Peter Iverson Biography


	This biography appears on pages 1163-1164 in "History of Dakota 
	Territory" by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. V (1915) and was 
	scanned, OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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				PETER IVERSON. 

	Peter Iverson is a worthy representative of an honored pioneer 
family of South Dakota that came to this state more than four decades 
ago. He now resides in a beautiful home near Brandon and is widely 
recognized as one of the leading and prosperous agriculturists of Split 
Rock township, Minnehaha county. His birth occurred in Norway on the 
20th of April, 1853, his parents being Iver and Bertha Olson, who 
emigrated to the United States in 1860, locating in Iowa, where the 
father carried on farming for nine years. Subsequently he brought his 
family to South Dakota, making the journey with oxen and settling among 
the earliest residents of this state. Mr. Olson took up a homestead 
claim on section 28 and also preempted a tract of land on section 21, 
Split Rock township, Minnehaha county. There he successfully carried on 
agricultural pursuits until the time of his demise in 1895, having for 
many years survived his wife, who passed away in 1863. He had been a 
resident of Minnehaha county for a quarter of a century and gained an 
extensive and favorable acquaintance in his home community. 

	Peter Iverson, one of a family of eight children, attended the 
common schools in the acquirement of an education and when not busy 
with his textbooks assisted his father in the operation of the home 
place, spending his youth in the usual manner of farm lads of that 
period. He was a youth of nineteen when he removed with his father to 
Minnehaha county, South Dakota, and there he subsequently homesteaded a 
tract of land on section 29, Split Rock township, also preempting one 
hundred and sixty acres on section 21, that township. He likewise 
acquired a timber claim in Turner county but later disposed of the 
same. In 1906 he purchased and excellently improved an eighty-acre 
tract on section 3, Split Rock township, and this is the only property 
that he operates personally, renting all of the remainder of his land, 
which comprises two hundred and sixty-nine acres in Split Rock 
township, Minnehaha county, South Dakota, four hundred acres in Rock 
county, Minnesota, and four hundred acres in Lake county, South Dakota. 
He is likewise a stockholder in the farmers, elevator at Brandon, also 
vice president of the Brandon Savings Bank, and has long been 
recognized as a substantial and representative citizen of the 
community. 

	In 1896 Mr. Iverson was united in marriage to Miss Tina Peterson, 
a daughter of Elias and Johanna Peterson, who are pioneer residents of 
South Dakota. Our subject and his wife having the following children: 
Alfred Leonard, William, Peter, Julia, Edna, Amy, Edgar and Erwin. 

	Mr. Iverson is a republican in politics and has held school 
offices, the cause of education finding in him a stanch friend. In 
religious faith he is a Lutheran. His life has been actuated by high 
principles and characterized by manly conduct and in the community 
where he has lived for so many years he enjoys that warm personal 
friendship and kindly esteem which are always given in recognition of 
genuine worth in the individual.