Peter Billerie is known through a single historical record, the 1870 U.S. Federal Census, which documents his life as a farmer in Altona, Clinton County, New York. Born about 1805 in Vermont, Peter was sixty-five years old when the census was taken. He lived with his wife, Annie, and two of their daughters, Ellen and Permenlia, in a rural farming household.
Peter earned his livelihood through agriculture, owning real estate valued at $500 and personal property valued at $125. Although modest in value, his farm represented the foundation of the family’s livelihood and reflected the agricultural economy that sustained many North Country residents during the nineteenth century.
Beyond the 1870 census, no additional public records have been located to document Peter’s earlier or later life. Despite the limited historical record, his census entry preserves the story of a Vermont-born farmer who established a home and supported his family in Clinton County. Peter Billerie’s life represents the many individuals whose contributions to the agricultural development of the North Country are remembered through a single surviving historical document.