Remnants of the Peckville School

This Daily Ypsilantian-Press article from February 6, 1926 reveals that in the 20s, remnants of the old northside Peckville school were still standing, near Forest and River. The city's second-oldest school, it was then being used as part of a garage by the Swaine family.

The 1856 plat map clearly shows the school on Forest near River. Other interesting details: Maple was called Mill St., and Prospect was called Cemetery St. One wonders when the last bits of the old Peckville School were razed. Also, this map shows the school abutting Forest, but the school is said to have been later turned into the Swaine malt house, which is set back some distance from Forest. Were there two iterations of the school building? Another note is that plat maps are not infallible and were drawn by non-resident plat map companies. You can certainly find errors on old Ypsilanti plat maps.


Here is a Reward of Merit given to one Florence Small(e)y in 1857 and recently published in Gleanings. At first I thought that the school illustrated on the form was the Peckville school, and thought, "that''s a pretty imposing structure for a then-semi-rural schoolhouse!" On closer examination I see that one has to fill in the school name on this form, so I speculate that it was just a standard purchased form someone ordered from a school supply-house.

Modern-day Peckville resident Janice A. has written a delightful account of her onetime neighborhood, published in the Summer 2010 Gleanings. It's worth a read to learn about this onetime northside community.

There Are No Pecks in Peckville--But There Is a Dwight Street

Dwight Peck, the great- grandson of pioneer Ypsilantian Joseph H. Peck, in a 1954 photo.

Peck's Gully south of Highland Cemetery takes its name from the several generations of Pecks that lived in the area, beginning with Connecticut-born Joseph H. Peck. After arriving in Ypsi and scoping out the site in 1825, he had to walk back to Detroit through the woods to buy the land deed--that was the nearest land office.

Through the years, the Peck descendants owned much property in the Forest-River area--so much so that the entire E. Forest area was known as "Peckville."

The article below notes, "Near the house was built an early school, a small structure called the Peck School. This was later incorporated into a malt house." DD wonders where this school was located--the plat maps show 3 buildings in the area as early as 1856, but they're not labeled. I did wonder about the nearby DPW office, a charming brick building, but I would guess that was built much later.

As late as 1915, as seen in this clip from that year's plat map above, descendents still owned much of the area land. Later these large holdings were divided up, and today apparently no Peck descendents remain in this section of Ypsi.

This 1954 Ypsi Press article reveals that a group of Potawatomi lived near the farmhouse. It also describes Joseph's wife Sophia's joking offer to swap her young son Erwin for a Potawatomi child. When the Indian woman took Erwin and left, an hours-long, arduous search resulted, until he was finally found.

No residents with the Peck surname live in Peckville today, according to the ewashtenaw property lookup. But traces remain: Dwight Street, between Forest and Holmes, memorializes in its name this pioneer family, one of the first in Ypsilanti.