leader in Texas colonization, was born in St. Matthew's Parish, South Carolina, the only son of Alexander and Lucy (Fontaine) Thomson. He later lived in Georgia before moving to Tennessee, where in 1830 he became a partner with Empresario Sterling C. Robertson in the development of the Robertson Colony. While conducting families who had signed agreements to settle there, he crossed into Texas and reached Nacogdoches three days after Mexican officials received notice of an 1830 law requiring passports of immigrants. After he failed to have the rule waived for hardship reasons, the party bypassed Nacogdoches and made a new trail that came to be called the Tennesseans' Road. Thomson lived for a time in Austin's Colony and represented the District of Hidalgo, now Washington County, at the Texas Convention of 1832. By 1835, when he served as consultation delegate from Viesca, later Milam Municipality, he lived in Robertson's Colony and was its official surveyor. He remained a leader as executor of Robertson's estate in 1842, was twice married and the father of 13 children, was an ancestor of many noted Texans including Thaddeus A. Thomson, United States envoy to Colombia and signer of the Thomson-Urrutia Treaty in 1914, and was also a leader in the early Methodist Church in Texas. He is remembered as a pioneer and a patriot.