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, who died when Robert was twelve. In contrast to the narrative in the semi-autobiographical A Day No Pigs Would Die, Peck's father was not a pig farmer but had been proprietor of his father's clothing business and during Robert's childhood he was an insurance and real estate agent. 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 Peck attended Weedville School (grades 1–4), and Central School (grades 5–7), both in Ticonderoga. He attended high school at Ticonderoga High School, also in Glens Falls, New York, and in Bennington, Vermont where he graduated in June 1945. From Bennington, he was accepted for military induction at age 17 following his high school graduation. World War II was then still in progress, but the surrenders of Germany and Japan had both occurred by the time Peck was out of training. Fighting was still taking place, nevertheless, and he served as a private from 1945 to 1947 in the U.S. Army, including time in the 88th Infantry Division and as a machine-gunner in Italy defending the Morgan Line. After his term of duty was completed and he had returned home, Peck took on a variety of jobs. He worked in a saw mill, did farm