Descriptive Summary
Administrative Information
Biography
Scope and Content
Descriptive Summary
Title: John Waldo Thompson Scrapbook,
Date (inclusive): 1889-1928
Collection number: Mss122
Creator:
John Waldo Thompson
Extent: 0.25 linear ft.
Repository:
University of the Pacific. Library. Holt-Atherton Department of
Special Collections
Shelf location: For current information on the location of
these materials, please consult the library's online catalog.
Language: English.
Administrative Information
Access
Collection is open for research.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], John Waldo Thompson Scrapbook, Mss122,
Holt-Atherton Department of Special Collections, University of the Pacific
Library
Biography
John Waldo Thompson (1841-c1930) was born in Michigan and worked all of
his adult life as a telegrapher. Thompson was one of the gang that helped to
string the first transcontinental telegraph line. He began work in Omaha
(1861), made his way to Ruby Valley, Nev. (1863), Petaluma, Calif. (1863),
various cities in Oregon (1864-1865), and Nevada (1866), Marysville and Yreka,
Calif. (1866), before finally settling in San Diego (1874-1909). Thompson was
the first manager of the San Diego Western Union office and, in the early
1880s, he installed the first telephone in that city. He married there, and one
of his daughters, Emma, enjoyed brief fame as an opera diva in southern
California during the last decade of the nineteenth century. In 1909, J.W.
Thompson took his final post in San Francisco. His wife, Hortense Eubanks
Thompson, died there in 1928. When Thompson retired in 1923, he was the oldest
telegrapher in the United States.
Scope and Content
Thompson's scrapbook, reveals an interest in California, Nebraska and
Oregon local history, the history of American telegraphy, and an active
involvement with a considerable extended family. Most of the materials to be
found here are newspaper clippings, although the scrapbook also contains a few
photographs and pieces of correspondence. Few items are dated or identified by
source, but internal evidence enables one to estimate their time of collection
as extending from about 1889 through 1928.