Person:John Peters (38)

JOHN PETERS

John Peters was born in the town of Stamford, Delaware County, NY, March 22 1804, the son of Richard Peters and Susannah Halsted, who came to this county from Saratoga, and settled in the town of Stamford about the year 1795, on the farm recently occupied by by Mr. James A. Rich, bringing all their earthly possessions in a wooden chest of primitive mold and rather heroic dimensions, which served them for years in their new home, in turn as table, tool-chest, wardrobe, and cupboard, and which was carefully preserved in the family for many years, bearing the marks of teeth and claws of many wolves, bears, and other wild animals, received during their almost nightly visits while doing duty as a barricade to their doorless cabin. . It is not too much to say that the presence of some of these animals around or near their cabin during these years was almost of nightly occurrence: and the "death rate" of the item of wolves for a single season killed by Mr. Richard Peters and a neighbor, Mr. Timothy Canfield, as an occasional pastime, numbered as high as fifteen. The writer remembers a solitary cove in the woods near the Bovina line, on the old farm, pointed out by the old gentleman (John Peters) many years ago as a spot where he was at one time attacked in open day by three of these half-starved creatures, he having only an axe and an old knife with which to defend himself, the conflict ending only when he had dispatched the most determined one and injured another, and being pretty well scratched up and done for himself.

1. ↑ Biographical review, this volume contains biographical sketches of the leading citizens of Delaware County, New York. (Boston, Massachusetts: Biographical Review, 1895)
   pp. 704 - 707.