Three weeks after arriving in America in November 1878, Catherine Petersen, just sixteen, posed with her twenty-nine year old husband Hans, her first cousin, in their wedding finery. First-cousin marriages were common in Europe at the time and were entirely legal in Nebraska then. Many years later Catherine joked to her grandchildren that she didn't have to change the monogram on her linen when she married...but she also occasionally remarked that first cousins should never marry. Make of that what you will!

Note that Catherine followed the custom of the era and her homeland by wearing a dark colored wedding dress, probably blue, green, or brown velvet, with a billowing veil and lacy crown, and a drape of orange blossoms over her shoulders. Her trousseau must have been sewn in the old country, preserved carefully and transported on the ship she and her family sailed on to the United States.

Hans and Catherine's first five children (Louis, Peter, Elise Christina, Elise Margaretha, and Margarethe) were born in Nebraska, where Hans and his father Lorenz worked as farmers on their own land. The two Elises died before they were three and were buried in Hebron. Around 1889 Hans, Catherine, their children, along with Hans' father Lorenz and Lorenz' second wife Eliza Hamberge, moved to a Chicago suburb, then called Lake. Hans and Catherine lived at 4735 South Paulina Street, a structure that still stands today.

Hans and his father Lorenz worked as laborers in Chicago, as did Hans' elder sons Louis and Peter. Lorenz died in October 1891 in Chicago. He was buried at Greenwood Cemetery, now called Mt. Greenwood Cemetery in Blue Island, a quiet suburb of Chicago near their home. Lorenz was only 66 years old.

In Chicago five more children were born: Johann Christian (1890), Edward Andreas (1892), Alfred Emil (1894), George (1897), and Marie (1899). Johann and Edward each died before age two and joined Lorenz at Mt. Greenwood cemetery, but Alfred, George, and Marie thrived.

We can see the family enumerated in the 1900 U.S. federal census in Chicago, but shortly thereafter the family joined Catherine's brother Andrew in Wisconsin, settling in Maunton, south Milwaukee, then Brookfield where they farmed. Hans and Catherina's last child, Clarence, their eleventh, was born in Wisconsin in 1904. The 1905 Wisconsin census records the family there, erroneously listing them as Norwegian, but with a mystery man called Peter Petersen, a cousin. His birth year was 1838. Could this actually be Hans' older half-brother Paul Christian, who was in fact born that same year? It's a tempting theory but so far unproven.

The couple had lost four young children to illness in the 1880s and 1890s, all of whom were buried back in Nebraska. Then tragedy struck again when in 1903 their eldest daughter Maggie, only fifteen, died by suicide. You can read the sad circumstances in the West Bend Pilot, a regional newspaper, on a webpage dedicated to Maggie's memory. The account is heart-wrenching and the entire family was deeply affected by her loss. In 1905 Hans Petersen, himself unwell, died in a drowning accident near the family home in Brookfield. He was only 55 years old.

Catherina returned to Chicago later that year to live near her eldest son Louis, now married to Anna Majoros with a growing family of their own. Pictured at left are Catherine's younger children Peter (seated), Alfred at right, and Maggie in back with her sister Marie on the left.

Within a year Catherine was being courted by Thomas Mikkelsen, an automobile and trolley mechanic with roots in Ladelund, Schleswig-Holstein, a town just a few miles from Catherine's birthplace, Leck, and close to Hans' home town of Süd-Klixbull. Family members today have speculated that Thomas was a family friend to both, and it's plausible. Or perhaps they shared enough common origins and interests to become acquainted after both were widowed.

Whatever the case, Catherine married Thomas Mikkelsen in November 1906 and they had one daughter together, Florence. Thomas' work with automobiles intrigued Alfred, George, Clarence, and even Marie, all of whom grew up with an ardent interest in cars. By all accounts it was a happy blended family. When Alfred (later Alva) married and had children of his own, his first son was named for Thomas.

After fifteen years with Catherine, Thomas died in 1921. Catherine remained in Chicago close to family, kept in touch with her brothers in Nebraska and Wisconsin, and became a much-loved grandmother to her children's progeny. She died at the age of eighty-one in 1944. She's buried, with so many other family members, at Mt. Greenwood Cemetery.