Partly-printed DS as president, one page, 23 x 19, December 20, 1924. President Coolidge appoints William L. Peck, of Connecticut as a “Foreign Service Officer, unclassified, of the United States of America.” Signed neatly at the conclusion by Calvin Coolidge and countersigned by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes. The document’s original large beige seal remains affixed to the lower left. In fine condition, with light creasing in the margins.
William L. Peck (1895-1965) was a Connecticut native who fought for the U.S. Marine Corps during World War I and served three decades abroad at U.S. embassies and consulates in more than six countries. Peck married Olga Alexandrovna Lankert from Finland in 1922 while he was working as a clerk at the U.S. Consular office in Stockholm, Sweden.
In 1942 during World War II, Peck was one of 145 foreign service personnel, military advisors, Red Cross workers, religious missionaries, and press correspondents who were detained by the French government for two months in hotels in Lourdes, turned over to the invading Germans, moved to Germany by guarded train, and held captive at a hotel in Baden Baden with restricted activities for another 13 months. His wife was not with him during the ordeal.
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