Description
My grandfather, Jerome Bowers Peterson, married Philip White's middle daughter, Cornelia, in 1893. Born in New York in 1859, Peterson attended the city's colored schools. One of his teachers was Peter Guignon's former schoolmate, Charles Reason, who also taught Philip White and Maritcha Lyons. In the early 1880s, Peterson began writing for T. Thomas Fortune's newspaper, the New York Globe, and then became Fortune's co-editor at the New York Age. A Republican political appointee, he was given assignments in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico, in 1903 and 1916 respectively.