NEAL AND NANCY PETERSON

 The following bio was taken from page 341 of the book entitled “Rusk County History” compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

 Transcribed by Claudia Schuster

 Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

William Peterson moved from one of the Carolinas to Stewart County, Georgia.  There on November 25, 1842, he married Catherine McLeod.  William and Catherine lived in Stewart County for a few years and then moved to Lowndes County.  Their home was a few miles above the northern border of Florida near Lake Park.  To this couple were born eight children.  My grandfather, Neal, was the oldest son.  At the age of seventeen he joined the Confederate Army where he served from March 4, 1862 until he was captured on October 19, 1864.  He was held prisoner for nine months at Point Lockout, Maryland.  He was released June 16, 1865, after taking the oath of allegiance.  When his grandchildren mentioned being hungry, he would always say, “You don’t know what it means to be hungry.”

Neal came to Rusk County in 1870 to join his Uncle George Peterson, who lived near Elderville.  In 1874, Neal married Nancy Ann Baton.  They bought a farm about two miles from Kilgore.  Neal was a successful farmer, and much of this farm is still owned by Peterson heirs.  To this couple were born nine children: Sarah Catherine, who married Leslie Laird; Eliza; Durham, who married Sue Gunn and later Pearl Rice; Mamie, who married Robert Russell; Margaret and Georgia, who died young; Ivor, who married Frank Brown; and twins who died at birth.

The Petersons believed in “early to bed and early to rise.”  My other Mamie and her sisters loved to tell about the time their father had everyone up and finished with breakfast by three o’clock.  Then all they had to do was sit and wait for daylight.  After realizing his mistake, their father wouldn’t think of going back to bed.

My mother and her brother Durham were twins.  They were born November 22, 1880 during an early heavy snow.  Together they weighed seven pounds.  Today babies of this size spend time in an incubator.  Pioneer ingenuity seemed to have worked.

My mother and the older children attended a school called “Thin Gravy.”  This school was a quarter mile off what is now called Peterson Road in South Kilgore.  Later the school was moved half a mile to the west and called Baton School.

The Petersons were Presbyterians and attended church in Kilgore.  Neal Peterson was named an elder in the New Danville Presbyterian Church of Kilgore in 1896.  Nancy Peterson was one of the best-read ladies in the Kilgore area.

After Neal had been in Rusk County for about ten years, he was joined by a younger brother, Daniel.  Daniel married Martha Baton, a younger sister of Nancy Baton.  Nancy and Martha were nieces of Frances Baton, the second wife of George Peterson.  Their children who lived to be adults were; Bennie; Johnny, who married George Alice Houston; Rosa Mae, who married James Fisher Griffin; and Crawford, who died shortly after serving in World War I.  There are no living descendants of Martha and Daniel.  Neal and Nancy had twenty-five grandchildren, many of whom are still living in Rusk and Gregg counties.

Submitted by Evelyn Russell Lindsey