John Mason Peck

John Mason Peck (1789–1858) was an American Baptist missionary to the western frontier of the United States, especially in Missouri and Illinois. A prominent anti-slavery advocate of his day, Peck also founded many educational institutions and wrote prolifically.

Born in Litchfield, Connecticut to a farming family, Peck received little formal education but in 1807 began to teach school. He was converted to Christianity at a revival at his Congregational Church.

On May 8, 1809, Peck married Sally Paine, a native of New York state, whom he met in Litchfield. In 1811 the couple moved from Connecticut to Greene County, New York, near her family's home. Shortly after the birth of their first son, they joined the Baptist Church, in a mission from the New Durham, New Hampshire church. Peck taught school and soon also served as pastor at the Baptist churches in Catskill and Amenia, New York. He became interested in missionary work after meeting Luther Rice, and went to Philadelphia to study under William Staughton while awaiting assignment. There, Peck met James Ely Welch, who became his missionary partner.

Having secured funding as "missionaries to the Missouri Territory," the Peck and Welch families traveled westward, arriving in St. Louis in December, 1817. Peck and Welch organized the First Baptist Church of St. Louis, the first Protestant church in the city, and baptized two converts in the Mississippi River in February, 1818. By year's end, they also soon founded the first missionary society in the West: The United Society for the Spread of the Gospel. In 1820, the Triennial Convention, short of funds and convinced ministerial migration would continue, discontinued their missionary support. Peck refused to move back East or north to work with Isaac McCoy among Native Americans. Instead, he continued his itinerant ministry and church-planting efforts around St. Louis independently. Two years later, the Massachusetts Baptist Mission Society employed Peck at $5.00 a week while conducting missions. Meanwhile, the St. Louis Baptists built a building with the Western Baptist Society on the first floor, and a meeting hall above (which they shared with Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and other Protestant denominations).

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