Peter A. Dahlby
Peter A. Dahlby, a prominent farmer and stock man living on section 28, Bristol township, Worth county, is numbered among the substantial citizens that Wisconsin has furnished to Iowa. He was born in Dane county of the former state on the 28th of May, 1881, a son of Amund P. and Elsie (Kittleson) Dahlby, both of whom are natives of Dane county, where their parents had settled in early pioneer times. Both the paternal and the maternal grandfather of Peter A. Dahlby served as soldiers in the Union army during the Civil war. Amund P. Dahlby came to Worth county, Iowa, in 1895 and for two years lived in Kensett. He afterward traded his property there for the farm now owned by his son, Peter A., a tract of land of three hundred and twenty acres adjoining Joice. Thereon he continued to reside until the spring of 1913, when he removed to Saskatchewan, Canada, and took up a homestead. He proved up on the property and is still owner thereof. In March, 1917, however, he returned to Worth county and settled on a small place of thirty acres adjoining Joice, where he now resides, for he does not care to assume the burden of responsibility and operation of an extensive tract of land.
Peter A. Dahlby was educated in the public schools and in the Humboldt College and the Cedar Valley Seminary. He then took up the professoin of teaching, which he followed for three terms, and in 1905 he began farming on his own account, taking up the cultivation of two hundred and forty acres of the old homestead. In 1906 he removed to Cerro Gordo county, Iowa, where he purchased one hundred and twenty acres of land, on which he resided for seven years. In the spring of 1913 he sold that property and went to Canada with his father. He, too, took up a homestead in that country and, complying with the laws regarding ownership, ultimately secured title to the place. This he sold in January, 1917, and returned to Worth county. In February of the same year he bought the old home farm from his father and is now busily engaged in its further cultivation and improvement. In all of his farm work he displays sound judgment as well as unremitting industry. He raises shorthorn cattle and Chester White hogs and his stock is of very high grade. He is also a stockholder in the Lake Mills Lumber Company and in the Farmers' Cooperative Creamery Company of Joice and is regarded as a man of very sound business judgment as well as of unfaltering enterprise.
In 1906 Mr. Dahlby was united in marriage to Miss Marie Treslau, of Cerro Gordo county, and to them have been born four children: Daniel, Evelyn, Thelma and Aaron. Mr. and Mrs. Dahlby occupy an enviable position in public regard and have a circle of friends in Worth county almost coextensive with the circle of their acquaintance. Mr. Dahlby displays sound judgment and keen discrimination in business affairs and his interests have been most wisely and carefully conducted, so that already he has attained a measure of success that many a man of twice his years might well envy.
SOURCE: HISTORY OF MITCHELL AND WORTH COUNTIES, IOWA, 1918, VOL. II; Page 639
Transcription by Gordon Felland, 8/17/2006