Author: Peck, John
Biography:
PECK, John (1734-1812: ancestry.com)
The Peck family was well established in Rehoboth MA where John Peck was born, the son of Henry and Rachel (Whitaker) Peck, but he moved first to Royalston MA and finally to Montpelier VT. He appears to have been a farmer. One source adds that he was a "town officer" in Royalston for many years, although that source might be confusing him with General John Peck (1764-1826). In 1759 he married Mary Drown (or Drowne); the couple had eight children. "A Dialogue between a Blind Man and Death," which was sometimes published with his Description of the Last Judgment, was not in fact by Peck but by the seventeenth-century author Richard Standfast. His "Universal Plan" poem--published under varying titles, but initially as A Poem, containing a Descant on the Universal Plan (1801)--is sometimes attributed to another John Peck, a minister (1780-1849), but generally reliable authorities accept this authorship. (ancestry.com 16 June 2020; A. M. Burke, ed. The Prominent Families of the United States of America [1908 repr. 1991]; Wendy Raphael Roberts, Awakening Verse [2020]) HJ