My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM G. PECKHAM, at present commander of James M. Brown Post No. 285, G. A. R., of Jamestown, has been a farmer, blacksmith and carpenter, and is a master workman at all these trades. He is a son of George H. and Harriet F. (Perrigo) Peckham, and was born in the western part of Rhode Island, March 3, 1841.

The Peckham family are of English extraction, but have been transplanted in America for considerably more than a century, and have spent most of the time in the State above mentioned. The paternal grandfather, William Peckham, was born there and died at South Kingston, same State, in 1864, aged ninety-six years. He was one of those who, when the tocsin of war sounded for our second struggle with the mother country, shouldered his musket and fought through the entire war. George H. Peckham came to Chautauqua county in 1855, and located at Kennedy, where he remained until 1872, when, as the tide of emigration was flowing rapidly toward the fertile lands of the great plains, he loaded his effects on wagons and drove to the then new State of Kansas, secured him a farm in Dickinson county and now resides there, aged seventy-nine years. He is a farmer, by occupation, and in politics a greenbacker; his wife, Harriet F. Perrigo was a native of the land of Roger Williams, and is now in her sixty-fifth year.

William G. Peckham spent his boyhood and youth in Rhode Island and was educated in the academy at Westerly. After leaving school he engaged for a while in farming, but finding it uncongenial he learned the blacksmith trade, which he followed a short time and then acquired the trade of carpentering and joining, which he has followed for eighteen years. A great many of the houses and barns in this and Cattaraugus county have been erected by him, many of them by contract, as he has added contracting and building to his business. William G. Peckham came to this county in 1855, and to the city of Jamestown twenty years later, and has lived here ever since. In August, 1861, after President Lincoln had made his second appeal to the country for defenders to save her from disruption, he enlisted as a private in Co. E, 5th regiment New York Cavalry, and served to the close of the war, having been mustered out of service at New York city in July, 1865. On July 3, 1864, at the battle of Ashland Station, he was wounded by a minie-ball striking him on the breast-bone. He participated in all the battles of his regiment except one, Petersburg, there being thirty-six pitched and seventy-eight skirmishes, and he was mustered out as the first lieutenant of Company M, same regiment. They were escorts for Gen. Sheridan from November, 1864, until the close of the war.

In 1867 William G. Peckham married Elmira J. Truesdell, a daughter of Zebedee Truesdell, who came from Rochester, New York, to Jamestown, and by this union there was born one son, Clayton J., who is a book-keeper in this city. Mr. Peckham is a prominent republican and takes an active part in his party’s affairs. He belongs to the Ancient Order of United Workmen, and is one of the citizens of Jamestown of whom she may be proud.