JOHN MASON PECK was born in the parish of Litchfield, South Farms, Connecticut, October 31, 1789. His parents occupied a respectable but humble sphere in life; and derived their support from a small farm, in the cultivation of which the father was aided by his sons. So soon as these were able to render assistance in the toils of husbandry, their services were thus employed during the summer, while in winter they enjoyed the advantages of that glory of New England, and especially in the earlier periods of Connecticut, the district school. Alternating
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in this manner between toil of the body and reflection of the mind, the subject of this sketch grew up among the hills and rocks of his birthplace, rather a stupid and uncultivated youth, until he was about 19 years old, as he has since ingenuously confessed. Two or three events then helped to develop some powers of his nature which before were latent. He taught a winter district school for two or three seasons, boarding around in the several families of his employers, as was then the more common custom; and what was no uncommon result of such family intercourse, he got married May 8th, 1809.Near the same period he was converted to Christ, and with some little hesitation he joined the Congregational church in his native town. There was, indeed, scarcely anything else to join in that region then; but ere long, and while still employing his winters in teaching in some of the adjacent parishes, he formed the acquaintance of a few scattered Baptist families, simple, honest, humble Christian people, even their ministers unlearned, and putting on no airs of superiority to the common people, with whom they very freely mingled, and by whom they were highly esteemed in love for their work's sake. He lived, some half a century later, to draw the picture of the two denominations, with the marked and sharp angles of difference as they were when he first knew them both, and before the large assimilation, which has since taken place, had melted and rounded off many of the very noticeable points of early dissimilarity.
A few years after his marriage, finding that his father's homestead would be inadequate to the support of multiplied and increasing families, he removed into a wild new region, in Greene County, N. Y., and there, among the mountains of the Catskill range, he cultivated a rude, new farm, in summer, and taught school in winter, as before. Here, too, he and that discreet, pious, faithful and self-denying wife of his, put on the Lord Jesus Christ in baptism, according to the original institution, after having been long and deeply exercised on this question, after having searched diligently among books and living, learned, able advocates of pedobaptist usages, and struggled manfully with the prepossession in favor of the traditions of their early years. There, too, he was licensed to preach the gospel, and not long after was publicly ordained in the same county." 1
While living at Catskill, prior to 1813, he adopted the following means of improvement. He and two other ministers, Brethren
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Jenks and Lamb, living near each other, met every fortnight at each other's houses and discussed some question previously proposed. Thus they passed over a number of important topics in systematic theology.On the 17th of May, 1817, the board of the Baptist Triennial Convention accepted and appointed Rev. J. M. Peck and his co-worker, J. R. Welch, as missionaries to the Missouri Territory. On the following day, which was the Lord's day, they were solemnly set apart to this work by appropriate services in the Sansom Street Church, Philadelphia. Rev. Dr. Furman preached the sermon of the occasion from Acts 13:2: "Separate me Paul and Barnabas," &c. One thousand dollars was the whole amount appropriated to defray their expenses to St. Louis, and to support the mission.
On Friday afternoon, July 25, 1817, a little one-horse wagon was seen leaving the door of Asa Peck, in Litchfield, Connecticut, with J. M. Peck, his wife and three little ones, bound for the scene of his labors in the then "Far West." They made the trip by way of Philadelphia, to Shawneetown, in said vehicle, thence by keel-boat to St. Louis, where they landed on the morning of the first day of the following December, Mr. Peck being sick with low intermittent fever, from which he did not recover for two months. As soon as he had fully recovered, he entered upon his work. He found many obstacles to the propagation of a pure Christianity, among which was a great want of reverence for the Sabbath, also a disinclination to attend any place of worship. But a few men and women were found who had the fear of God before their eyes. On the third Sabbath in February, 1818, these, to the number of eleven, were organized into a church, called "The First Baptist Church, St. Louis," by Elds. Peck and Welch, this being the first time Eld. Peck had stood up west of the Mississippi to preach the gospel. We next find him engaged in a school which he had established in the spring of 1818. The building was on the east side of Fourth Street, opposite the site of the Planters' House; a two-story framed building, 30x20 feet, the lower story being used for the double purpose of school and church. Here for a time the First Baptist Church worshiped. Such was the commencement of Baptist work in the Catholic village of St. Louis, sixty years ago. But his labors were not confined to St. Louis. He made extended prospecting and preaching excursions in the territory, establishing and aiding churches and associations. In
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June and July of this year he made a tour through St. Charles, Clark's, Woods (now Troy, Lincoln County) and Stout's Forts, to Ramsey's Creek Settlement in Pike County, where he found a small Baptist church, to which he preached Saturday and Sunday, and returned to St. Louis. In September of the same year he made two trips to the south and southwest of St. Louis; the first one as far as St. Michael in what is now Madison County. On his return he preached in Cook's Settlement, also in the Murphy Settlement. It was on this tour that he found and thus describes the "specimen squatter family:" "About 9 o'clock I found the family to which I was directed. As this family was a specimen of the squatter race found on the extreme frontiers in early times, some specific description may amuse the reader, for I do not think a duplicate can now be found within the boundaries of Missouri. The single log cabin of the most primitive structure was situated at some distance within the corn-field. In and around it were the patriarchal head and his wife, two married daughters and their husbands, with three or four little children, and a son and daughter grown up to manhood and womanhood. The old man said he could read, but 'mighty poorly.' The old woman wanted a hyme book, but could not read one. The rest of this romantic household had no use for books, or 'any such trash.' I had introduced myself as a Baptist preacher, traveling through the country preaching the gospel to the people. The old man and his wife were Baptists; at least had been members of some Baptist church when they lived 'in the settlements.' The 'settlements' with this class in those days meant the back parts of Virginia and the Carolinas, and in some instances the older sections of Kentucky and Tennessee, where they had lived in their earlier days. But it was 'a mighty poor chance' for Baptist preaching where they lived. The old man could tell of a Baptist meeting he had been at on the St. Francois, and could direct me to Eld. Farrar's residence near St. Michael. The old woman and the young folks had not seen a Baptist preacher since they had lived in the territory, some eight or ten years. Occasionally they had been to a Methodist meeting. This was the condition of a numerous class of people then scattered over the frontier settlements of Missouri. The 'traveling missionary' was received with all the hospitality the old people had the ability or knew how to exercise. The younger class were shy and kept out of the cabin, and could not be persuaded to come in to hear the missionary read the Scriptures
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and make a prayer. There was evidence of backwardness or some other propensity attending all the domestic arrangements. It was nine o'clock when I reached the squatter's cabin, and yet no preparations had been made for breakfast. The beds, such as they were, remained in the same condition as when the lodgers first crawled from their nests in the morning. The young women appeared listless. Their heads, faces, hands, clothes, all indicated slothfulness and habitual neglect. Soon the old woman made preparations for breakfast, and as the culinary operations were performed out of doors, very probably the younger women assisted, but no other female entered the cabin but the old lady. In an hour's time her arrangements within commenced."2Mr. Peck continued his itinerant work in Missouri until 1821, when he removed to Rock Spring, Illinois, and established the Rock Spring Seminary, which in 1831 became Shurtleff College. In 1829 Dr. Peck commenced the publication of The Pioneer, the first Baptist newspaper in the Western States. As editor and publisher he continued this work about twelve years. He was also the author of the Emigrant's Guide, The Gazetteer of Illinois, Life of Daniel Boone, Father Clark, &c.
He was a most remarkable man, indeed, and for a full account of his life the reader is referred to The Memoir of J. M. Peck. From 1821 he spent the residue of his eventful and useful life in Illinois, and died at Rock Spring, March 15, 1858, where he was first buried, and about a month later his remains were removed to the city of St. Louis, and now repose in Bellefontaine Cemetery.
____________________ --Notes--
1 Rufus Babcock, in Western Watchman, Vol. XI, No.1.
2 Western Watchman, Vol. VIII, "Reminiscences of Missouri."======= [From Robert S. Duncan, A History of the Baptists in Missouri, 1882; rpt. 1981, pp. 89-93. - Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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