Peterson Sisters: A Place to Live and Work
Peterson sisters, c. 1910. Gerda, Ellen, Freda, Naomi. The youngest, Ruth, is not pictured.
The Peterson family emigrated to the U.S. from Sweden in 1888, ultimately making their home in Burlington, Iowa. Their five daughters, Gerda, Ellen, Freda, Naomi, and Ruth, all found their way, one by one, to Lake Forest between 1900 and 1910. Chicago was a natural destination for children of recent immigrants in the Midwest, and it was widely known that Lake Forest families often employed Swedish women as domestics.
The first of the family to arrive in Lake Forest were Gerda and Ellen, whose name appears in a 1908 town directory. Ellen worked for the Edward L. Baker family on Sheridan Road. Gerda took a position working as a domestic for the Captain Israel P. Rumsey family, whose home, The Evergreens, was on Deerpath.
Upon Gerda Peterson’s arrival in Lake Forest, she was picked up at the train station in a horse-drawn carriage by the Rumseys’ coachman, Alfred Braun. Braun resided on the second floor of the Rumseys’ carriage house, 361 East Westminster. After many years of courting, Alfred Braun and Gerda Peterson were married in 1924.
The other Petersons soon followed their older sisters to Lake Forest. Freda and Naomi found positions next door to each other on Deerpath working for the Frances Hewitt and William Kilman families - they were just down the street from Gerda. The youngest sister, Ruth, arrived in 1910, and began working as a waitress in the dining hall at Ferry Hall.
Ruth Peterson and Ferdinand Berghorn Jr., Lake Forest Day, July 14, 1916.
At the time, the Independent Order of the Vikings, a Swedish-American organization, held dances in the large, open third floor of the Anderson building at the corner of Deerpath and Western. The Peterson sisters all attended those dances, , and as it happens, three of them met their future husbands there. Ellen and Freda went on to marry a pair of brothers, Ander and John Rosquist, whom they met in 1915. Their younger sister Ruth had similar good luck – she first encountered Ferdinand Berghorn Jr. in the stairwell between the second and third floors of the Anderson building – they were married in 1916.
Ruth Peterson Berghorn in Market Square, 1927.
In 1922, the Lake Forest Sports Shop opened in Market Square. Ruth Berghorn was hired as a seamstress within the first year – she did customer alterations in the front room of the store manager’s apartment above the shop. In this instance location was everything – Ruth only had to step across the hall from their apartment to get to work. She was soon promoted to be in charge of all fittings, working at the Sports Shop for 37 years.