David Jones Peck (c. 1826–1855) was an American physician. He was the first African American to receive a Doctor of Medicine from an American medical school. He graduated in 1847 from Rush Medical College in Chicago.
Biography
editPeck, a native of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was born to Sarah Jones Peck and John C. Peck (1802–1875), a prominent abolitionist of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. John Peck, a native of Hagerstown, Maryland, was a barber, wigmaker, and minister who was active in cultural and antislavery activities in and around Pittsburgh, where he lived after 1837.[1] From about 1844 to 1846, David Peck studied medicine under Dr. Joseph P. Gazzam, a white anti-slavery physician. After his two years of study with Gazzam, Peck entered Rush Medical College, Chicago, Illinois, in autumn 1846, and graduated in 1847. During the summer after graduation, Peck toured the state of Ohio with William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass.
He set up a medical practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1848. He married Mary Lewis in Chicago in 1849. When his medical practice in Philadelphia proved unsuccessful, he returned to Pittsburgh in 1850.
At the suggestion of Martin R. Delany, Peck moved to San Juan del Norte, Nicaragua, in early 1852.
Peck was killed in spring 1855 in a skirmish between Democratic forces and their Republican rivals at Jalteva, Nicaragua (near Granada) in the Filibuster War. The latter forces had been deposed after an election in 1854. Peck's death is recollected by Charles William Doubleday (1829–1909) in Chapter 4 of his Reminiscences of the 'Filibuster' War in Nicaragua.[2] Peck died as the result of concussion injuries sustained when a Republican cannonier fired on the position from which Doubleday and Peck had been observing their activities.[3]
References
edit- ^ "Free at Last? Slavery in Pittsburgh in the 18th and 19th Centuries". www.library.Pitt.edu. Archived from the original on December 6, 2017. Retrieved January 30, 2018.
- ^ Charles W. Doubleday: Reminiscences of the 'Filibuster' War in Nicaragua. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), 47-48 http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/book/Doubleday.pdf accessed May 26, 2014
- ^ Eddy Kuhl. "David Jones Peck, the first Afro-American Doctor Died in Nicaragua in 1855". Salvanegra.com. Retrieved January 30, 2018.[permanent dead link]
- "First 3 African American Physicians". Essortment. PageWise, Inc. 2002. Archived from the original on 2008-05-16. Retrieved 2008-11-07.
- Medical Center Archives (April 2005). "David Jones Peck, M.D. Library and Archival Research Pathfinder". Rush University Medical Center. Archived from the original on 2010-06-14. Retrieved 2008-11-07.
- Charles William Doubleday (1886). "Reminiscences of the "filibuster" War in Nicaragua". C. P. Putnam's Sons. Retrieved 2010-04-26.