Colonel Peter Atherton (April 12, 1704 – June 13, 1764) was a farmer, soldier and office holder with an extensive record of public service as a magistrate and as a representative for Harvard, Massachusetts, at the Great and General Court (1740–1747 and 1764).
[2]: 52 His grandfather, James Atherton,[3] arrived from England in the 1630s, and went to serve under Captain John Whiting's Company, and went on to become one of the founders of Lancaster, Massachusetts.
The History of Harvard (1732–1893) by Henry S. Nourse refers to Atherton and his brothers, Benjamin, James, John, Joseph, and his cousin Simon, as the first petitioners for 11,430 acres (4,630 ha) of land west of the river in 1731.
[8] The law in Massachusetts required all able men to keep a firearm and volunteer in the citizen army known as the militia, which would fight alongside the British soldiers engaging the threats resulting from the French and Indian War during the mid-1700s.
Non-compliance eventually led to passage by the British Parliament of the Quartering Act, in order to enforce the practice in the interest of the Crown.
[11] He married Experience Wright on June 13, 1728,[12] the granddaughter of Samuel Wardwell, a carpenter, who was charged with witchcraft in 1692, and was hanged at Witch Hill in Andover.
[6]: 85 Ten years later, Atherton died on June 13, 1764, at the age of sixty, of bilious colic in Concord, Massachusetts,[6]: 415 while a representative for his hometown at the General Court.
In 1921, a descendant transcribed his eulogy from his tombstone, which once read: "Peter Atherton, Esquire, closed the scene of life in Concord during the sitting of the General Court of which he was a member, the thirteenth of June, seventeen sixty-four, in the sixtieth year of his age.
The family homestead, built by his father descended from him and onto his eldest son, Peter (1734–1784) who served as Deputy Sheriff for Harvard between 1774–1784[19] and married a cousin.
His tenth son, Israel Atherton (1741–1822),[24] studied medicine at Harvard College, and built an honorable reputation as a doctor, and his daughter Mary (1753–1788), known as Mercy, married Dr Ephraim Monroe.