Peter married Ruth H. Crocker of Amherst, Ohio on 12 Jul 1821 and
first settled at Brownhelm, Ohio. He was the first settler of
Oberlin, Ohio in April 1833. He gives the following account of his
experience in pioneer life: "In the fall of 1816, at the age of 21 1/2
years, I left Stockbridge, my native place, to seek my fortune in the
West, and settled in what is now called Brownhelm, then an entire
wilderness, and known as town No. 6, in the nineteenth range of the
Connecticut Western Reserve. Three young men of us built the first
house in town, and wintered there in the employ of Col. Henry Brown of
Stockbridge, Mass. From whence a colony was formed of about twenty
families, who settled the town, enjoying the pleasures and suffering
the privations of a pioneer life, common to all new settlements. I,
with my family of five children, left Brownhelm in April, 1833, for
the express purpose of commencing the Oberlin enterprise, and we were
the first family that penatrated this, then dense forest, and thus
took a second trial of pioneering, which was much shorter than the
first, and I have been an eye witness to what God hath wrought in and
for this place, and for this great valley of the Mississippi, and do
praise and magnify his name!"