LibGuides: North Carolina Quakers, Anti-Slavery, and the Underground Railroad: Harriet Peck

Harriet Peck

Brief Biography:

Date of Birth: 19 April 1815 Place of Birth: Coventry, Kent County, Rhode Island

Date of Death: 23 May 1840 Place of Death: Kent County, Rhode Island

Where lived: Coventry, Kent County, Rhode Island / Guilford County, North Carolina

Parent's Names: Perez Peck and Joanna Peck

Sibling names: Mary Ann Peck Sisson, Lydia W. Peck, Sarah Peck, Joanna Peck

Spouse's Name(s): Unmarried

Burial: Friends Burial Ground, Coventry, Kent County, Rhode Island

Chronological events in connection with Slavery, Abolition, and the Underground Railroad

1837 New Garden Boarding School, later re-chartered to become Guilford College, opens as a Quaker boarding school with fifty students (all European American as the school would not integrate to enroll African American students until 1962).

1837-1839 Harriet Peck came from Rhode Island to become a teacher at New Garden Boarding School. She was involved in the local anti-slavery movement.

About Harriet Peck

"Listen to my words!"

Peck Family Papers MS 241

Manuscript Collection, Friends Historical Collection, Hege Library

Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina

“Trip South”
Harriet Peck’s letters written and received from 1837-1839

Transcribed by Mary A. Browning

Jamestown, North Carolina

Transcript:

My dear friends,

I wish I might give you a full detail of our journey at this time, but I am not only rather limited for time, but my mind is not sufficiently settled to go much into particulars even now, and as father has given you a considerable of a history of our journey I believe I will not attempt much of the kind at present. What seems to dwell with me most is the subject of slavery and I cannot or I feel as though I could not arrange my ideas to communicate upon any other subject at present. We have seen for ourselves as much as we wish to. To us everything through Virginia wore a gloom and as Catharine has expressed, several times, the moment we stepped on shore at Potomac landing there seemed to be a cloud over everything. It does seem to me that my views upon the subject are very much strengthened if that were a possibility, certainly I have had a different view of it than I ever before had. When I have seen the poor slave waiters submissively attending to every call, obliged to run hither and thither at every demand ///and when I have considered that this was all without compensation, it has seemed to be enough to make the “whole head sick and the whole heart faint”. We saw in passing through Virginia, large fields of tobacco in hoeing of which both male and female were employed. Yes then they were under the rays of the scorching sun many of them with nothing over their heads. And now while I think of it I will insert C. Cornell’s love to our Anti-Slavery Society together with a request from her that they should persevere and even double their diligence in the cause of the suffering ~~and the~~ and by all means to abstain entirely from the use of tobacco. She thinks that if she had ever practiced the use of it, (after what she has now seen), she should abstain entirely. We arrived here yesterday as father told you. The Situation of the School is much more pleasant than I had anticipated. This afternoon they received a large supply of books forwarded from Fayetteville. Among the number there were between two and three thousand of the address of Philadelphia Y. M. on the subject of Slavery ordered, I think by Phinias Nixon, jr. Father asked him what he intended to do with them. He replied, I do not know but I must have them. Phinias appears to be a very pleasant person and a good Abolishonist. He says he has sent several times for a package of A. E. Grimke’s Appeal for distributing but has never received any of them. No doubt that that the Philadelphia address will be freely distributed by him, as father intends to add a little /// more I will close. Do not know as you can possibly make out what I have written just what happened to come first and cannot look it over. Love to all of you.

This is to Mother and Sisters and Brother.

Harriet

Resources

The Devotion of These Women by Deborah Bingham Van Broekhoven
ISBN: 1558493638
Publication Date: 2002-12-01
During the 1830s. the small state of Rhode Island flourished as a center of radical abolitionism. Inspired by William Lloyd Garrison's call for immediate emancipation. some twenty-five antislavery societies were formed under the leadership of the African American communities in Providence and Newport, several energetic Baptist and Congregational clergymen, and the wealthy elder statesman of the New England Friends, Moses Brown. Despite the efforts of these groups, by 1842 the antislavery movement in Rhode Island was nearly moribund, the unified hopes of earlier years having fallen victim to political wrangling. A year later the largest auxiliary in the state, the Providence Antislavery Society, turned its funds over to Amarancy Paine, who in concert with other women not only revived the abolitionist movement in the state but kept it running for another ten years. This detailed study explores how and why women like Paine emerged from the background to resuscitate and lead the antislavery cause in Rhode Island. It suggests that women more than men were accustomed to working behind the scenes, informally and without much public recognition. The crumbling of the male-centered organization.
Meaning of Slavery in the North by Martin H. Blatt (Editor); David R. Roediger (Editor)
ISBN: 0815337582
Publication Date: 1999-09-01
Southern cotton planters and Northern textile mill owners maintained what has been called "an unholy alliance between the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom." This collection of essays focuses on the central role of slavery in the early development of industrialization in the United States as well as on the interconnections among the histories of African Americans, women, and labor.
The Abolitionist Sisterhood by Jean Fagan Yellin (Editor); John C. Van Horne (Editor)
ISBN: 0801480116
Publication Date: 1994-06-03
"The overall aim of showing the impact, complexity and dynamic quality of female anti-slavery work is amply realized."--Slavery and Abolition
A Shaker Musical Legacy by Robert C. Opdahl; Viola E. Woodruff Opdahl; Sarah C. O'Dowd
ISBN: 1584653795
Publication Date: 2004-04-01
Frances Harriet Whipple (1805-1878) was born in Smithfield, Rhode Island, She gained early recognition for her poems that appeared in local papers, and in 1829 published The Original, establishing herself as one of America's first female editors. Almost a decade later she wrote one of the few published narratives about a free black woman, The Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge. In her middle years, Whipple turned to spiritualism, leaving Providence to write for numerous spiritualist publications in New York City. By this time she had married and divorced Charles Green - an unusual step for a woman in the mid-nineteenth century. Whipple moved from the East Coast to California in 1861. She served briefly on the board of the first female typographical union in San Francisco and at the age of fifty-seven married her second husband, a gold miner who had been a California assemblyman and brother of the state's second governor. O'Dowd, deftly contextualizing her analysis of Whipple's key works in nineteenth century politics and culture, has created a fascinating portrait of a woman well ahead of her time.
A House Dividing Against Itself, 1836-1840 by William Lloyd Garrison; Louis Ruchames (Editor)
ISBN: 0674526619
Publication Date: 1971-01-01
To honour the Queen Mother and mark the occasion of her 100th birthday, Dundurn Press is publishing a biography of this remarkable woman in words and pictures. Since her marriage to George VI, the Queen Mother has been a public figure who has always evoked passionate reactions: whether it was the anonymous soldier who vowed "to fight for that little lady," Adolf Hitler who described her as "the most dangerous woman in Europe," or the Canadian journalist who coined the expression "the Queen Mum." A Canadian perspective on a sovereign who created and cultivated a special relationship with Canada informs The Queen Mother and Her Century. The first of many tours of Canada, the Royal Tour of 1939, which gave Canadians our initial opportunity to experience the Queen Mother's personal magnetism first-hand, is described in detail, along with the many Canadian relationships the Queen Mother has formed since. The Queen Mother and Her Century is a wonderful album-sized (81/2" x 11") commemorative keepsake and makes a thoughtful gift for the many admirers of the Queen Mother. The text and 120 colour photographs are complemented by time bars, lists of the Queen Mother's official tours, associations the Queen Mother is patron of, places that are named after the Queen Mother, and the Royal Family tree.

Find A Grave

This website shows an image of Harriet Peck's grave stone,

"She was an early Rhode Island abolitionist from the prominent Perez Peck family. She died at only 25 years of age of consumption. All her sisters and her first cousin, Lydia Brown Wickes, was also active in the antislavery movement."