Peck, Daniel G.

PECK

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 6/29/2021 at 23:23:59

History of Warren County, Iowa from Its Earliest Settlement to 1908, by Rev. W. C. Martin, Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1908, p.698

DANIEL G. PECK
Daniel G.Peck, while now numbered among the successful business men of Indianola, started out in life on his own account with but limited capital and has through his own labor and diligence won the prosperity which he is now enjoying. He was born in Putnam county, Indiana, in 1831, and was the fifth in order of birth in a family of ten children, whose parents, John and Sally ( Taylor ) Peck, were both natives of Kentucky . The Peck family is of Scotch-Irish descent. John Peck followed the occupation of farming as a life work. He removed from his native state to Ohio and in 1826 became a resident of Indiana , where from the government he entered a tract of timber land, which he cleared and developed, bringing the fields under a high state of cultivation. He successfully carried on the farm work there until 1853, when he came to Iowa and entered a tract of land in Lincoln township, where he continued to spend his remaining days. He was a typical pioneer resident, whose home was noted for its warm hearted hospitality. It was always the stopping place for the preacher who visited the neighborhood and who always received a hearty welcome. In politics Mr. Peck was a democrat. He was not long permitted to enjoy his home in Iowa for after a residence here of about nine years he passed away in 1862, at the age of sixty-four years. His widow, long surviving him, died in 1894, at the very advanced age of ninety-four years.
As a farm boy Daniel G. Peck spent the days of his boyhood and youth. He early began to follow the plow and in the winter seasons when the work of the farm was practically over for the year, he attended the country schools. He gave his father the benefit of his services until seventeen years of age and then began learning the blacksmith's trade, becoming an expert workman in that line. He followed that pursuit for many years in Indianola and built the first blacksmith shop in the town. He was also engaged in the grain business at that place for four years and for a third of a century has continued in his present line of trade, having in 1875 opened a hardware store. He also deals in farm implements and buggies and carries a large line in each department. In fact his establishment is regarded as headquarters for anything desired in hardware, implements or carriages and throughout the intervening years he has enjoyed an extensive patronage, from which he has derived a just and reasonable profit, so that in the course of years he has become one of the substantial business men of the city.
Mr. Peck was married in 1854 to Miss Flora Marsh, who was born in Ohio in 1835. They traveled life's journey together for forty years and were then separated by the death of Mrs. Peck in 1894. They were the parents of seven children: Ginevra; Florence, who became the wife of J. M. Harlan and died in the fall of 1907, at the age of fifty-six years; Walter, who is engaged in the grocery business in Indianola; Frank, who has a gas light lamp system and resides in Wichita, Kansas; Alta, the wife of T. D. Swan, a farmer near Indianola; Benjamin, who has departed this life; and Orlin, who is with his father.
In the spring of 1852 Mr. Peck drove across the plains with ox teams on his way to California , passing through Oregon , and for a time was engaged in mining on the Pacific coast. He then returned home by way of the Isthmus of Panama . He is a supporter of democratic principles and has served as school director and as a member of the city council. Few men of his years, for he has attained the seventy-seventh milestone on life's journey, are so active and enterprising and in spirit and interests he seems yet in his prime and is justly regarded as one of the leading factors in business circles in Indianola, where for many years he has conducted a successful business along honorable principles that have neither sought nor required disguise.