liver “Ben” Peterson was born in Drummond, Bayfield County, Wisconsin in 1905. He first arrived in Alaska in 1932, when he landed in Haines aboard the S.S. Admiral Rogers. He worked at odd jobs in Haines for almost two years and then moved on to Juneau, where he was sent out to work for a contracting firm constructing a dock at Gustavus. He then returned to Juneau and got a job working on the construction of the bridge across the channel from Juneau to Douglas. He moved to Anchorage in 1935 to join the Alaskan Engineering Commission on the construction of the Knik River Bridge.

In 1936 he and Leona Mary “Peggy” Gehlen were married in Palmer, Alaska. Peggy was born in Glencoe, Minnesota in 1903 and was raised there. She left Minnesota to go to Alaska in search of employment and had met Ben in Haines. During his years with the road commission, the couple lived in McKinley Park and Palmer and in 1940 they moved permanently to Anchorage.

In Anchorage, Peggy worked as a waitress at the original Hewitt’s Lunch Counter and was also employed by Nellie Brown in the old Nellie’s Diner. Ben and Peggy had one daughter, Helen Marie. She married Jerry Burkes and they had two daughters, Teresa Dawn Burkes Atkinson and Christin Marie Burkes Sweet Hubble. Leona Mary “Peggy” Gehlen Peterson died in 1972 and Oliver “Ben” Peterson died in 1979. They are both buried in Angelus Memorial Park in Anchorage.