Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021
Peter Pettee Clark Atwood was born May 12, 1796, in Weare, New Hampshire. His parents were Elijah Atwood and Polly Dustin.
Peter married Harriet Walter in Burke, Vermont, who was born October 25, 1798, daughter of Thomas Norris Walter and Elizabeth White. The couple had one child, Norris Walter Atwood.
Peter was a private in Captain Joseph Morrill’s Company of 31st U.S. Infantry. He enlisted at Barton, Vermont on April 26, 1813, and was discharged at Plattsburg, New York on April 27, 1814. His pension is filed in the National Archives.
He moved to Ashtabula County, Ohio. Peter and Harriet were related to the Holmes’s family. Catherine Ann Holmes was the sister of Thomas A. Holmes. She married Voney Atwood. The Atwoods and Holmes lived in Marion, Ohio before eventually moving west. Peter and his family arrived in Shakopee in 1852.
He was a carpenter by trade, and at once began the erection of a house behind the Philipps furniture store and nearly on a line with the alley. The frame house was on the north end of Lots 3 and 4 of Block Five. The middle place faced east, and was 16 x 24 feet, and 12 feet high. It also included one-story wings on each side, 14 x 16 feet, and one on the north and south side.
The building was completed in November 1852, and two or three months later became the first hotel in town. It was advertised as the “only first-class hotel in the city.” Robert Kennedy was the landlord, and it was known as the Shakopee House. It continued to be the only first-class hotel in the city until next summer. In 1853, the larger and conveniently located Wasson House (later called the American House) succeeded as the principal hotel.
It served a long time as a useful kitchen, and by 1891, the building became the home of a flock of domestic chickens.
The brick house was later the Orestus S. Brown and Eveyln Bortle Brown residence, and during the 1880s, they lived at this house (and the kitchen/coop) with their indentured servant, Alice Briggs, who was 15 years old and African American.
The limestone house (the left side of the current home) was built in 1856 by A.B. and Martha Jones, who sold it to J.J. Peck in 1879, and David and Julia Brown in 1880.
In 1905, Henry Schroeder, former mayor of Shakopee and president of the American Range Company, bought the home. By this time, the section that used to be the kitchen built by Peter Atwood was probably a chicken coop.
In 1949, Ralph Schroeder inherited the property. It then was sold to Harry and Gladys Lane. Don Wagner bought it in 1966. By this time, Peter Atwood’s kitchen and/or chicken coop was no longer there.
Peter and Harriet rented the house in Shakopee by 1853, and Peter and family moved to Sand Creek Township. Peter became a useful and esteemed citizen of Jordan. Harriet Walker Atwood died March 9, 1871, and was buried at Spring Hill Cemetery in Jordan.
Private Peter Percy Atwood died in Jordan on Saturday, August 10, 1872. He was 76 years old. He was suffering from gangrene, which is a potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies (necrosis).
Peter died from senile gangrene in the foot. Known as Pott gangrene, it is tissue death that usually occurs in the extremities of elderly people because of arterial blockages. The toes are most commonly affected, as happened to Peter.
All that remained in Shakopee is the name of the street, Atwood Street, in remembrance of Private Peter Pettee Clark Atwood and Harriet Walker Atwood.