California Dreamin’: Uncle Snow Edison And Milan’s 49ers
- Dillion Liskai
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
“I can just remember seeing a number of Prairie Schooners encamped in front of our house. This was about 1849 to 1850, when I was a mere infant, and I learned afterwards that these Prairie Schooners were carrying adventurers going to California to hunt for gold.”
- Thomas A. Edison to the Sandusky Register, December 31, 1922
In March of 1849, the village of Milan had gathered to celebrate the departure of 12 men who were referred to simply as the Milan Company. These twelve men, made up of Milanites and residents from surrounding cities and villages, were about to embark on an incredible journey out to the “Wild West” in search of a material prized by human civilization across place and time: gold. As the local band struck up some tunes to celebrate the occasion, the group, consisting of Ebenezer Atherton, George Choate, Harry Page, John Norton, Samuel Wickham, Hiram Allen, Seth Jennings, William Jennings, John Gregory, Martin Smith, and Robert Smith, shook hands and hugged their families. One man was also saying goodbye to his family, never to return to see them again. His young nephew, Thomas A. Edison, watched as he hopped onto a wagon to chase his dreams. Thomas's uncle, Snow Edison, was one of those twelve dreamers in the Milan Company.
Snow Edison was born February 7, 1809, in Digby, Nova Scotia, to Captain Samuel Ogden Edison Sr. and his first wife, Nancy Simpson. When he was only two, his family picked up stakes from Digby and moved south to Vienna, Ontario. He then had the great privilege of growing up in Vienna and was eventually wed in Vienna to Christiana Burkholder sometime around 1835. I cautiously use the word “sometime” because in the Ontario Marriage Registers, in the category where the wedding date was to be written, it reads, “Between the 12th March 1835 and the 12th March 1836.” Regardless of when Snow married Christiana, they began their family in Vienna.
Christiana and Snow had seven children: Christine, Cortland, Catharine, Samuel Edgar, Mary Ann, Michael, and Frank. As with many families, including Thomas’ family here in Milan, tragedy struck early and often. At least two of Snow’s children, his daughter Catharine and his son Samuel Edgar, passed away before they turned three years of age. If you recall, two of Thomas’ siblings (Samuel Ogden Edison III and Eliza Smith Edison) also passed away around the same age as Snow’s children, and Thomas’ older brother, Carlisle Snow, named by his father Samuel in honor of his brother Snow, also passed away when he was six years old. More sadness befell the Edisons in Vienna when Snow’s wife passed away on June 4, 1847. Christiana was only 33 years old.
Just months after Christiana passed away, news from California was beginning to rock the world. On January 24, 1848, whispers from Sutter’s Mill had announced that not only had they discovered gold, but that they had discovered copious amounts of it. At first, most people merely scoffed at the news. People proclaimed that they had been “finding gold” for years without evidence. Many believed that this was another one of those occasions, except it was not. As word began to spread of the great wealth that could be obtained, towns and villages started to organize groups of explorers to cash in, and Milan was no different.
The men from the Milan Company set out with “gold fever” from Milan in March of 1849. While Snow’s exact impetus or motive for joining the crew is forever lost to history, it isn’t too hard to guess why he might have joined in. After going through so much loss in recent years, his family needed a “victory” of some sort, and if there was really gold and riches that could be found, he and his children could relax in comfort for the rest of their lives after the tumult they had been through. Maybe he wanted to start fresh for himself, and as I have stated, finding gold or at least a new home in an unknown land can certainly be that fresh start he was looking for. In any event, he hopped up on that prairie schooner and went west.
His and the Milan Company’s journey was long; they first went to Cincinnati, then to St. Louis, Missouri, and then to St. Joseph, Missouri. Hiram Allen wrote to his brother-in-law about 230 miles west of St. Joseph in May 1849, “We are in the prettiest country I ever saw.” They were not alone on their trip out west, as throngs of “companies” from Ohio were nipping on their heels. In fact, they sought refuge with men from Bellevue, Monroeville, Norwalk, and other local communities throughout their travels. They continued to travel over a thousand miles from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, which Ebenezer Atherton, the captain of the Milan Company, claimed he reached in late August of 1849. Snow got to see California and the rest of the crew, but his chance for gold and glory would be cruelly slammed shut on him.
On September 10, 1849, Snow became violently afflicted with an illness that many succumbed to on their travels out west: dysentery. He was taken to Sacramento Hospital, which was good timing since Sacramento didn’t have any hospitals until 1849. In April 1849, Sacramento, California, had more than 100 settlers. Still, a year later, that number exploded to over 10,000 thanks to the Gold Rush, necessitating more doctors and hospitals. Snow’s doctor told members of the Milan Company that there was no doubt of his recovery and that he would be back to mining in five or six days. The Milan Company left the hospital and planned to come back at that time to pick up a healthy Snow Edison. Despite the doctor’s best hopes and wishes, Snow knew three days later that he himself would not recover, and he passed away on September 16, 1849. He was buried beneath a live oak tree, “80 rods east of Sutter’s Forts, and about 30 rods from the south road leading from the forts over the California Mountains.”
The New Helvetia Cemetery, which came to eventually envelope Snow and scores of other 49ers, faced floods and other disturbances, and in the 1950s, over 5,000 bodies, many unknown, buried in unmarked graves, were exhumed from the New Helvetia Cemetery to make way for a middle school. Almost 4,700 of the over 5,000 exhumed were reinterred in a large mass grave at East Lawn Cemetery, and 410 bodies that could be identified were reinterred at Old City Cemetery. For almost forty years, no marker had been placed on the mass graves of unknowns from the New Helvetia Cemetery until one was erected in the 1990s to remember the forgotten. Today, a marker outside Miwok Middle School memorializes the old New Helvetia Cemetery. The location where Snow gently and peacefully rests today is unknown.
In going to California, Snow may not have gotten any gold, but he got one last great adventure and he got to go “home”. Not to Vienna and not back to Milan, where his previous journey began, but to be with his wife and his children who had gone before him. Snow Edison’s story has been largely forgotten and untold for nearly two hundred years. While you, the reader, may be inclined to remember his death most since it is emotionally salient, I don’t think he would’ve wanted you to remember that about him. I think he would have wanted you to remember him just as little nephew did, climbing up into a prairie schooner with his fellow members of the Milan Company and with the finest fanfare in Ohio, looking westward for adventure.
Sources Used and Encouraged for Further Reading
Edison, Thomas A. 1922. “Edison Recalls Milan.” Sandusky Register (Sandusky), December 31, 1922.
Frohman, Charles E. 1976. Milan and The Milan Canal. Sandusky, Ohio.
The Milan and Milan Township Bicentennial Committee. 1976. Milan and Milan Township, Ohio 1787-1976. Milan, Ohio.
PBS. “The California Gold Rush | American Experience.” PBS. Accessed August 5, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-california/
Sacramento County Cemetery Advisory Commission. “Sutter's Burial Grounds: Helvetia Cemetery.” Sacramento County Coroner. Accessed August 6, 2025. https://coroner.saccounty.gov/sccac/Documents/NewHelvetiaBrochure.pdf
Thomas A. Edison Papers, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University. “Edison, Miller, and Affiliated Families: Thomas Alva Edison and His Family Tree.” Thomas A. Edison Papers. Accessed July 31, 2025. https://edison.rutgers.edu/images/pdf-files/Edison-Miller%20Families.pdf
UC Davis Health. 2021. “A Deeper Dive: History of the Hospital 1870s-1890s.” UC Davis Health. https://health.ucdavis.edu/aboutus/150th-anniversary/articles/history-of-the-hospital.html
Womack, Graham. 2023. “Sacramento’s earliest cemetery is now the site of a school. What happened to the graves?” The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento), December 14, 2023. https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article280659505.html
YesterYear Once More. 2009. “Snow Edison And The Milan Company,” Reprinted Excerpts From Local Newspapers Of The Time. YesterYear Once More. https://yesteryearsnews.wordpress.com/tag/snow-edison/
Dillon Liskai, a native of Clyde, Ohio, is a Bowling Green State University junior. He is pursuing a degree in Adolescent to Young Adult (AYA) Integrated Social Studies Education, specializing in History.
Dillon has been a Thomas A. Edison Birthplace Museum tour guide for three years. When not at school or the museum, he enjoys cheering on the Bowling Green Falcons, spending time with friends and family, and exploring local history.
Have a question for Dillon? Reach out via email at dliskai@tomedison.org!
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