- Upper Fall River Memories,
Highlightsofaninterview done by Tom Isern with Gilbert Peterson in 1982 at his home on upper Fall River. “My father was Peter Peterson and he was born in Norway. He died when he was 76 and that was in 1927. He came to the United States in 1852 at the age of one. They lived in Wisconsin and had a tobacco farm there. My great-grandfather had died of cholera and my great-grandmother remarried. Her name was Mary Evenson when she came to Kansas and settled in Greenwood County. They settled on the west side of the river, about ¾ of a mile from where we are now. My father whose first name was Peter added “son” to it and that was how they did it in the old days. My grandmother died in Norway and my mother did not come to the United States until she was 20 years old. My grandfather died just before my mother came to the United States. She came to the United States because she had two brothers and a sister living here. She worked at Madison in a hotel when she first came here and then worked for some neighbors who live about two miles south of this place. She and my father belonged to the same church before they married. The church was the Fall River Lutheran Church and it was in a school building about 1/2 mile north of where the church is now. It stood there until 1917 when a tornado destroyed it and they rebuilt it where it is now. I was baptized and confirmed in the old church and married in the new church. I think the schoolhouse where the church was first, was at Hover School. Mr. Hover lived on a farm across the road from the stone schoolhouse.
