Correspondence about Snowshoe Thompson

John "Snowshoe" Thompson was born in Tinn, Telemark, Norway on April 20, 1827, to Torstein Olson-Rue and Gro Jonsdatter Einungbrekke. In 1837, after the death of his father, John and his mother, Gro, immigrated to the United States, settling on a farm in the Fox River settlement in LaSalle County, Illinois. The family subsequently moved on the Norwegian immigrant settlement in Shelby County, Missouri. In 1839, they were joined by Thompson's brother Tostein (1819-1880) and sister Kari (born 1822). In 1840, they relocated again to the Sugar Creek Settlement in Lee County, Iowa.

In 1846, Thompson and his brother Tostein moved to Dane County, Wisconsin. In 1851, Thompson drove a herd of milk cows to California and settled in Placerville. For a short time, he worked in mining in Kelsey Diggins, Coon Hollow, and Georgetown, California. Disillusioned by mining, he bought a small ranch at Putah Creek, in the Sacramento Valley with the small amount he had saved. In 1860, Thompson homesteaded a 160-acre ranch in Diamond Valley, south of Genoa, Nevada in California's Alpine County. Here, he met his wife, Agnes Singleton, an immigrant from England. They had one son, Arthur Thomas, who was born on February 11, 1867.

From 1856 until his death, Snowshoe carried the mail between Genoa and Placerville and later Virginia City, Nevada. In all of his years of delivering mail, he was never paid for his work.

Snowshoe died of appendicitis on May 15, 1876. His son, Arthur, died two days after. Both Snowshoe and Arthur, as well as his wife Agnes, are buried in the Genoa Cemetery.

[Information taken from the website snowshoethompson.org and Wikipedia, accessed March 12, 2019]