PETER HANSON

Sacramento County

Biographies

PETER HANSON

Peter Hanson was born in 1838, about fourteen miles from Christianstadt, Sweden, his parents being Andrew and Charsta (Peterson) Hanson, both now deceased, the mother in 1855, aged fifty, the father in 1881, aged ninety-one. They had two sons and two daughters. Andrew Hanson’s father lived to be eighty-five and Andrew’s sister, Mrs. Lawson, was 106 when she died. The subject of this sketch came to America in 1856, with some knowledge of farm work and carpentry and possessed of a fair education. He first went to the Swedish settlements in Minnesota, but, being too young to enter Government land and not liking the chances of labor presented there, he proceeded southward as far as Moline, Illinois, where he worked in a saw-mill for a year or more. He next went to farming in that neighborhood for two years. Ie (sic) 1859 Mr. Hanson came to California, landing in San Francisco. He then proceeded to Sacramento, and thence to the mountains, but not being suited he returned to the city and soon afterward found work on a ranch near Clarksburg on the Sacramento River. There he remained one year, and then worked near Rio Vista two years. In March, 1862, he bought the ranch of 121 acres which he still occupies on Grand Island about thirty-seven miles below Sacramento. He has about twenty acres in orchard, fruit being the chief marketable product. In 1886 he built a comfortable house of ten rooms on his place; and in 1888 he bought eighty acres near Clements in San Joaquin County. Mr. Hanson is unmarried. Miss Tilda Neilson, a granddaughter of his sister, Mrs. Peterson, of Princeton, Illinois, has charge of his household.

Transcribed by Karen Pratt.

Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, California. Page 533. Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.

Sacramento County Biographies