OCR Text |
Show Morgan Pioneer History Binds Us Together Margrete became ill with congestive heart failure and had to remain in bed. Her legs became terribly swollen. She died on January 18,1919, at the age of eighty-five. The flu epidemic was still raging and there were no public meetings allowed. The mortician in Morgan County was ill with the flu and her body was not embalmed. On January 21, a short funeral was held out of doors, in front of the brick home. She was buried next to her husband in the Richville Cemetery. This small piece of land had been donated to the community by the Petersons. ©9 Charles Shreeve Peterson Charles Shreeve Peterson, Ann Patton Peterson, and their family, along with the Thomas Jefferson Thurston family, were the first white settlers in the Morgan Valley. How I have wished I could go back in time and come into the valley with them; however, their first years were filled with hardship and sacrifice. They were strong, courageous individuals who never faltered in their defense of the truth. Charles was descended from Swedish ancestry who settled in Delaware in the early 1600's. Bom in 1827, he spent his early years in New Jersey. A quote from his history proves interesting and helps us understand his personality. "While I was at Mr. Gaskill's, the great excitement over the 'Falling Stars' took place. Mr. Gaskill and his family were members of the Methodist church and the church was within 150 yards of his house. This was in the town of Pembertown, Burlington County, New Jersey. About midnight, the stars apparently began to fall thick and fast like flakes of snow, though 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 claiming "The Judgment Day has come, and the earth is about to be burned up!' They carried on such a shouting and howling that they could be heard all over the town. Mr. Gaskill came to my door and asked, 'Are you not coming to the church to pray? The end has come.' I replied, 'No, it is too late to pray now, if the end has come. I will stay here and take it as easy as I can.' After poking my head out of the window to satisfy my curiosity, and listening to the howling of the Methodists, I went back to bed, went to sleep, and woke in the morning and found the family there, getting breakfast ready as usual, and the end had not come. I have since learned that at this very time and night the Latter-day Saints were being butchered and driven from their homes and lands, which they had made and purchased from the government in the state of Missouri." (Haun's Mill) In the spring of 1837, Charles married Ann Dennis. Three children came in quick succession; the third, Andrew, being bom in January of 1842. Again from his journal, "In the fall of that same year, while hauling coal, 1 met a man who lived near Burlington who told me of strange people whom he had just visited in Illinois; he had become converted to their church and faith. His name was Matthew Ivory. His rehearsal of the faith and principles of their church gave me a peculiar feeling that I could not throw off my mind. I did not believe in any of the numerous sects, although, honest in their convictions; but there was such a difference in the beliefs of the different sects in regard to the meaning of the writings in the Bible that I had become almost an infidel, although I had witnessed some strange manifestations." "At two different time, previous to talking with Mr. Ivory, while laying in my bed, reflecting in the midnight hours, a light brighter than the noon-day sun burst into my room, encircling a personage who looked me in the face and passed out of the room, apparently down the stairs, and left the room as dark as a dungeon, for so it was before the light entered, as there was a heavy thunderstorm in progress at the time." Mr. Ivory gave Charles some pamphlets about this strange new religion. He took them home and he read them aloud as Ann sewed. "We were so interested that midnight was upon us before we were aware of it, or scarcely a word had passed between us, and I bear witness that the Holy Spirit bore witness into our spirits at nearly every sentence I read, that the doctrines and principles contained therein were true, and from God, and from that day to the present I never doubted the truth of the Latter-day work." As soon as Charles' and Ann's conversions and baptisms were made known, they became the object of public ridicule and were shunned by their neighbors. Charles was given an ultimatum by his employer and he put things in order and walked away. They immediately began to make preparations to move their family to Nauvoo. The evening before they left he was called upon to speak at a meeting. While speaking, the spirit came upon him and he prophesied that within the year he would shoulder his gun and stand in defense of the Prophet and the Saints in Nauvoo. [24 |