Clay Co., KS AHGP-Portrait and Biographical Album of Washington, Clay and Riley Counties-Claus Peter Hanson
Portrait and Biographical Album of Washington, Clay and Riley Counties Chapman Brothers, Chicago, 1890
CLAUS PETER HANSON The results of diligence and economy are nowhere better illustrated than in the career of Mr. Hanson, who commenced in life at the foot of the ladder, financially, and has now become the owner of a valuable estate, comprising 353 acres of highly improved land on sections 35 and 36, Mulberry Township. The neat and substantial buildings, the goodly assortment of live stock, the forest and fruit trees and the farm machinery reflect great credit upon the proprietor, who spent the first few years of his residence in Clay County toiling early and late in order to gain a foothold. His land is finely located and well watered by Mullberry Creek, which winds romantically through it.
Mr. Hanson came to Kansas from Galena, Ill., in 1872. For two years prior to that time he had been employed as a pressman in the office of the Galena Gazette. A native of Denmark, he was born in Lolland, Oct. 26, 1844, and is the half brother of Hans Hanson, a biography of whom, with a full history of the family, appears on another page in this volume. Claus was the eldest child of his mother, whose maiden name was Anna Clauson, and he was reared and educated in his native place. When a young man of twenty-three years he determined to emigrate to the United States, and set out April 3, 1867, for Copenhagen, where he took passage on the steamer "Holsatia" bound for New York City, and which landed him safely at destination after a voyage of three weeks. Thence he went directly to Wisconsin, locating first in Oshkosh, but not long afterward went up into the copper mines of Lake Superior.
After six months spent in the above mentioned regions Mr. Hanson made his way to Dubuque, Iowa, and thence eastward to Galena, Ill., where he spent two years. Then being seized with a fit of homesickness, he recrossed the Atlantic where he spent the greater part of a year among his old friends and associates. In 1872 he organized a colony of Danes and accompanied them across the Atlantic and to this State, where they are mostly now located and doing well.
Upon coming to Kansas Mr. Hanson first located in Riley County, where most of the colony above mentioned established themselves and where he, himself, homesteaded a piece of land. Then coming to Clay County, he lived in a dugout on his present home for two years when he was married in Bloom Township, to Miss Anna Roenick. This young lady was a native of Prussia, whence she emigrated to America with her parents at the age of seventeen years, having been born in 1854. They located at once in Bloom Township where her father died when quite aged. The mother and
most of her children are still living there, the former being quite well advanced in years. Of this marriage there have been born a son and daughter�Charles W. and Celia May. Mr. Hanson, politically, affiliates with the Democratic party, while he and his estimable wife are members in good standing of the Lutheran Church. They are in possession of a large share of this world's goods as the result of their industry and economy and maintain in a marked degree the esteem and confidence of their neighbors.