Description
This collection brings together works collected and produced by the Baptist missionary John Mason Peck. Peck founded many of the first Protestant churches and organizations in the St. Louis area, and he held deep connections throughout the continent tied to social issues of temperance, abolition, and education during the time known as the Second Great Awakening. The collection covers Peck's many educational endeavors and comprises an excellent picture of a frontier intellectual's interests through the cultivation of a rare and extant mid-nineteenth century personal library. His collection contains some of the earliest known copies of many Illinois newspapers as well as many other rare frontier Midwestern imprints. The collection holds original manuscripts and ledgers on such subjects as the development of Rockspring Theological Seminary, the first institution of higher education in Illinois, as well as important annotations and manuscript commentaries throughout. Most of this working library was composed of books from Peck's adult life, many of which are excessively rare today, and dates concentrate from the 1820s through the mid-nineteenth century.A case could be made that John Mason Peck (1789-1858) was the greatest of the pioneers who set foot in early St. Louis. Writer, Baptist missionary, educator, humanitarian, Peck set about the process of bringing the civilization he knew and loved to the Mississippi Valley. In the 1820's, he founded one of the first Protestant churches west of the Mississippi, the first college in Illinois, and ordained the first African-American clergy in St. Louis. He also established the first schools...
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