George Peck (August 8, 1797 – May 20, 1876) was a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church who helped to found Cazenovia Seminary, and became its president in 1835.
The movement gained widespread support for its emphasis on which called upon adult conversions through which individuals sought Christian perfection; its sentimentality also created controversy and its critics claimed that the movement undermined the reality of the social gospel.
They had four children: George M. and Luther Wesley, who became ministers in the same conference as their father; Wilbur Fiske, a medical doctor; and Mary Helen, a writer and mother of Stephen Crane.
As director of the Methodist Episcopal Church's publishing concern, Peck was responsible for several historical biographies in what was then the new style of historiography, drawing on the use of original documents.
His Sketches & incidents, or, A budget from the saddle-bags of a superannuated itinerant[6] and Life and Times of Reverend George Peck, DD,[7] offered insight into the challenges facing the itinerant clergyman, or circuit rider, as they had been called; by the time he published his memoirs in 1874, these roles for clergyman had long since disappeared.