Charles & Alice Corey Peterson

PETERSON COREY MCBRIDE KING

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 10/13/2010 at 19:24:50

History of Woodbury County, Iowa 1984

Charles and Alice (Corey) Peterson
By Charles Peterson

Charles G and Alice J Peterson reside at 1410 N Rustin Street, Sioux City. They purchased this home and moved there on October 29, 1971. They moved to Sioux City late in November, 1969 and resided at 705 Iowa Street up until this time. The east part of the house was built by Charles including laying up the basement. He also remodeled the west twenty feet as he was a carpenter. The Petersons have no children.

Charles Godfrey Peterson was born November 27, 1919, on Thanksgiving Day, at Wolsey, South Dakota, to Charles Godfrey and Cora Delphine (McBride) Peterson. They were farmers. Charles attended the Wolsey grade and high school, graduating in 1938. He made two attempts to attend South Dakota State College, Brookings during the great depression. He farmed with his parents until 1958, when farmer’s lung forced him to quit farming. He graduated from South Dakota College in 1959, which was twenty-one years after school.

Charles found it hard to get desirable jobs at forty years of age. He worked for the Soil Conservation Service for a short time. He worked on Fort Randall, Oahe and Big Bend dams. He taught school for eight years which included two years at the Boys Reform School at Worland, Wyoming. He attended summer school at Augustana College, South Dakota State University, and Southern University.

Alice J (Corey) Peterson was born at Bryant, South Dakota, on July 18, 1929, to John P and Elizabeth (King) Corey. She grew up on a dairy farm three miles east of Bryant. She was the house maid for the local Congregational Minister at Nearby Willow Lake, South Dakota, when she met the local Science teacher. They were married four years later at Fairfax, South Dakota, by the same minister, A M Ramos. This was December 30, 1966. Charles was teaching Science and Shop at the Stuart, Nebraska, high school at the time. They moved to Winnebago, Nebraska in the summer of 1968 where he was Science and Shop teacher. He immediately transferred his Loyal Order of Moose membership from Douglas, Wyoming, to Sioux City, Lodge No. 752. This was their first connection with Sioux City.

Winnebago proved to be an undesirable place to teach and they paid on a ten-month basis. This left the Petersons in need of money in the summer of 1969. Charles transferred his membership from Pierre, South Dakota, to Carpenters Local No. 948 in Sioux City and worked on the Iowa Public Service powerhouses No. 2, 3, and 4 for the next ten years. He served as a Trustee for Local No. 948 for a total of eight years.

Charles transferred his membership to Landmark Lodge No. 103, AF&AM in 1977. He joined the Sioux Consistory No. 5 in 1981. He is a Past Master of two small Masonic Lodges in South Dakota as of 1948 and 1962. He also belongs to the Boys of ’68. Charles does some free lance writing which consists mostly of historical essays. Alice and Charles transferred their membership from Winnebago to the First Presbyterian Church in Sioux City late in 1969. They regularly attend the adult Sunday school and are members of the Kinonia group of the church. Alice belongs to the Women of the Moose and Azure Chapter of the OES. She sometimes belongs to the YWCA for swimming purposes and is active in a women’s roller skating group.

Charles’ father was the son of Swedish immigrants who resided at St Charles, Illinois and moved to South Dakota in 1905. His grandmother was of French descent who were driven to Sweden during the Inquisition. Charles’ mother was Scotch-Irish and English. Her grandfather, Samuel McBride, was a Scotch immigrant who eventually was a Scotch immigrant who eventually settled at Pilot Mound, Iowa. Her father, Thoams Johnson McBride was born at Rolf, Iowa. Samuel’s wife had a family name of Dwakins. They had migrated from Missouri and were Irish. Cora’s mother, Emily Gifford, was born at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and moved to Iowa as a child. Her father, Robert Gifford, was born in Blackhawk County, New York and was extremely proud of his English ancestry. Robert Gifford married Cora Maynard, who had migrated from Vermont to Lake Geneva. The Maynards were Irish. They were married at Lake Geneva and grandma was born there. Charles’ mother was born on the family homestead in Seward County, Kansas, in 1893. They moved back to Pilot Mound in 1894 where she grew up. The family migrated to South Dakota in 1913.

The Coreys were of German descent and were original Homesteaders at Bryant, South Dakota. Alice’s father was born on the homestead. Elizabeth King was a school teacher from Niobrara, Nebraska, who taught in rural schools around Bryant. There she met and married John P Corey. She was mostly Scotch with some English.