Annie Smith Peck

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Annie Smith Peck bigraphy, stories - American mountain climber

Annie Smith Peck : biography

19 October 1850 – 18 July 1935

Annie Smith Peck (October 19, 1850 – July 18, 1935) was an American mountaineer.

Peck was the youngest of five children, born to Ann Power Smith Peck (1820–1896) and George Bacheler Peck (1807–1882), a lawyer, member of the House of Representatives, and a coal and wood merchant. Her brothers, George Bacheler Peck (1843–1934), a doctor, William Peck (1848–1939), Principle of Providence Classical High School, and John Brownell Peck (1845–1923), an engineer, merchant, teacher and farmer, instilled a sense of competitiveness in Peck at a young age. The Pecks also had another daughter, Emily Peck (1847–1847), who died shortly after she was born.

Peck attended grammar school, Dr. Stockbridge’s School for Young Ladies, in Providence. She then attended Providence High School and Rhode Island Normal School (now Rhode Island College), a preparatory school for teachers. Peck briefly stayed on in Rhode Island, teaching Latin at Providence High School. Like her father and brothers before her, Peck had wanted to attend Brown University after her work at the Normal School. However, Peck was refused admission on the basis of her gender. Rather than attending Brown as her brothers had done, Peck moved to Michigan in an effort to live on her own and support herself, where she worked as a preceptress teaching languages and mathematics at Saginaw High School until 1874. While teaching in Saginaw, Peck decided to further her education, but when she wrote home to tell her family about her plans to earn a full degree at a university, they thought it was “perfect folly” for her to want to go to college and graduate at the very old age of twenty-seven. Nonetheless, Peck wrote to her father, explaining, “Why you should recommend for me a course so different from that which you pursue, or recommend to your boys is what I can see no reason for except the example of our great grandfathers and times are changing rapidly in that respect. I certainly cannot change. I have wanted it for years and simply hesitated on account of age but 27 does not seem as old now as it did. I should hope for 20 years of good work afterwards." After hearing that Peck insisted on earning the same education as her brothers, her father agreed to support her education, and so Peck attended the University of Michigan, which had just opened its doors to women in 1871.Woman at the Top" http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?Ver=1&Exp=12-07-2017&FMT=7&DID=2675756551&RQT=309&attempt=1, retrieved 12/8/20012.

She enrolled at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1878 with a major in Greek and Classical Languages. In 1881, she earned a master’s degree at University of Michigan, specializing in Greek. Peck then went to Europe, where she continued her schooling at Hannover and Athens.Annie Smith Peck" http://www.ric.edu/faculty/rpotter/smithpeck.html, retrieved 3/8/2008. Peck was the first woman to attend American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece. In 1885, she discovered her enthusiasm for mountaineering, and ascended the three hundred feet summit of Cape Misenum in Italy and small mountain passes in Switzerland, including Theodul Pass, at ten thousand feet. While in Greece, she climbed Mount Hymettus and Mount Pentecus, both between three and four thousand feet. From 1881 to 1892 she was a pioneering professor in the field of archeology and Latin at Purdue and Smith College. She began to make money on the lecture circuit, and by 1892 she gave up teaching and made her living by lecturing and writing about archeology, mountaineering and her travels. She scaled a number of moderate-sized mountains in Europe and in the United States, including Mount Shasta. In 1895, she climbed the Matterhorn and suddenly became quite well known. However, her notoriety came about not in terms of her mountain conquest, but because of the clothes she wore to climb it: a long tunic, climbing boots, and a pair of pants. At the time, women were being arrested for wearing trousers in public, and so Peck’s climbing costume not only brought about serious hullabaloo in the press, but also prompted public discussion and debate (for example, in the New York Times) on the question of what women should do and what they can be.