Martin H. Petersen

PETERSEN, JENSEN, HANSEN, OLSEN, HENRICKSEN

Posted By: Emmet County IAGenWeb Coordinator (email)
Date: 3/5/2011 at 12:46:42

Martin H. Petersen has passed his entire life in Denmark township and has continued the work of his father in the improvement and cultivation of the homestead on section 12. His birth occurred May 11, 1894, and his parents were Robert P. and Kirsten (Jensen) Petersen, natives of Denmark, the former of whom was taken to Michigan when he was but six years old. The paternal grandfather, Morton Petersen, was one of the earliest of the Danish settlers in Denmark township, Emmet county, and took up land under the homestead act. Robert P. Peterson subsequently joined his father in this county and worked in his employ until 1890, when he bought the farm now owned by Martin H. Petersen. There were eight children in the family of Mr. and Mrs. R. P. Petersen, as follows: Anna, the wife of J. E. Hansen, a banker of Crystal Lake, Hancock county, Iowa; Marie, who married O .E. Olsen, of Comfrey, Minnesota; Martin H.; W. E., of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Ella, Dora, Eugene and Edna, all at home.

Martin H. Petersen entered the high school at Ringsted after completing the course offered in the district schools and still later was a student in the Iowa State Teachers' College at Cedar Falls, Dana College at Blair, Nebraska, and the Waterloo (Iowa) Business College, from the last of which he was graduated in 1913. His father died September 11, 1910, and after leaving business college Mr. Petersen of this review, began cultivating the place for his mother and since 1915 has owned the farm. He gives a great deal of careful thought to the management of his work, keeps in touch with the most advanced methods of agriculture and is meeting with highly gratifying and well-deserved success.

Mr. Petersen was married on the 22d of December, 1914, to Georgina Henricksen, a daughter of John and Hannah (Madsen) Henricksen, early settlers of Denmark township, a sketch of whom appears elsewhere in this work.

Mr. Petersen is an adherent of the republican party but has never sought office. He holds membership in the Danish Lutheran church, which indicates the standards which have determined his life, and is one of the most highly esteemed residents of his township.

Source: History of Emmet County and Dickinson County Iowa: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement, The Pioneer Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois, 1917.