Robert Newton Peck was reticent to discuss his early life, perhaps because the reality was in a number of respects different from statements he made and from the picture portrayed in his novels. Peck gave his birth date as February 17, 1928, but typically refused to specify where he was born. His place of birth was
Ticonderoga, New York, as is recorded in state archives and published in the local newspaper. Peck's parents, Frank Haven Peck, a widower, and Lucile Dornburgh, both of Ticonderoga, were married in 1923 in
Glens Falls, New York. At his birth, Peck was named for his two deceased grandfathers, Robert Dornburgh, a prominent attorney, and Newton Peck, who was trained as a medical doctor but later became a clothing merchant. At the time of Peck's birth, the family consisted of Peck, his parents, and two half sisters, Marian and Molly, who were several years older than Robert. (Two older half sisters had married before Robert was born.) By the fall of 1930, however, his mother had filed for a separation, though both parents continued to live in Ticonderoga; a divorce was granted in early 1933. From about the age of two, Peck and his mother lived in the home of her deceased parents, along with her sister, Caroline ("Carrie") Dornburgh. Lucile was the homemaker, and Carrie worked as a business secretary and stenographer. During the early years of the
Great Depression, Lucile and Caroline attempted to sell the family home, not a "farm" but a town lot with two adjoining half lots (about a third of an acre). They were apparently unsuccessful, for the property was foreclosed upon by the
Ticonderoga National Bank six years later, when Robert was nine, though the family continued on in the home as renters for about four more years. When Peck was about thirteen, he and his mother moved to
Glens Falls, New York, for a couple years before returning to Ticonderoga. Peck indicated that he was born and grew up in Vermont, as in his semi-autobiographical novels. Though Peck and his mother briefly lived in
Bennington, Vermont, before he entered the military, the only verified family connection to Vermont comes through his paternal grandparents, who died before Peck was born. The grandfather, Newton Peck, was originally from
Cornwall, Vermont, and had moved to Ticonderoga and married there shortly before the 1875 birth of Peck's father. Newton Peck's wife, Mary Haven, had family connections to
Shoreham, Vermont, adjacent to Cornwall and directly across
Lake Champlain from Ticonderoga. It was not only his grandparents that Peck did not know; he claimed later in life that he had never known his father, Robert's father's home at that time had belonged to Newton Peck, the doctor and merchant, and had previously been the property of Newton Peck's father-in-law, who had been a
cooper. As with Peck's mother's family home, his father's was also lost to a bank foreclosure during the
Great Depression. Whether there was involvement in
Shakerism in Peck's family, as indicated in
A Day No Pigs Would Die, is unlikely. There were no Shaker communities in Vermont, nor in Ticonderoga, and Peck has been criticized for his inaccurate depiction of Shaker belief and practice (for example, in reality Shakers were unmarried, held their property communally, and did not keep pets). The obituaries of his parents and grandparents instead indicate family ties to
Congregationalism and
Methodism. == Education, military service, and early career ==