Forty Years of Pioneer Life

This Baptist missionary memoir of pioneer life in the Midwest was published in 1864. From the book's Preface: No compiler of a biography could desire to be favored with more abundant and reliable materials. They consist of a very extensive correspondence from the year 1808 to that of Dr. Peck's death covering full fifty years of his eventful life. Then in addition to these well-arranged letters which a thou- sand hands have contributed with the substance of his more important replies there are his journals for almost this entire period filling fifty-three volumes some few of them small and portable for his convenience in traveling but most of them large either folios or quartos of some humdreds of pages each full of all facts and incidents which his inquisitive and almost ubiquitous spirit of research brought under his observation. The superabundance of these materials has indeed proved the principal embarrassment in this compilation. They are ample and by Dr. Peck himself were designed for a more full and extended memoir of his life and times than it seemed ad- visable to the publishers now to send forth.