Theodore Charles Petersen was born 1851 in Denmark and was a brick mason. He was married to Lena Toppen and the father of five children. While riding his bicycle down Washington Street on December 28, 1904, he turned in front of a streetcar, fell beneath it and was crushed. Petersen, who had been active in several fraternal organizations, was buried in the IOOF Cemetery.
the I.O.O.F. Cemetery was created after the independent order of odd fellows purchased a piece of land to bury their dead, as well as others.
Lindley Orme, a sheriff from one of our lawmen posts, is buried in the I.O.O.F. Cemetery.
Below, you will see several clues to the I.O.O.F.
The answers can be found on Find a Grave. Our volunteers have placed all of our interred on this platform. However, we do hope you will join us in Person soon.
Post Your Answers in the Reply Section. Good Luck!
1. What does I.O.O.F stand for?
2. Murdered on his way to Florence in 1873. Grave marker is a replica.
3. Born in 1876. Father made coffins. Buried with his mother.
4. Owned the Phoenix Illuminating Gas and Electric Company. Born in 1847.
5. Stabbed by a knife in 1879. Was originally buried in the 1st City Cemetery.
Frederick “Fred” was born August 18, 1831 in Jugenheim,
Germany, to Bartholomew Balsz and Phillipine Gerisch. The couple had
eleven children born between 1814 and 1836, several of whom came to the United States. Frederick’s mother Philippine is believed to have died
around 1836 in Germany shortly after the birth of her last child,
David. Bartholomew, a butcher, then immigrated to the United States
with some of their younger children, settling in St. Louis, Missouri.
Young Fred is thought to have married at the age of 17 in
St. Louis and had a son he named Frederick, Jr. The name of Fred’s
first wife is unknown, but she died about 1849.
Soon thereafter, Fred left his son with family and went west
with his brother David, who would have been 13 years old. The
brothers drove a team of oxen along the California Trail to Sacramento, where
they found work as butchers. They remained there until Fred eloped
with his second wife, Mercedes Gonzales, around 1860. The couple had
three boys and one girl before Mercedes died about 1867. Shortly
after, Fred married Eliza Tapia who was about 16 years of age on November 12,
1867. She bore him five more children before her death in 1878.
By this time, Fred’s younger brother David had opened a
slaughterhouse north of Phoenix in the Arizona Territory, so Fred moved his
family there. Between Fred the butcher and David the cattleman, they had the
perfect vertical business model.
Fred married his fourth wife, Sotela Bracamonte, on October
29, 1879 in Phoenix. She was about 17 years old; he was
48. Fred and Sotela would add at least ten more children to the
family. Between Fred’s family and David’s family, they had enough
children to open their own school--Balsz School—which still exists today in
Phoenix.
Fred continued to work as a butcher, going into business for
a short time with Frank D. Wells in Phoenix. That partnership was
dissolved in 1884, by which time Fred’s sons were in business with him.
Sotela died February 8, 1899, in Phoenix of heart disease
and was buried in the family plot in the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows. Fred did not remarry this time, but he had plenty of
children to care for him in his final years. The number of children
he fathered fluctuates by different accounts, but in 1906 he said he had had 19
children by his four wives.
Fred died at the home of his son Joseph on June 13,
1910. He had suffered a bout of pneumonia the year prior and never
fully recovered. He was buried next to Sotela.
© 2020 by Patty Gault. Last revised June 28, 2020
To obtain a copy of the sources used for this article, please contact the PCA to make a suggested donation. azhistcemeteries.org
