John Mason Peck
John Mason Peck (1789–1858) was an American Baptist missionary to the western frontier of the United States, especially in Missouri.
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[edit] Biography
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut to a farming family, Peck received little formal education but in 1807 began to teach. He was converted to Christianity at a revival at his Congregational Church.
[edit] Marriage and family
On May 8, 1809 Peck married Sally Paine, a native of New York state. In 1811 they moved from Connecticut to Greene County, New York, near her first home. There they joined the Baptist Church. Peck became interested in foreign missionary work.[1]
In 1818, they traveled westward, where Peck organized the First Baptist Church of St. Louis and the first missionary society in the West: the United Society for the Spread of the Gospel. In 1820, the Triennial Convention discontinued his missionary support, but he refused to move back East. Peck continued his church-planting efforts independently. Two years later, the Massachusetts Baptist Mission Society employed him at $5.00 a week.
In 1827, Peck founded a seminary in Belleville, Illinois which he moved to St.Louis, then to Upper Alton, Illinois in 1836 and renamed the Alton Seminary, which later was named Shurtleff College and would survive until 1957.[2]
The American Baptist Home Mission Society was organized in 1832 under his influence with Jonathan Going as the first secretary. This society, like Peck, directed its efforts toward the people of the frontier: settlers, Native Americans, and former slaves.
He was also influential in the establishment of Rock Spring Seminary, the Illinois State Baptist Convention, the Illinois Baptist Education Society, and the Western Baptist Society.
During his 40-year ministry, Peck contributed to the establishment of 900 Baptist churches, saw 600 pastors ordained, and 32,000 were added to the Baptist faith. He died in Rock Spring, Illinois, where he was first buried. He was reinterred at Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ "Biographies: John Mason Peck", Southern Baptist Historic Library and Archives, accessed 21 Aug 2010
- ^ http://www.lib.niu.edu/1998/ihy981205.html
- ^ "Biographies: John Mason Peck", Southern Baptist Historic Library and Archives, accessed 21 Aug 2010
[edit] Further reading
- Hayne, Coe. Vanguard of the Caravans: A Life Story of John Mason Peck, 1931.
- Lawrence, Matthew. John Mason Peck, the Pioneer Missionary: a Biographical Sketch, 1940.
