Peterson, E. Ed.

E. Ed Peterson was born on September 6, 1885, near Wakefield, Wayne County, Nebraska, to parents P. M. Peterson and Kjersti Person Peterson. Educated in local public schools and the high school at Wakefield, he graduated from the commercial department at Luther College in Wahoo in 1904 before gaining practical farming experience in Nebraska. He permanently relocated to Kingsburg, California, in 1910, where he worked on a ranch for a year and a half prior to starting as a bookkeeper when the Kingsburg Bank opened on May 2, 1911.

Rising to become the popular assistant cashier at the Kingsburg Bank, Peterson also served the public as a Kingsburg city trustee following his appointment to fill the vacancy left by Charles Schaeffer. He married Nebraska native Della Heerman in Kingsburg in 1912, and the couple raised four children, May, Effie, Eva, and Edwin, at their home in Bungalowville. Active in local religious life, he and his family belonged to the Swedish Lutheran Church, where he served on the building committee responsible for erecting their twenty-thousand-dollar church edifice.