Peterson, Andrew ___ 1818-1898 ___ Swedish ___ farmer

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Peterson was born in Ydre district, into a farming family. His father died in 1846. In 1850 he, his sister and 14 others from the parish emigrated to the US. He wrote a diary on the voyage which provides good detail on the hardships faced by such emigrants. After arriving at Boston, Peterson eventually arrived in Burlington, Iowa, where he joined a group of other newly-arrived Swedish baptists. In 1855 he and others moved to a wild part of Minnesota, claimed land and developed the settlement known as Clearwater Lake, and then Lake Waconia. The detailed diary - of which there are 12 volumes - kept by Peterson for 44 years became the principal source of research for author Vilhelm Moberg's widely-read books such as 'The Emigrants' and 'The Last Letter Home', some of which were turned into movies.
A biography link
No Wikipedia bio

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1850 1854g-1898g ___ domestic religious social farming family

WEB TEXT LINKS
about and some extracts
several citations
a lot about

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
University of Minnesota Libraries

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES

 

November 2005, July 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.