Interviewed September 6, 1984
b. 1894
Concord Oral History Program
William Bailey, Interviewer.
My name is Herbert Peterson, and I was born in 1894. My father was Frank Peterson and my mother was Metta Peterson. My father came from Sweden and my mother was born in Concord, but her family came from Denmark.
I was about two years old when we moved to Concord at the corner of Virginia Road and Old Bedford Road. My father had learned the trade of a cabinet maker. At that time they had to work four years for room and board as an apprentice.
When he came to this country, he landed in Dorchester because he had a brother there. He began working as a cabinet maker for $1 a day. He also did the finish work on pianos. He worked for a piano maker in Cambridgeport.
He bought the farm in Concord and went back and forth on his bicycle from Concord to Cambridgeport until the snow came, then he took the train that ran from Acton, Concord, Bedford, Arlington and Cambridge. My mother and I did the chores on the farm. While I went to school, my mother did the chores then when I came home I did them at night.
Asparagus and strawberries were our big crops. That whole section of Concord raised strawberries and asparagus as their big crops. We also raised lots of other vegetables. I started going to market alone when I was 16.
On the right of our farm across the road were the Daltons and on the left were the Magurns. They were all good neighbors and in those days we all helped each other, but today it is everybody for themselves.
When I was about 17 or 18 I wasn't feeling good so I went to the doctor. He said I had appendicitis and I should have it out right away. I said in another week we would finish the strawberries and I'll go to the hospital for the operation then.
But in another day or two I came home with pain and cramps so bad I couldn't get off the wagon. So they got the doctor and put me upstairs in bed. When I woke up, there was Mr. McHugh, another neighbor, kneeling down by my bed praying for me.So I had the operation at Emerson Hospital and was in there for five days. When I came home my father was trying to do all the work that needed to be done, so I said let me get on the old mowing machine. After only five days I was riding the old mowing machine, raising my shirt now and then to check that everything was all right.
Sunday afternoon about 12:00 we would be loaded ready to go to Boston to the market. There was many a week that I didn't get home until Saturday afternoon because my father would meet me with another loaded wagon to go back to the market after I would give him the money from the previous load. There was no market on Sunday.
In Boston, we would put the horses up at one of three stables, wagons on the first floor, horses on the second and third floors. We would sleep in the wagon until it got cold, and then we stayed in the New Enqland House, two to a bed, 50 cents apiece.
The big farms in those days were Sheehan, McHugh and us. Magurn and Dalton weren't too big. We all hired bums or tramps during strawberry time. They would come around about the end of May or first week in June. June starts the strawberry season. We would all take some to work and we would give them about a foot of hay on the barn floor and horse blankets until the season was over which was about three weeks. We paid them $1 a day. One Sunday we picked 137 crates, 32 quarts to a crate, all for the Boston market.
William Bailey – Did your brothers and sister help on the farm too?
My sister, Edna, did and my two brothers until they went into other businesses. I was the only one that stayed on the farm until World War I came.
I joined because I was the only one left in the neighborhood my age. I thought I might be drafted anyway. We shipped out from Woburn and New York was our first stop. We were in Hoboken, N.J. all set to go overseas. One morning we heard all kinds of guns going off and we thought there were Germans over here. But the Armistice had been signed. I was still sent on to New Mexico until I was able to get out.
William Bailey – Why did your father move from Dorchester to Concord?
I don't know how he met my mother but she was born in Concord and I am not sure if he had a job here or not.
William Bailey – What were your mother's parents names?
Peter and Anna Peterson and they were from Denmark. They lived on Virginia Road close to our farm and they were farmers.
William Bailey – Did you ever learn any Swedish or Danish?
No, the only time I ever heard any Swedish was when they didn't want us to know what they were talking about.
William Bailey – Did you ever go back to Sweden or Denmark?
No, my father never went back to Sweden either.
William Bailey – Did any of your father's brothers and sisters come to Concord?
No, his brother in Dorchester was Gus and he was a painter. The younger brother, Axel, was a chef for J.P. Morgan on his yacht and he traveled all around the world. He was my best man in my wedding in 1921.
William Bailey – Did you play baseball?
Yes, but we could only play on Sundays. Weekdays were for working. We played teams from towns around here.
William Bailey – Tell me what your mother's day would be like?
She worked very hard. I had to stay home from school every spring to set out the strawberries. She dropped the plants, the hired man would make the holes and I would set them out. I lost a lot of time in school. Most of the farms had two or three hired men, and my mother would have to cook and wash for our hired man. She also had to work in the fields. My brothers, Ralph and Norman, were much younger. They didn't like working on the farm.
Ralph worked in my mother's brother's clothing store in Concord. A man named Halliday had three stores, Concord, Maynard and Hudson. Jack ran the Hudson store, Martin the Maynard store, and Andrew & Tom ran the Concord store. These were all my mother's brothers. She also had three sisters. Ralph worked for Uncle Tom and he got the store when Uncle Tom died.
Andrew tried the horse business in Boston near North Station and was spending more time there so he and Tom split up in the store. Tom bought him out. Andrew bought the Maynard Coal. They all made out good.
William Bailey – Tell me about your grandparents. Do you remember much about them?
My grandfather was a tall man and he had a big Saint Bernard dog. I was the first born of my generation so I was kind of it. I would go to their house often and grandfather sometimes had a bag of candy or a couple of pennies.
My mother had twin sisters that never married. They were telephone operators and they took care of grandmother in her old age. My mother's younger sister married a man named Oftsie, who was a minister in Brooklyn, N.Y.
William Bailey – Did your family try to keep the old Swedish and Danish customs especially food?
No, not to much. My grandparents went to the Norwegian Methodist Church on Thoreau Street.
But later on many of us young people didn't understand Norwegian so the only reason we would go to church was to pick up a girl after church. In those days Concord had a lot of wealthy people and some of those people had three or four maids. So we used to go home with them and they would give us a good feed so that was all we were interested in was the girls. That's how I met my wife.
William Bailey – How long did you farm?
When I was about 22 I got a job at the Deaconess Farm next to the hospital. I was there 15 years. Then I went to Connecticut and worked for a private estate. My brother-in-law was a chauffeur and gardener there and the summer home was in Salisbury, CT.
I was there about five years, then my mother and father
weren't good, and I decided we should get back nearer Concord. So
I got to Dover and worked on an estate there. Then my mother's younqer brother, Peter, was the the Concord Poor Farm and he had
heart trouble and couldn't work any more. His wife cooked for the
inmates. So I went there and worked for a while.
Then I got a job at Fernald School as a farmer and stayed there 16 years when I retired in 1965.
My first wife, Nanny Danielson, died in 1959. I met her in Concord where she worked for the Weeds on Monument Street. She came to Concord during World War I. We had one daughter who now lives in Baltimore. About a year or so after my wife died, I married Frances, who was a teacher at Fernald School for 45 years.