ANN DENNIE CHARLES S. PETERSON Charles Shreeve Peterson Early Church Leader 1855 (?) From the very beginning, the first settlers of Mountain Green were blessed with a strong spiritual leader in the person of Charles Shreeve Peterson. He had moved his family to the Upper Weber Valley to found the settlement of Weber City in 1854 or 1855. Charles Shreeve Peterson was born, 28 July 1818, in Mount Holly, New Jersey, a son of Andrew and Martha Murdock Peterson. At the age of 10 he was hired out to a brick maker and was required to move about 6,000 bricks a day during the curing process. At age 14 he apprenticed to Aaron Gaskill, a blacksmith, where he had to shoe horses, split bars of iron for horseshoes and forge axles for wagons. This stren- ous work caused him to suffer back and chest pains most of his life. While working at Gaskill Pembroke, New Jersey, he was allowed to attend three months of school, the only formal school training he ever had. It was here that he met his future wife, Aral Dermis. It was also here in Pembroke that he witnessed a remarkabel display of celes¬tial lights. He related the experience: "While I was at Mr. Gaskills, the great excitement over the falling stars took place. About midnight (in about 1833 or 1835) stars apparently began to fall, th¬ick and fast, from the sky like flakes of snow, although they resembled flakes of fire. Sometimes they would be like balls of fire and would strike the ground and burst into pieces. The flakes, when near the ground, would disappear like so much fire going out. "Soon the church bells began to ring and the people came running, the Methodists 103