Peter Hansen Petersen, also known as Peter Hans Petersen, was born Peder Hansen, 28 March1832 in Asminderød, Frederiksborg, Denmark, the first child of Hans Pedersen and Ane Sophie Knudsen. He was the first in his family to be baptized a memberof The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, being baptized on his birthday in 1856. A little over two years later he married Anne Kirstine Jensen, also a member, 29 November 1858 at Sankt Pauls Kirke in Kobenhavn. She brought a son, Niels Fritz Jensen or Hansen, to the marriage. Christena is also shown with another son, Hans Soren Jorgensen Hansen, in family records researched and kept by Villadene Knudson Banks. Together they had at least five more children who have been very difficult to trace because of the anomalous legal standing of their church with regard to the state church. When Laurence was born in 1859, the family was living at 223 Store Kongensgade,Kobenhavn (St. Anne's Quarter). He lived only three days. Peter Hansen was listed as a laborer and Christena’s age was given as 28 years old. In the 1860 Census, Peter and Christina were found at the same address in Kobenhavn’s St. Anne’s Quarter East, but Fritz was living with Peter’s parents in Asminderød. When Willardine (named for Willard Richards and known as Dena or Dinah) was born in 1861, the family was living at 18 Store Kongensgade, Kobenhavn (also St. Anne's Quarter). Peter was listed as some kind of a coachman. Ane Sophie Kirstine (Anna Hansen Crompton) was born in 1864. Their next son, Charles Hansen, born in 1867, died before his fourth birthday, and their last known child, Jesse Vilhelm Hansen, was born in 1870 and lived only 10 weeks. Nevertheless, Peter and Christena were mainstays of the Kobenhavn Branch for a good 15 years before emigrating. They crossed the Atlantic aboard the “Minnesota” in September 1872 with their two surviving daughters. (Fritz remained in Denmark where he died in 1889.) They settled in Brigham City where they were eventually joined by Peter’s mother, Ane Sophie Knudsen, possibly after the death of his father, Hans Pedersen, in 1973. After Peter’s death 12 February 1878, his younger sister, Marie Petersen Bergen, came with her family to Brigham City to join her elderly mother and her brother's widow.