Peterson Family Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to honor every word. John Peterson was born in Sweden in 1840, and sometime in that restless middle of the nineteenth century, he made his way to the United States. 1868, to be precise. He didn't come straight to Texas.

No, he landed first in Nebraska, built some kind of life there, and waited. Two years after John arrived, his wife Thilda (Thilda Mossberg before she took the Peterson name, born in 1848) crossed the ocean and joined him. Nebraska held them for a while, but Texas had a pull.

By 1872, John and Thilda Peterson were here, in this part of Tarrant County, and John went to work acquiring several hundred acres of land. He farmed it. That was his living, his purpose, the shape of his days on that Texas soil.

Now here's where the story turns quiet and heavy, because the first soul laid to rest in the Peterson family cemetery plot was not John, who lived all the way to 1925, and not Thilda, who passed in 1912. It was Grace. His granddaughter Grace, born in 1902, gone in 1903.

One year old. She was the first. That little plot of ground became something more than land after that; it became a place that held the family's grief and, eventually, its generations.

Ten graves in all, the marker tells us. Ten. And that cemetery stands today as a reminder that Swedish settlers put down roots in Tarrant County, deep and real, and John Peterson (who sailed from Sweden, settled in Nebraska, and finally planted himself in Texas) was part of that story from the very beginning.

What the marker says

Swedish native John Peterson (1840-1925) came to the United States in 1868. His wife, Thilda (Mossberg) (1848-1912), joined him two years later. They lived in Nebraska before coming to Texas in 1872. Peterson acquired several hundred acres in this part of Tarrant County and made his living by farming the land. His granddaughter Grace (1902-1903) was the first to be buried in this cemetery plot set aside for the family. A reminder of Tarrant County's early Swedish settlements, the Peterson Family Cemetery contains a total of ten graves. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.