Oregon-California Trails Association | Peck, Washington

Peck, Washington – Diary 1850

Merrill J. Mattes Collection·

Peck was born April 11, 1801, somewhere in Connecticut. His first wife was named Phoebe and their children were Elizabeth, David, Edgerton and Edmund. When Phoebe died, Peck married Mercy, and their children were Mary Ann, Jane, ad Emma. The second Mrs. Peck was a travel bug, and she made the trip from Canada to California that is so well recounted in Peck’s diary.

“Copied from the Tarkio Avalanche Article written by Dick Altman, Thursday, March 18, 1965, “Canadian-Born Pioneer Keeps a Frontier Diary.”
Washington Peck traveled with his family from Eastern Canada to California.
40 Pages

The collection was begun in 1991 by the late Merrill J. Mattes, a co-founder of the Oregon-California Trails Association. That original nucleus was a result of a generous donation from Merrill and reflected his many years as an award-winning National Park Service historian and also included works of his own authorship. The collection is housed at the national Frontier Trails Museum in Independence, Missouri. Here, you have access to many of the original trail diaries he collected in digital form.