John Mason Peck

John Mason Peck (1789–1858) was an American Baptist missionary, educator and writer on the West. Born in Connecticut, he went to Missouri in 1817 as a missionary and spent most of his life in Illinois, founding churches, Sunday schools, a seminary at Rock Spring that grew into Shurtleff College, and a religious newspaper. He opposed the introduction of slavery into Illinois. His Gazetteer of Illinois, A New Guide for Emigrants to the West and his life of Daniel Boone made him one of the best informed and most widely read writers on the frontier.