homas Peterkin was born in Bobcaygeon, Ontario, Canada in 1882. He started his railroading career with the Canadian Pacific Railroad prior to moving to Anchorage in 1915. The following year, he was employed as a locomotive engineer with the Alaska Railroad, a job he would continue for twenty-eight years. He purchased a lot on the first town lot sale in Anchorage, left Alaska for a while, and married Anna Packebusch in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1918. Anna was born in Pender, Nebraska in 1894.

Tom and Anna returned to Alaska in 1920, the year their first son, Tom. Jr. was born. The family lived on a homestead east of Anchorage until 1928, when they purchased the East Side Dairy from the Suomela family in 1928. The Peterkins had three more sons; Ernest, born in 1924; William, born in 1926 and John, born in 1928. All four sons grew up working in the East Side Dairy along with their mother, and Tom put time in at the dairy when not on his railroad job. The Peterkins owned the dairy until 1940, when it was sold to the Matanuska Valley Farmers Co-op. Tom retired from the Alaska railroad in 1944.

The family subdivided their homestead and sold it off as residential and commercial lots in 1945, naming it the Peterkin Addition. Tom and two of his sons took up placer mining at Marshall on the lower Yukon River in 1946 and operated the mine until Tom, Sr.’s death in 1947. Anna Packebusch Peterkin died in 1966, and she and her husband are buried in the Masonic Tract, Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery.

All four of the Peterkin sons are also deceased. Ernest, a Navy pilot, was killed in 1942 during World War II. John died in 1991, leaving three children; Matthew, John, Jr. and Diana. William died in 1988. He had two children, Maynard and Ernest. Thomas, Jr.had three children; Robert T., Shelly and Bonnie Lee Rogers. Thomas operated a wholesale grocery business, Peterkin Distributing, in Kenai, which was taken over by his son, Robert.