Inexperienced and without previous training, she found few occupations open to girls, but being desperate, she managed to find some work with the use of a sewing machine.

[1] Deprived of a textbook education, and there being no public library nearby, Alice often stayed up late, reading her Bible and books from the Sunday school.

While her husband was stationed in Cleveland, Mrs. Peters took an active interest in the Sanitary Commission, making garments and scraping lint.

[1] Arriving at Fort Leavenworth, Mr. Peters found that no provision had been made for quarters for himself and his wife, so they boarded at the hotel in the town for a time, and he rode back and forth to his work daily.

There were 16 people already living in the crowded quarters, but they remained for five weeks, at the end of which time, two rooms were partitioned off from the warehouse where the bacon was stored for the army.

Not only did she become an influential factor in the business department of government service there, but she did a work of incalculable benefit in the religious training of the neglected children of the fort.

In 1873, Mrs. Peters had her sister-in-law babysit her child each day so that she could devote herself to the Women's Crusade for eleven weeks, speaking and praying in saloons and on the street.

Identifying herself with the Methodist Episcopal Church at the age of fifteenth, Peters became a charter member of both home and foreign missionary societies.