Today’s Leader of Faith
JOHN MASON PECK
Home Call : 14 March 1858
Missionary, Educator, Pastor, Author, Historian, Abolitionist
John Mason Peck (1789–1858) was an American Pioneer Baptist Leader, Missionary, who played a crucial role in spreading Christianity in the western frontier of the United States. He is best known for his missionary work in Illinois and Missouri. Peck co-founded the First Baptist Church of St. Louis, the city’s first Protestant church, and established the West’s first missionary society in 1817. He later worked with the Massachusetts Baptist Mission Society and played a crucial role in establishing Bible societies, Sunday schools, and temperance movements. He was a prominent anti-slavery advocate of his time, and founded many educational institutions, seminary and wrote prolifically. 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.
Peck was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, and grew up in a farming family with little formal education but began teaching school in 1807. A revival at his Congregational Church led to his conversion to Christianity. On May 8, 1809, he married Sally Paine, a native of New York. In 1811, they moved to Greene County, New York, where they joined the Baptist Church. Peck taught school and served as a pastor in Catskill and Amenia, New York. Inspired by missionary work after meeting Luther Rice, he studied under William Staughton in Philadelphia while awaiting assignment, where he met his future missionary partner, James Ely Welch.
As a missionary to the Missouri Territory, When the Triennial Convention withdrew support in 1820, Peck continued his church-planting and itinerant ministry independently. Moving to Illinois in 1822, he founded a seminary at Rock Springs, later relocated to Upper Alton, which became Shurtleff College. He actively opposed slavery, influencing Illinois Governor Edward Coles’ fight against pro-slavery efforts and helping establish the African Church of St. Louis in 1828. Peck also helped found the Illinois Baptist Education Society, the Illinois State Baptist Convention (serving as its first president), and the American Baptist Home Mission Society. His prolific writings covered agriculture, frontier history, and Native American affairs, and in 1843, he founded the American Baptist Publication Society. Harvard awarded him an honorary degree in 1852, and Illinois later commissioned him to write the state’s first history.
Peck died at the age of 69 in Rock Springs, Illinois, where he was first buried. His body was reinterred at Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis. His legacy continues in the churches, schools, and lives he touched, proving that a single dedicated missionary can shape both spiritual and societal progress for years to come.