John Cunningham

John Patrick Daniel Cunningham (16 February 1817 – 12 October 1870) was a Canadian voyageur, postmaster, and clerk.

Early life John Cunningham was born in Île-à-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan, on 16 February 1817, as the eldest son of Patrick Cunningham, a postmaster from Sligo, Ireland, who had become a voyageur at Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), and of Nancy Anne Bruce, a native of Louisiana.

Later life After a hiatus of seven years, Cunningham reappeared in 1855, aged 38, when he was hired as an interpreter by the HBC, being in charge at Lac Ste Anne in 1857–58, and then becoming a postmaster and clerk at Fort Edmonton, a position that he held for a decade, from 1858 until his retirement in 1868.

In addition to his sons, he also raised a certain John Grace Matheson, who was still a young boy when Cunningham spotted him wandering in a camp to escape the tedium of school and farm, and since he was a strong young man, with no ties to hold him, he brought him to St. Anne, where he was quickly accepted as a family member. His wife, a faith devotee, strove to influence her children and Matheson to become a priest, and she succeeded with her second son Edward, who was educated at Ottawa University and ordained by Bishop Grandin in Alberta in 1890. When he returned, he had forgotten his boyhood admiration of John Grace, so he referred to him by the term "cousin".

Death and legacy Cunningham died in Paint Creek House, Alberta, on 12 October 1870, at the age of 53, during the smallpox epidemic of 1870.