J. E. Peterson Company Store

J. E. Petersen owned a farm, the Mitten Factory in New London, and this large General Store. He was married to Florence Lee, a daughter of Mary Jane [Versey] Leas and Samuel Lee. Mary Jane was the daughter of Jane [Walker] Leas and Thomas Chapman of Indiana. The marriage of Samuel Lee and Mary Jane was, in both cases, their second marriage. He had been married to Louisa Burge from 1851-1859 when she died, and Mary Jane's first husband was Hugh Rodgers.

The Petersons joined some of their other Lee cousins from New London, who moved to Los Angeles, California after J. E. Peterson died in 117. There were three daughters: Ruth, Norma L., and Mary Peterson, and a son: Robert Glenn Peterson, in the family. Norma, Mary, and Glenn never married. Ruth married a man named Gregerson.

Glenn was quoted in a genealogical book written about the Hardin Family in the 1960s.

This general store pictured above was sold to E. R. Morrow in 1915 and it burned to the ground in the 1920s. According to John McClure in an article printed in the New London Journal in 1965, the store, on the north side of Main Street in New London, covered all the space that was then in 1965 Vera and Virgil Engelhard's Barber and Beauty Shop, Howard Ritchey's Variety (Dime) Store, Earl Petzinger's Grocery, and all the upstairs which was lodge rooms for the Masons and Eastern Stars.

J. E. Peterson's Mitten Factory

New London, Iowa, Photos from the Turn of the 20th Century
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