Martha Larsen Peterson

The following excerpt is from a life sketch of my ancestor, Martha Larsen Peterson. She was awarded “Local Mother of the Year” in 1962. I love seeing this idealic image of her life. The tone of the article just makes me smile. Martha was the mother to nine boys. She was a child of Danish immigrants, born in the American West. Her husband was an immigrant from Denmark, as well. Enjoy!

On a cold winter day when it was best for children not to be outside, Martha’s living room became a small basketball court or a large marble ring on which the boys were permitted to play. In the evenings, there were always books to read and plenty of delicious red apples to eat. Musical instruments were always in evidence in the living room which could be quickly converted from a basketball court to a library to a music studio.

To a person with less understanding of boys than Martha had, this home may have seemed a bedlam of confusion. To her it was home—as a home should be—a place for her boys to grow and develop.

To Martha the dream that most young girls have that one need only to marry and then she will “live happily ever after” was only partly fulfilled. She learned how to work in her early childhood from frugal pioneer parents. This knowledge of how to work she has used all of her life. She managed her home and helped run a small fruit orchard for the first twenty years of her married life. During the thirties, the years of the Great Depression, she worked at the Pleasant Grove Canning Company to help supplement the meager family income. Since 1940 she has worked as society reporter for the Pleasant Grove Review—a weekly local newspaper.

She has known what it is to lose a child. Her second boy, Eugene, was the victim of a tragic drowning accident when less than two years of age. She has sat beside the bed of her children as they have had fevers ranging to 105 degrees from scarlet fever, influenza, and diphtheria. In 1940, she lost her husband, a victim of coronary occlusion.