Buried in Oakland Cemetery, Clinton, Iowa.

He was a native of the province of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany and landed at New York in 1852, came to Chicago, and Freeport, Illinois, then the terminus of the Northwestern, by rail, and walked and worked the remainder of the distance to Savanna, Illinois, and on to Sabula. His first effort was to invest his small amount of money, saved from his wages as a farm hand in Germany, at twelve dollars per year, in land in Elk River Township, after which he found employment in the construction of the lower pike from the bluff to Sabula, Iowa, working for seventy-five cents per day and boarding himself. While engaged in this work, he met and married his wife, and then set about improving his land. He found wood, water and stone, and made a permanent settlement, opening his land for farming. In early times he went through many privations usual with the first settlers, and found his greatest trouble in raising money to pay his taxes, going to De Witt on foot to do that. But hard work and honest dealing brought him to the front and enabled him to add to his farm until it consisted of two hundred acres, which he held until 1907, he himself having retired from active work and removed to Lyons in 1887. Peter Petersen was proud of his adopted country and of the opportunities which it opened before his family. In politics he was a Democrat and steadily supported the principles of the party; in religion he had been brought up a Lutheran and never departed from the faith. As a farmer he was hard working and looked carefully after his business, as a citizen he was well known and highly respected, and his honor and integrity were above reproach. He died in Lyons, on January 1, 1910; his wife had preceded him on November 12, 1909. They reared twelve children: Detlef, a farmer in Nebraska; the fifth child died young in 1862; H. H. was the sixth; August, the seventh, is a mechanic at Rocky Ford, Colorado; Emil died at the age of fourteen; the ninth and tenth children died young; Otto of Loup City is treasurer of Sherman county, Nebraska; Augusta died at the age of nine. History of Clinton County, Iowa ed. by P. B. Wolfe. 2 vols. Indianapolis, Ind.: B. F. Bowen, 1911