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Peters Family History
Prepared for the Peters Family Reunion
10 October 1999

The Peters family reunion is being held at the Fountain City United Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. The reunion brings together descendants of Alva Edward Peters and Sallie Jane Cole. I have generally heard their children referred to as "the brothers and sisters", and their grandchildren referred to as "the cousins". The reunion is now primarily a reunion of the cousins and their children and grandchildren.

This Peters family is from East Tennessee, and its Tennessee roots lie primarily in Anderson County. The parents of Alva Peters were married in 1865 in Anderson County, and Alva was raised in Anderson County. The children of Alva Peters and Sallie Jane Peters all lived in East Tennessee. Most of the cousins stayed in East Tennessee, and a few of the cousins moved elsewhere. With each succeeding generation after that, there were more and more of the family members who spread out throughout the country, but there is a very strong contingent of this Peters family who are still in East Tennessee.

This family history lists as many of the descendants as we were able to find, and we are now up to six generations of descendants in some of the families. In addition, the family history lists John H. Peters and Hulda Asberine Cross who were the parents of Alva Peters, plus Alva's brothers and sisters.

This is the first year of having the family history in a computer data base. Most of the information came from a family history which had been compiled by Irene Tarver (Virginia Irene Peters). In turn, Irene found much of the information in the Peters family bible. At the present time, the location of the bible is not known. If anyone knows where it is, please let me know. I would love to make copies of the family history pages from the bible.

Please let me know if there are any errors or omissions in this history, and I will make the corrections. I know we do not have all the younger generations listed for all the families. Where we do have people listed, we often have a birth date but not a birth place, or we have a date of death but not a location where someone is buried. Any such information would be valuable to add to the data base. Also, it would be wonderful to add any anecdotes that anyone might have.

Finally, I wonder if anyone has any additional information on our common ancestors. I have not been able to find anything on the parents of Sallie Jane Cole. I have been able to find possible parents for John H. Peters, but I need further verification before I know I have it right. I have found parents for Hulda Asberine Cross. She was the daughter of Alfred Cross and Zipporah Peters. Since she was the daughter of a Peters, I wonder if John Peters and Hulda Cross were cousins of some sort.

Jerry Bryan

Knoxville, Tennessee

10 October 1999


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This page last edited on 23 Aug 2006.