About Robert Newton Peck

Robert Newton Peck (February 17, 1928 – June 23, 2020) was an American author who specialized in children's and young adult literature. His works include A Day No Pigs Would Die, Millie's Boy, and the Soup series.

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.