Built in 1839 and lived in by the Peck family until 1996, the Peck Homestead is significant locally, for the state of Illinois, and nationally as the home of Sheldon Peck, a radical abolitionist, keeper of a documented URR station, and prolific itinerant portrait painter. Its period of significance begins in 1839 and ends in 1868, the year of Sheldon Peck's death. Peck had numerous friends and business associates involved in the URR. Several anti-slavery meetings were held at the homestead, and Peck was an agent for the Western Citizen, an anti-slavery newspaper published in Chicago. Peck's URR activity was documented in a memoir kept by his youngest son Frank, including accounts of Peck harboring freedom seekers on the URR in the 1850s. Frank's memoir describes Old Charley, a freedom seeker who stopped at the homestead, and includes lyrics to a slave spiritual song that Old Charley taught Frank. A painting by Sheldon's daughter Susan is believed to depict a freedom seeker who stopped at the Peck house. The homestead was donated to the Lombard Historical Society by a great-great grandson of Sheldon Peck, and the village purchased the land to keep the house on its original site. Since 1999, the homestead has been a public museum operated by the Lombard Historical Society, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, and it is registered on the National Park Service Network to Freedom as a verified stop on the underground railroad, or URR.
