Contra Costa County Biography

PETER OLSEN

Transcribed by Sally Kaleta, December, 2006.

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 
Peter Olsen, one of the well-known and representative men of eastern Contra 
Costa County, was born July 8, 1849, in Sonderburg, Denmark. He received his 
education in the old country and learned the brickmaking trade, which he 
followed for seven years in his native land. At the age of twenty-one he came to 
America and settled in Nebraska, where he found employment, and in 1871 he 
removed to Carbon County, Wyoming, where he followed mining. He then went to 
Utah, where he worked in the silver mines for a period of two years, when he 
returned to Wyoming and followed mining, and later assisted in the construction 
of a large stone building and barns for the Wyoming Coal  Company. He then went 
on a cattle ranch for two years. At this time the Indians were hostile in his 
section, and Mr. Olsen relates many narrow escapes from the red men where he was 
working. In 1874 he came to California and located in Antioch, where he became 
identified with the coal mines. In 1879 he purchased two hundred and forty acres 
in the Black Hills, where he engaged in the cattle and wood business for seven 
years. In 1885 he removed to Marsh Creek and rented a half-section and followed 
general farming. Later he purchased a lease and operated two hundred and ninety 
acres for twelve years. In 1912 he settled in Brentwood. Mr. Olsen was married 
on July 28, 1878, to Mary E. Nathan, a daughter of Daniel Nathan, who came to 
California via Cape Horn, and settled in Antioch, where he died thirty-five 
years ago. To Mr. and Mrs. Olsen have been born four children - Mabel Elizabeth, 
wife of Jacob Jacobsen, of Brentwood; Edward James, engaged in the grocery 
business in Oakland; Ralph, who is bookkeeper for R. W. Kinney, of Oakland; and 
Cecil, who died at the age of four years. Mr. Olsen is a Republican. 
Fraternally, he is a member of the I. O. O. F. and Rebekah lodges of Byron.
 
Source: "The History of Contra Costa County, California," Elms Publ. Co., 1917, 
pp. 557-558.