Biography of Thomas Halvor Thompson This biography is from "Memorial and biographical record; an illustrated compendium of biography, containing a compendium of local biography, including biographical sketches of prominent old settlers and representative citizens of South Dakota..." Published by G. A. Ogle & Co., Chicago, 1898. Pages 383-384 Scan and OCR by Joy Fisher, 1997. This file may be copied for non-profit purposes. All other rights reserved. THOMAS HALVOR THOMPSON is one of the earliest pioneers of Brookings county and has witnessed its development from the hunting grounds of the Indians until it has become the home of a prosperous and civilized people. He was born in Muskego township, Racine county, Wisconsin, April 1, 1842, and a son of Halvor and Sine (Evenson) Thompson. Halvor Thompson was born at Chaen, Norway, was a blacksmith by trade, and also worked at farming and traveled more or less selling scythes which he had forged at his own shop. He came to America in 1839 and spent one winter in the woods, where the city of Milwaukee now stands. The next year he settled in Racine county where he lived on a farm until his death in 1880, aged seventy-six years and six months. Mrs. Sine Evenson came to America about the same time that Mr. Thompson did and became his wife in Illinois. She died in 1851, at the age of forty years. Thomas H. Thompson left home at the age of eighteen years and spent the next winter in the pineries of Michigan. He enlisted in September, 1861, in Company C, First Wisconsin Infantry, and served two years in General Thomas' division. He participated in the battle of Prairieville, Kentucky, and did a great deal of skirmish duty, marching through Tennessee, Alabama and other states. While caring for the wounded on the battlefield of Prairieville, he became separated from his comrade in the darkness and wandered into the Rebel camp where he was captured. After three or four days, however, he was paroled and returned to the Union lines. Upon being released from the service of the government, he returned to Michigan and spent eighteen months more in the woods, and then went to Fillmore county, Minnesota, and engaged in farming. About two years later he went to Colorado and engaged in gold mining at California Gulch, about one hundred miles from Denver. After spending two years here with indifferent success he worked his passage to Sioux City where he worked for a short time on the C., St. P., M. & O. railroad. In 1870 he came to Brookings county, South Dakota, and took a preemption claim on the Sioux River, which he traded two years later, for the claim on which he still lives, situated on section 22, Medary township. This was then an unbroken prairie with some timber along the river, but he at once built a log house and began to improve and develop his farm. He now has a fine farm of two hundred and twenty acres, of which about one hundred and fifty acres is under cultivation and the balance is pasture and meadow. February 23, 1879, Mr. Thompson was united in marriage to Miss Elsie Goodwin, daughter of Gunder Goodwin, of Fillmore county, Minnesota. Mrs. Thompson was born in Norway and came to America in 1861. Their wedded life has been blessed to. them by the presence of five children upon whom they have bestowed the following names: Emma, Anna (who died December 17, 1897), Edwin, Sam and Hilda. One other child died in infancy. The family is connected with the Seventh Day Advent church. Politically Mr. Thompson has usually supported the Republican party, but is not a politician.