Major Joseph F.Thompson of Col.Stand Watie's Cherokee Volunteers may have been one of the sons of James G. Thompson of Grayson County. James G.Thompson was the first chief justice of Grayson County and grew up among the Cherokees in Alabama and married Margaret McNary, a quarter-Cherokee. Thompson was a trader, keel boat operator and operated a trading post on the Canadian River. He was friends of Holland Coffee, a Red River trader, Sam Houston and Jesse Chisholm.

Thompson began trading on the Red River in 1833 in association with Holland Coffee who established a trading post on the Red River in 1836 at Preston Bend or also known as Coffee's Bend, north of Preston, Texas on the Red River. James G. Thompson's wife Margaret, died in 1840 and he married Martha Gresham Caruthers, from Shawnee Town, on the Texas side of the Red River at Colbert's Ferry and where Denison, Texas is located today. In 1860, Thompson was elected to the Secession Convention in Austin, where he signed the secession declaration and served on several committees.

James G. Thompson died in Preston, Texas in 1879. He may be buried in the Preston Bend Cemetery with Holland Coffee, who was killed in a duel in 1846.