Sheldon Peck, Portrait of an Ordinary Man in Extraordinary Times Script

Narrator: On residential suburban street corner in the heart of DuPage County, Illinois sits the Sheldon Peck Homestead. 

It's recognized as the oldest house in Lombard, constructed in what was once Babcock's Grove around 1839. The farmhouse was home to the Peck family, the first school in the area, a stop on the Underground Railroad, and a place of business for Sheldon Peck, a portrait artist. 

Sarah Richardt: The Sheldon Peck Homestead is a home with warmth and heart. It is a modest house with a radical history. Sheldon Peck built this home with his family in 1839. He passed away in 1868. The house went to his wife. When his wife passed away in 1887, the house then went to their youngest son Frank Peck. Frank Peck lived here until his death. And then the house went to his daughter, Alice Mertz. Alice lived here in this house until 1991. And if you catch that, the generations are extremely long. So, 1991 Alice passes away and the house then goes to her son, Alan Mertz. And Allan was extremely generous. And donated the house to the Lombard Historical Society. To preserve the families history and turn it into a museum. 

Narrator: In many ways, the story of Sheldon Peck is the story of 19th Century America. Tracing Sheldon Pecks migration from Yankee Vermont, to Upstate New York where he and his family 

bought passage on the transportation miracle of the age, the Erie Canal. Then on a steam ship to Chicago and ultimately by wagon to the prairie frontier where he and his wife Harriet build their home only a few years after native Americans were forced out. 

As an artist, Sheldon Peck was a self taught master, creating unique works of portrait art that captured the personality of his contemporaries in vivid color and texture. These private commissions were hung in obscurity and not fully recognized by the wider art world for nearly a century. But more than the travel and art, Sheldon Peck saw a progressive vision of a future America that stood for equality, dignity, and respect for all people. It was a vision that he sometimes failed to live up to, but always worked toward, sacrificed for and remains today an example of a life, well lived.  

Jeanne Schultz Angel: When you dive into Sheldon Peck's story, you are infused with humanity that resonates today.

Sarah Richardt: Sheldon Peck's art, undeniably carries out through generations. What Sheldon and Harriet Peck did, the way they are sharing their values... It spreads.

Bob Jacobson: His vocation is a farmer. And his joy is painting.

Lynn Fall: Not just abolition, but also women's suffrage, public education, temperance... He sets a really, really powerful example.

Richard Miller: It was very risky, what he and those other people did. And he was determined to do what was necessary to give somebody a chance.

Bob Jacobson: History has dots all over the place. And a lot of the dots start with Sheldon Peck.

Rita Schneider: I want people to see, what a person of worth he was.

Narrator: In 1797 America was just 21 years old. George Washington, the nations first President, finished his second term in office to make way as his Vice President, John Adams, assumed the Chief Executive role. The population of the United States at the time, was just under 4 million, and growing. In Cornwall, Vermont, Revolutionary War veteran, farmer and blacksmith Jacob Peck and his wife Elizabeth, gave birth to their 7th child, Sheldon.  

Sarah Richardt: Sheldon Peck was born in Cornwall, Vermont in 1797. The family had already been here from England since the 1600's. They settled in Vermont. 

Narrator: Then as now, Cornwall, Vermont was a farming community. The township was covered with mostly unbroken forest with no paths, but those marked by blazed trees and passable only on foot when Yankee immigrants began to homestead in the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War. Describing Cornwall residents, one local historian said that "while they avoided ostentation, they manifested as clearly their sense of obligation in religious as in secular things.   

Richard Miller: In Peck's day, in Cornwall, Vermont, it might have been geographically isolated. But culturally it wasn't. There was a library there. That had 400 books in it. When Peck was a young man, newspapers and magazines were circulating. Travelers were coming through the town on a regular basis bringing news of what was going on elsewhere. Many people aspired to gentility. To be perceived as erudite, educated. 

Bill Brooks: He married his wife, Harriet Corey Who was from the nearby community of Bridport. And they married in 1824. He probably started to paint in that period just before the marriage.  

Rita Schneider: I don't believe that Sheldon Peck was ever educated in art. But he had a vision and an innate talent, to use that to create his paintings. 

Richard Miller: The earliest know portrait is a double portrait of his parents. By that time he had done some painting. How he learned is unknown. I think that Peck might have had access to some of William Jennys portraits. William Jennys was a Connecticut portrait painter who traveled up the Connecticut River in 1803, 1804. And painted in Middlebury from which he may have learned composition, color, poses. No evidence has been found that he received any training. So we can assume that he was probably mostly self-taught and being a young and ambitious artist, that may have opened doors for him.

Bob Jacobson: And this is what you look for. The collar here, is typical Illinois. Well, if you go here, we know this is an Illinois painting. You will see that the collar is the same. So you put all the dots together and hopefully you know more. That's what folk art is all about. A man not trained in art. Hasn't gone through any schools on art, and he says I'm gonna paint. 

Richard Miller: By 1824 he painted his brother and sister-in-law. Of course, probably a wedding gift. But by the end he was he was 27 years old and he developed a distinctive, recognizable style. The earlier sort of, painterly surfaces of the portrait of his parents where looks like you sort of finding his way, in terms of is in terms of how to lay down paint. These portraits show that he had mastered that. He was naturally gifted. And I think he probably recognize that from his youth. All children like to draw. Most children stopped at a point. I think it's likely that he never gave it up. Painting was something that was part of his character and that desire needed to be satisfied.

Narrator: In 1828, 25 year old Sheldon Peck decided to move his family 200 miles to the west, from Vermont to Jordan, New York, where he purchased land and built a home. In the decades following the War of 1812, many Americans, like Sheldon and Harriet Peck, found themselves on the move. Historians later use terms like Manifest destiny, American exceptionalism and Continentalism to describe a sense of mission held by Americans living along the Eastern Seaboard as well as European immigrants poring into the former British Colonies, to redeem the Old World by high example. Before them stretched a vast, seemingly open land destined to be explored, cultivated, evangelized and developed. New technologies like steam engine locomotives pulling passenger and freight trains, the telegraph, and improvements in agriculture, made all this seem possible.  

Almeda Powers Dodge, a school teacher from Onondaga County, New York wrote "It had begun to be whispered about that a wonderful new invention was at hand, a powerful piece of machinery that ran on iron rails and drew after it, a string of coaches buckled together and capable of holding three times as many passengers as the old stage coaches.

Ann Keating: A lot of the settlers who were moving west are going to come from the northeast. Many of them originally from New England. By the first part of the 19th century New Englanders are starting to move into upstate New York. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 shifts attention even further westward. And so Erie Canal now opens connecting New York City with the Great Lakes, Albany to Buffalo. On this 365 odd mile canal. 

Lynn Fall: Jordan was on the path of the original Erie Canal which opened in 1825. And like many of the other small villages along the path of the Erie Canal, Jordan really thrived and blossomed as a result of the ease of transportation and commerce that was just facilitated by the opening of the canal.

Sarah Richardt: Jordan New York was a booming town in the 1830'. The Erie Canal now opens, and now all of this transportation is available. If you go there now it's this quaint little town and it's a lovely. It wasn't a quaint little towns in the 1830's. They had factories. They were building wheel barrels. They were building all of this stuff and its all being transported on the Erie Canal.

Narrator: It was an age of progress and innovation. Both economic and social progress as well as unparalleled innovation and departure from traditional forms of Christian religion, particularly in an area of UpState New York known as the "Burned Over" District. 

Doug Sweeney: The "Burned Over" was a region of upstate New York that in the early decades of the 19th century was getting burned over by red hot religion. Not just Evangelical Protestantism. But all kinds of red hot religion. When the Erie Canal was opened in October of 1825, there were all kinds of boom towns and there was all kinds of social excitement that surround of these boomtowns. Towns like Utica and Rome and Syracuse. And Rochester.

Narrator: Utopian experiments like the Oneida Community, founded by John Humphrey Noyes, practiced “complex marriage,” in which every male was married to every female. The Millerite's, believed William Miller’s claim that the world would end around 1843 and gave away their homes and land and waited for the Second Coming of Jesus. Following the so-called Great Disappointment, many Millerite's helped found the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

About the time Sheldon Peck moved his family from Vermont to Jordan, New York, fellow Vermont native Joseph Smith moved to the Burned Over District and claimed angels spoke to him in 1829, revealing the location of buried scriptures. Smith went on to in his words,  restore the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

Charles Granderson Finney, a successful revival preacher popularized a number of techniques like lengthy evangelistic meetings and invitations for sinners to come forward to reflect on the state of their souls. At Finney’s revivals, sinners flocked to the anxious bench, which was a row of seats up front near the altar where people could pray, weep and confess their sins before accepting salvation. 

Narrator: When Sheldon Peck arrived in Jordan, New York the Erie Canal had been open for three years. Peck continued to raise a family, work as a portrait artist, develop his skill and earn a living. He also purchased a home and land. 

Richard Miller: The earliest portraits were painted on wood panels. Wood panels could be gotten from carriage builders. They used wood panels for doors and other parts of carriages. When he moved to New York. The vast majority of the portraits were painted of New York sitter, are painted on wood panels. But four are painted on canvas as well. By the time he was well-established in New York, he was experimenting with other supports. 

Sarah Richardt: While he's in New York he is painting regular folks He's also painting people have the same progressive thoughts he has. At least two of the families were members of the Sennett Federated Church in Sennett, New York. Which is right next door to Jordan, And it's this huge radical church with a free black population. And a population of freedom seekers who have escaped slavery and they're found sanctuary in this church as well.

Narrator: Swirling around him, a perfect storm of social activism was brewing. David Low Dodge formed the nations first Peace society. Elizabeth Caty Stanton's Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the Seneca Falls Convention, would eventually give rise to the women's rights movement. And the New York Legislature was in the process of establishing a system of free public education. But most influential was the rise of the anti slavery movement and the underground railroad. With notable figures like Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Seward and Harriet Tubman, all living within a days ride of Jordan, New York.  

Ann Keating: I think there's a real connection between the religious fervor and the idea of manifest destiny as one of the strains of the Great Awakening. One of the strains of this revivalism of this era. And making society as good as it can be. Reforming yourself. Reforming your society. And making it better.  

Lynn Fall: There were local communities, Oswego, the village of Sennett. Auburn, who had residents who were very active in the underground railroad and other abolitionist activities in this area where freedom seekers would has been hidden and stayed on route to Canada. 

Kenneth B. Morris: The Underground Railroad was a network of people working together to help ferry freedom seekers to Canada for freedom. And so when you have freedom speakers that were making their journey from the south which on average took at least a year. You had to have people working along the way to ferry you to safe stations. To get you clothes. Get shoe some food and get you along to the next station so the you can eventually make it to Canada for freedom.

Narrator: The American anti slavery movement in the first half of the 19th century was united in their call to end slavery. The reasons why and exactly how they should go about it, was far from settled.  

Jeanne Schultz Angel: You could be on the spectrum of anti-slavery in the United States and say, I want west of the Mississippi to be settled by white people in small farms. And I don't want plantation farming. Or, I'm anti-slavery because I would like all the people of color to get on a boat and travel to Africa. There was also the radical end of things. The radical end looks at the anti-slavery movement a little bit different. The radical end generally is for Racial Equality. Which is not something the average American really had in their mind when they talked about slavery. 

Sarah Richardt: Sheldon Peck was radical abolitionist. And he was very passionate about what he did. And not afraid of what he did. He is kind of this 1850's hippie. who had all of these a radical craziness that he did that nobody really appreciate that the time. 

Kenneth B. Morris: Sheldon Pack and his family were these radical abolitionists. And they were working I'm to do the right thing and to help. That risked their own freedom, their own safety. The safety of their family and their property to do the right thing. To work to help people get to freedom. Because slavery was horrific. It was brutal. It was the exportation of the most vulnerable among us. And so white families were really instrumental in helping freedom seeker make it to freedom.

Narrator: While living in Jordan, New York, Sheldon Peck painted the portrait his friend, Winslow Churchill in nearby Camillus, New York. In 1832, Winslow and his wife Mercy left Jordan, and moved to a plot of land along the east branch of the DuPage River in in what was to become DuPage, County, Illinois. Four years later, Sheldon and Harriet Peck with their seven children, decided to follow them. They bought passage on the Erie Canal to Buffalo, New York and then by ship through the Great Lakes to Chicago where Sheldon tried to re-start his portrait business. 

Sarah Richardt: There is a whole way that Sheldon Peck and this group of people from the East Coast are moving here. 

Rita Schneider: Families followed families. Neighbors followed neighbors. Friends followed friends. Because his friends have written back and said to him, We have a good life here. We have a farm. Why don't you come out here too? 

Sarah Richardt: Sheldon Peck had painted the Churchill's. We believe they were friendly out there. Word gets sent back to the Pecks. Sheldon and Harriet. Come on out. And they make it as far as Chicago.

Ann Keating: In 1833 Chicago is changing really rapidly. It had been for several generations, a Métis mixed race outpost in Indian country. 

Narrator: Two years before the Peck's arrived in Chicago, Potowanami Indians who had lived for generations in and around the Southern Great Lakes region including a large settlement along the banks of the DuPage River, had signed the second of two treaties which granted the United States government all land west of Lake Michigan to Lake Winnebago in modern-day Wisconsin. In return, the Potowanami received promises of cash payments and tracts of land west of the Mississippi River.

Ann Keating: This is a dramatic demographic change. Pottawatomi are going to be removed. They're going to be led out of the region in just a few years. 1836, 1837 they're gonna be removed to Iowa, to Kansas and finally many of them to Oklahoma to Indian Territory. 

Jeanne Schultz Angel: The American Indians we're absolutely disrespect. There's no question about it. They were part of false treaties. There were conversations and things that were signed illegally. 

They were essentially evicted out of their home in Illinois and the senators that we're coming in wanted to just forget about this. They had a very much attitude of manifest destiny. It was this idea of, "Oh, this blank landed that we get to know settle and improve." And there was not a recognition of the people that we're already there.

Narrator: Upon arriving in Chicago, the Peck's lived at what is now the intersection of State and Washington Streets and continued to work as an artist.  Wether it was competition from other portrait artists, the economic Panic of 1837 or a cholera epidemic that took the lives of two of their children, Sheldon and Harriet Peck decided to leave Chicago and according to family legend, trade for a wagon, which they used to move their belongings 20 miles due west, to Babcock's Grove.  

Rita Schneider: Well I think they had enough of Chicago. I think that the financial collapse and so on, of that era, had a lot to do with it. 

Sarah Richardt: He ends up selling his property, according to family lore, for Oxen and a wagon. Moves his family here. Lives on this new found property, or newly homesteaded property, for two years in the wagon while they are building the house.Babcock's Grove in the 1830's, it would be grass taller than your head. It is a wilderness prairie where you have the Peck's living on the east side of Babcock's Grove, the Churchill's living on the west side of Babcock's Grove, and there is a river running in between. And there is no one else. 

Narrator: With 80 acres of land and a frontier home built with timbers cut from a stand of trees they purchased near their friends, the Churchills, Sheldon and Harriet Peck began to farm the land and raise sheep. Not just any sheep. Marino sheep likely purchased from friends or relatives back in Vermont.  

Jeanne Schultz Angel: Sheldon Peck, on his farm in Illinois, raised Marino Sheep. He used those Marino Sheep for everything from diapers to wash clothes, to his coat, to everything. They used wool for their clothing and they used the sheep in that way, so that they would have no union with slave holding. You didn't want to be a party to that system at all. You didn't want to vote with those people. You didn't want buy their goods. You didn't want to have anything off the backs of people of color, who were enslaved. It's just not something he could have stomached at all.  

Narrator: As the 1840's progressed, the Peck family blossomed. Harriet set up a homespun, frontier clinic in one room of the house, offering care to anyone who needed it. In 1843 they hired a neighbor, Almeda Jane Powers Dodge, to serve as a school teacher. Since there was no school, the Peck's again, used their home, making it the first school in Babcock's Grove. 

Sarah Richardt: Eventually he built a little school house his property as well, that was then used to educate everybody. Regardless of age or sex. Girls would be educated the same as boys. And regardless of religion.

Jeanne Schultz Angel: Sheldon and Harriet Peck were not only anti slavery advocates, but they were also a part of a bigger reform movement. And one of the arms of those reforms, was temperance. They were against alcohol. They thought alcohol had a very negative effect on the family and on society. And the reformer mindset in general wanted to improve society, by getting rid of the evils.

Narrator: Sheldon continued to work as an artist as his natural talent developed into a unique style of portraiture that captured his friends and neighbors in vivid color and vocational detail. 

Sarah Richardt: He is putting images in the portrait to represent part of their lives. Whether it's a book, whether its a flower, whether it's a background, whether it's a newspaper. One gentleman was a printer. So he's you know he writes the newspaper that he's working for. But all of those things to capture that moment in time. Much as a photographer would today. 

Richard Miller: Peck painted a portrait of Bailey Hobson, in Naperville Illinois. He was very prominent member that community. In his wife's portrait she's holding a book and seated next to a table with a vase of flowers. It's a very domestic scene. But yet the book indicates her education. She was able to read. Hobson is a seated with his beaver hat up turned on the table. As if he had just returned from outside or was preparing to go outside. It's very subtle clues as to how this couple interacted within their marriage.

Narrator: In the years after Sheldon and Harriet Peck moved their family to Illinois, tension over slavery steadily grew. Pro and anti-slavery factions battled for control in Congress as the nation spread westward. In 1837, support for the radical abolitionist view in Illinois turned deadly.  

Jeanne Schultz Angel: Elijah Lovejoy was a printer. He was the newspaper publisher in Alton, Illinois. And he was anti-slavery. And the focus of this newspaper was anti-slavery. When they threw his printing press into the river, he actually had friends raise enough money for a new printing press. It happened again. By the time it was his third printing press, they actually murdered him as well. 

Narrator: Then, on September 18, 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act. The law required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. DuPage County, Illinois was no longer safe haven for freedom seekers. Radical abolitionists like Harriet and Sheldon Peck now faced legal consequences for helping them. Despite the danger, the Peck family opened their home to freedom seekers, joining with other radical abolitionist in area like the Blodgetts, McChesney's Cushings and Filers.  

Rita Schneider: In my opinion, Sheldon Peck did not keep it a secret. Because Sheldon Peck made it his goal to be able to bring those slaves through into Chicago and so on. He joined the Liberty Party. He was out there. He was telling people about it. He was having meetings at his home, that had prominent people in the abolitionist movement speaking. He was agent for the Western Citizen, which was the Liberty newspaper. And he was out there. Painting all these abolitionists. It was very obvious that's what he was. He was an underground railroad person. He was known in DuPage County and in the Chicago area for believing in "All men are created equal."

Narrator: Frank Peck, Sheldon and Harriet's youngest son, recalled years later, his memories of freedom seekers staying in their home. "I have seen as many as seven slaves sheltered under the roof I still own and still occupy that my parents were helping on to freedom. One man in particular, Old Charley, left a deep impression. Frank Peck's sister, even painted her own portrait of him. Frank Peck's diary says, "As a Small boy I was sitting on the knee of Old Charley, and wondered why he was black and I white? And I asked him if his skin was rubbed off, would he be white too? As we sat in the moonlight, and sang some of his plantation songs together.  

Roll on tibler moon,  guide the traveler not astray

Whilst the nightingale song is in full tune.

While I sadly complain to the moon. 

Sarah Richardt: Harriet Peck was a woman of strength and caring. She would get up every morning and make fresh jam for her children. She would go out and pick the berries, come in and make jam for her children. Who does that? I mean... but Harriet Peck does. She is the one here. She is the one with her sons and her daughters running the 205 acres in Babcock's Grove.

Jeanne Schultz Angel: Sheldon and Harriet had a wonderful relationship. And we know this from stories from Frank Peck's diary. There's a particular story and which Sheldon, one of the times he's home on the farm, not traveling around with his portrait painting business, is trying to milk a cow. And he's having trouble with the cow. And he starts cursing up a blue streak. And Harriet walks along and she said, Good Morning Reverend McChesney! Really loudly. And Sheldon, looking very abashed sneaks around over the cow sees that actually Reverend McChesney was not there. Harriet starts uproariously laughing over the whole thing and Sheldon starts laughing as well.

Narrator: 1849 was a big year in the lives of the Peck family. The year before, Sheldon had sold a portion of his farm to make way for the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad which ran from Chicago, to Babcock's Grove and beyond. It was also the year of the California Gold Rush. Two of the Peck Boys, Charles and John caught the fever and headed west. Charles went on to become an artist in his own right, helping to co-found the Academy of Design which eventually became the Chicago Art Institute.  Sheldon and Harriet Peck lived out the rest of their lives in Babcock's Grove. They continued to farm, paint and work for social justice causes and watch helplessly as America tore itself apart in the Civil War. 

Narrator: Sheldon Peck died in 1868, one year before Babcock's Grove was incorporated into the town known today as Lombard, Illinois after re-estate developer Josiah Lombard. As the decades followed, the memory of Sheldon Peck faded beyond the borders of Lombard. The portraits he painted, were hung in private residences, not museums or public spaces. Then, in the mid 20th century, the art world began to recognized and appreciate the work of frontier artists like Sheldon Peck.  

Richard Miller: He didn't paint for the salon, for exhibition. He painted for customers. And the work that he did was hung on the walls of homes. It wasn't until the 20th century that people started looking at these kinds of paintings in a very systematic way. Recognizing the connections between certain painting as and the artist who painted them. These paintings painted outside of urban areas are sort of like a tributary of the mainstream of American Art History. It runs parallel two it. But it's separate. And I think had this works been considered as relevant and as important as the Chester Harding's and the Gilbert Stewart's and those urban society painters who were working at the same time Peck was, we'd probably know a lot more. 

Bob Jacobson: If you're go into the study or folk art you find at Williamsburg, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum. It is really the foundation of the study of folk art. When you worked in the front door or at least the last time I was there, the first thing that hit's your eye is a Sheldon Peck painting. 

Richard Miller: I don't know of a single subject that he painted, who had their portrait painted by another artist before or after Peck did. So the significance of that experience was not lost on them or Peck.

Rita Schneider: Everything about Sheldon Peck's life and his family, there are so many lessons to be learned from it. How they were integral integral integral integral parts of a society that believed that the future would be make better.

Lynn Fall: What kind of a powerful message just doesn't that send today when we have a country that is sometimes deeply divided and sometimes even torn apart at the seems over issues. Contemporary issues related to race, related to socioeconomic differences. And the conflicts that sometimes result from those differences. And here you have a man who was so passionate and so brave. 

Kenneth B. Morris: Sheldon Peck's story really made an impression on me. One person can make a difference. When you consider, you know looking at something that you see that there's an injustice and you decide, you make a decision that you want to do something about that. And it doesn't have to be on a grand scale. It can just start at the local level. And in fact when we look at the heroes and heroines from history. For most of them including Frederick Douglas and people like Martin Luther King Jr. It just started on an issue that was a local issue. And then it mushroomed in blossomed into something greater. And so it's an example to everybody that you can make a difference in the world around you and if you see something is wrong been in do something.

Sarah Richardt: I love the story of Sheldon Peck. He's interesting. He's translatable to today. And I think people need to know about him and know how important this one person was.

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