Tulare County Biographies

Alfred Peterson

Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn

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

 
     A native of Sweden, Alfred Peterson is descended from old families of that 
country. He was born August 23, 1869, near Oskarshamn, Smoland, a son of Peter 
and Christine (Johnson) Carlson. His father was a sexton, in charge of the local 
church and cemetery, and his grandfather, a Swedish cavalry soldier, did gallant 
service in the Napoleonic wars 1812-15. Alfred and his sister, Mrs. Selma 
Pospeshek, of Tulare county, are the only living children of the father�s 
family. In 1884, when he was between fourteen and fifteen years old, Alfred 
Peterson came to America with his brother Oskar and found employment on a farm 
near Long Point, Livingston county, Ill. From there he went to Marshall county, 
in the same state, and in 1889 came to Los Angeles, near which city he worked 
two years in an orange grove for Abbott Kinney. Then he went to Antelope Valley, 
intending to locate there, but did not like the prospect in that vicinity and 
proceeded to Formosa, where he and his team were employed two months in 
construction work, and after that he teamed four months at Fresno. In 1891 he 
came to Tulare, where he was variously employed until the spring of 1893, when 
with William Kerr as a partner, he went into the threshing business, buying an 
engine of twenty-four horse power. At the expiration of two years he took over 
the business, which he continued until in the fall of 1901, when he retired in 
order to devote himself almost exclusively to stockraising. In 1893 he had 
farmed at the Oaks, north of town, on one hundred and sixty acres of land leased 
for one season. In the spring of 1894 he rented twenty acres, three and 
one-fourth miles east of Tulare on the Lindsay road, where he now lives. In the 
following fall he bought that property and in the spring of 1895 he bought 
twenty acres more. In the fall of 1897 he bought forty acres adjoining on the 
east and in the spring of 1900 two hundred and sixty-five acres adjoining the 
north. In the winter of 1905 he bought one hundred acres known as Bliss field, 
across the road, south of the other property. He has introduced many 
improvements and his land is all fenced in. He has about one hundred acres of 
alfalfa, twenty-five acres under orchard tree, farms two hundred acres to grain 
and devoted the remainder of his land to pasturage. 
 
     The marriage of Mr. Peterson, in Chicago, the spring of the year 1904, 
united him with Miss Hilda Anderson, who was bon near Westervik, Smoland, Swden, 
and they have children named Carl, George and Helen, the first of whom is in 
school. While maintaining a deep affection for the land of his birth, Mr. 
Peterson is loyal to America, especially to California. He has long been an 
advocate of irrigation, realizing that the lack of water here is the only 
drawback to the achievement of satisfactory results in agriculture. He was for a 
time director in the Farmers� Ditch Company, from the improvements of which his 
own land was irrigated and he has in other ways promoted the irrigation 
facilities of this part of the county and has not been less helpful in a public 
spirited way to other movements for the benefit of the people among who he has 
cast his lot. He is a stockholder in the Bank of Tulare and in the Rochdale 
store. During the entire period of his residence in Tulare county he has 
affiliated fraternally with the lodge, encampment and Rebekah organization of 
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. During recent years he has devoted much of 
his time to travel and in 1902 he journeyed thirty thousand miles by railroad 
and steamer. Nine times he has crossed our own continent and twice has he 
returned to his old home to renew the associations of his youth, the first time 
in 1902, when he enjoyed a visit with his father in Oskarshamn and with other 
relatives and friends whom he had long been separated. In the spring of 1908 he 
went back again for five months accompanied by his family. Since the 
establishment of the reformation by Martin Luther, the successive generations of 
the family have been of the Lutheran faith and Alfred was reared in its 
doctrine, but since he came to America he has affiliated with the Methodist 
Episcopal church, of which his wife is also a member. 
 
SOURCE:  History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical 
Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913 Pp 347, 348