Noah Thompson was born in Bertie County, North Carolina in September 1812. At some point before 1840, he moved to Florida and was appointed co-executor of his brother-in-law John Whitaker Cotten's plantation and estate there. His wife, Martha Elizabeth Whitaker Thompson (née Cotten) died in childbirth, leaving behind a daughter, Eliza Thompson. By the summer of 1854 his extended family was distressed at the thought that he may have been sick with cholera, which was spreading through Florida at the time. He died by February 1855 in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida.