Seeking Old Charley - A Virtual Presentation
Frank Peck’s (Sheldon Peck’s youngest son) diary tells of “Old Charley,” a memorable freedom seeker who stayed at the Peck Homestead on his way to freedom, and how “little Frank” sat on his knee asking him questions. Frank Hale Peck was the youngest son of Harriet and Sheldon Peck.
This is a painting by Susan Peck, the Pecks’ daughter,
of Old Charley and sister Abigail.
Two former Executive Directors of the Lombard Historical Society, Jeanne Schultz Angel and Sarah Richardt; Archivist, Jean Crockett, and Linda Dixon, LHS Research Volunteer, have teamed up to share their research and discoveries in a compelling program about “Old Charley.”
Old Charley, Old Free Charlie Wilson, Charles Allick, Charlie Fisher, and at least three other Charlies without surnames in the historic record appear throughout Illinois in the 1840s and 1850s. These men are sometimes recorded as free people of color and often times as enslaved men seeking freedom by attempted escape to Canada. Any of them could have been working with known white radical abolitionist and folk artist Sheldon Peck who lived in Babcock’s Grove (Lombard, Illinois) and traveled throughout the region for his portrait painting business.
A remnant of the legacy of slavery in the United States is the obliterated identity of people considered property in the eyes of the law. The racist and dehumanizing efforts of slave owners to remove individual identity from enslaved peoples produced a contemporary challenge to telling complete stories, thereby continuing the ripple-effect of the legacy of slavery to modern day. The motivation for seeking Charlie’s story is to tell a more complete history of the Underground Railroad in Illinois, thereby recognizing that people of color were not invisible as Americans, despite historians’ inability to see them.
This is a virtual presentation available via Zoom at
6:30 pm Central Time on Wednesday, February 24, 2021.
A link will be sent to you after you register.
