David J. Peck

Who was David J. Peck?

David Jones Peck was an American physician. He was the first African American to receive a Doctor of Medicine from an American medical school.

Peck, a native of Carlisle, Pennsylvania was born to Sarah Jones Peck and John C. Peck, 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. 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 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, Illinois 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.