Stephen Denison Peet was born on December 2, 1831, in Euclid, Ohio, the son of the Rev. Stephen Peet (1797-1855), a founder of Beloit College and the Chicago Theological Seminary, and Martha Denison (1796-1877).

He was a clergyman and archeologist. He graduated from Beloit College (B.A., 1851) and continued his studies at Yale Divinity School from 1851 to 1853. He graduated from the Andover Theological Seminary in 1854. In 1855, he was ordained and became pastor of the Congregational church at Genesee, Wisconsin. Over the next forty years, he held pastorates in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Illinois, and he also established churches in rural communities. Peet’s interest in American Indians and antiquities arose early in life. Later, during his theological studies, he acquired a lifelong interest in biblical archeology and ethnology. He concentrated on the archeological remains of Ohio and Wisconsin, areas abounding in evidence of prehistoric occupation. He was one of the founders of the State Archeological Association of Ohio in 1875, serving as its corresponding secretary and later president. They prepared a successful exhibit on Ohio archeology at the U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. He also served as an editor of the American Antiquarian. He was a corresponding member of the American Oriental Society, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the American Numismatic Society, the Davenport Academy of Sciences, the Philosophical Society of Great Britain, and the Society of Biblical Archeology. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1882.

In 1854, he married Katherine Moseley (-1866), and in 1866, he married Olive Walworth Cutler (1839–1927). He died on May 24, 1814, in Northampton, Hampshire, Massachusetts.