My Genealogy Hound

OTTO PETERSON. The subject of this brief biographical sketch is one of the early settlers of Kearney county and a representative citizen of Hayes township. He was born in Sweden April 3, 1831, and is one of the family of five children born to John and Mary (Johnson) Peterson. The father was born in 1801 and followed farming all his life. Both parents were members of the Lutheran church and zealous christian pcople.

The early life of our subject was spent in attending school and working on his father’s farm. He received a good common-school education, began life for himself at the age of twenty-one, and was engaged in agricultural pursuits until 1867, when, in April of that year, he embarked for America. Arriving in this country, he first located at Burlington, Iowa, where for four years he was engaged in farm and nursery work. He next moved to Henderson county, Ill., where he farmed for seven years, and in the spring of 1878 came to Kearney county, Nebr. Two years previous he had come to the state to consider the advisability of locating, but the few half-starved settlers of that early day presented anything but an inviting appearance to a new-comer, and he returned home, having decided to wait a few years. When he came to the county in 1876, there was but three houses between Kearney and Bloomington, but on his second visit he counted seventy, so rapidly had the country settled up. The country at that time teemed with antelope and other wild game, but the rapid settlement of the next few years drove them to the outskirts of the settlement. He homesteaded a quarter in section 20, township 6, range 15, and erected a sod house thereon. The following year he took another quarter in the same section as a timber claim, which gave him the east half of the section, making three hundred and twenty acres. This he still owns and has well improved. He had previously purchased a half section of railroad land in section 29, but sold it in 1880 and bought a quarter section across the road from his present place. The first year he broke out forty acres and raised a good crop of corn. Of the four hundred and forty acres which he now owns, four hundred and ten are under cultivation.

Mr. Peterson married June 25, 1855, taking for a life partner Miss Anna Johnson, a native of Sweden. This union has been blessed with seven children, as follows — Peter J., Minnie, Gussie, Edward, Tilda, Charles and Otto, all of whom are now living and are consistent members of the Lutheran church.

Mr. Peterson has been deacon in the Swedish Lutheran church ever since he has been in the county, and superintendent of the Sunday-school since its organization. He gave liberally and was instrumental in erecting the present fine edifice, one of the best of that denomination west of Chicago. Mr. Peterson has, by his generous acts and kind disposition, endeared himself to his people, and his name will long be remembered in connection with the early history of the church.

He is a good man and highly esteemed by the people of Kearney county.