Manuscript Location

Old Sturbridge Village, Research Library

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Rhode Island

Date of Composition

19th century

Description

The recipe books in this collection were compiled within the extended family of Perez Peck (1786-1876), his wife Joanna Brown Peck (1786-1867), and their five children, born between 1815 and 1821. Perez Peck and his business partner Asa Sisson (1815-1893) were innovative machinists and manufacturers of cotton looms in the village of Anthony (Coventry), Rhode Island. Shortly after Sisson married Peck's daughter Mary Ann (1816-1882) in 1839, the two formed the firm Perez Peck & Co., which became the purveyor of the Sisson loom, for several years a standard of the textile industry in Rhode Island. Staunch Quakers, Peck and Sisson were supporters of the antislavery cause. After the Civil War, Asa Sisson continued in the Rhode Island textile industry, later establishing a foundry and machine shop in Wickford, Rhode Island, with Ambrose E. Vaughn.