Elizabeth Peabody

Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox person Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (May 16, 1804Template:SndJanuary 3, 1894) was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic developmental and educational value.

With a grounding in history and literature and a reading knowledge of ten languages, in 1840, she also opened a bookstore that held Margaret Fuller's "Conversations". She published books from Nathaniel Hawthorne and others in addition to the periodicals The Dial and Æsthetic Papers. She was an advocate of antislavery and of Transcendentalism.

Peabody also led efforts for the rights of the Paiute Indians.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She was the first translator into English of the Buddhist scripture the Lotus Sutra, translating a chapter from its French translation in 1844. It was the first English version of any Buddhist scripture.<ref name=ford>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

Early yearsEdit

Peabody was born in Billerica, Massachusetts, on May 16, 1804. She was the eldest daughter of Nathaniel Peabody, a physician, and Elizabeth (Template:Nee) Peabody,<ref name="SPL sisters">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> the granddaughter of Joseph Palmer, a general during the American Revolutionary War.<ref name="BET obit">Template:Cite news</ref> The Peabodys were a two-income family. Elizabeth advocated for preschool child education and taught school. Nathaniel was an apothecary, doctor, and dentist.Template:Sfn Her sisters were Mary, reformer, educator, and pioneer in establishing kindergarten schools and Sophia, painter and the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> Peabody had three brothers, Nathaniel, George Francis, and Wellington Peabody.Template:Sfn George and Wellington died in the twenties. Nathaniel relied on Peabody for his living expenses.Template:Sfn

The Peabody family lived in Salem, Massachusetts, and worshiped at the Second Church (later Unitarian Church) there. The children received a thorough education at home.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> Elizabeth Peabody operated a school from the family home, providing a classical education for boys and girls.Template:Sfn Nathaniel tutored the Peabody children.<ref name="Ritchie">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Peabody developed an interest in philosophy, theology, literature, and history over the years and she spoke ten languages.<ref name="SPL sisters" />

In 1820, the Peabodys moved to a farm in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and Peabody taught and ran the school beginning at age 16, based on what she learned from her mother's tutelage. Peabody taught from an enlightened perspective, helping her students build character, grow spiritually, and engage in discussions about school work.Template:Sfn In 1822, the Peabodys left the farm life of Lancaster for the social city life of Salem, where Nathaniel worked as a dentist.Template:Sfn

The Peabody sistersEdit

File:Mary Tyler Peabody Mann (cropped).png

Mary Tyler Peabody Mann

File:Sophia Peabody Hawthorne 2.png

Sophia Peabody Hawthorne

The Peabody sisters, intelligent and capable on their own, were stronger together. Sophia was an artist. Peabody and Mary were educators who played significant roles in the creation of kindergarten programs and improvements to traditional education.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> In 1825, Peabody and Mary lived in a boarding house on Beacon Hill,Template:Sfn where they met a fellow boarder Horace Mann in 1832<ref name="SPL sisters" /> or 1833.Template:Sfn Rebecca Clarke, the mother of James Freeman Clarke, operated the boarding house, Ashburton Place.Template:Sfn Living there at the time were George Stillman Hillard, Edward Kennard Rand, and Jared Sparks.Template:Sfn The sisters were Unitarians who embraced the Transcendentalism movement and supported fellow Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who married Sophia.<ref name="SPL sisters" /><ref name="Ritchie" />

Mann, a widow, came to Boston to recuperate from losing his wife.Template:Sfn Peabody and Mary frequently talked with him about their lives and viewpoints. Sometimes, they read to one another. The young women helped Mann manage what Josephine E. Roberts called his "hopeless sorrow".Template:Sfn Peabody shared an interest in education with Horace Mann. Although working in the fields of politics and the law, Mann had developed his educational theories.<ref name="SPL sisters" />

In 1833, Mary went to Cuba, where she worked as a governess and looked after her sister Sophia, who went to the country to recuperate from some medical conditions. Mary and Sophia lived there until 1835 when they returned to Salem, where Mary taught until 1840.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> During that time, Mary and Mann stayed in contact via letters. Mann visited and wrote to Peabody periodically to learn what she knew of Mary. Mary questioned Peabody about the affection and "brotherly tenderness" she shared with Mann during his visits.Template:Sfn After Mary returned from Cuba, Mann visited and wrote Mary regularly in Salem in friendship and confidence, to the exclusion of her sister.Template:Sfn

TranscendentalismEdit

Peabody developed a network of intellectual friends and transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Ellery Channing, Bronson Alcott, and Jones Very, who in 1837 founded the Transcendentalist Club. They sought to question traditional religious and societal thinking, and develop their political, philosophical, and literary views of the world. They advanced the belief in the inherent goodness of people.<ref name="SPL sisters" />

Personal life after 1852 and deathEdit

After Peabody shut down the West Street Bookshop in 1852, she moved in with her parents in West Newton, Massachusetts, and cared for them. Peabody moved in with her sister Mary in Concord in 1859.<ref name="SPL sisters" />

File:ElizabethPalmerPeabodyGrave.jpg

Elizabeth Peabody's grave

Peabody died on January 3, 1894, aged 89. She is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.<ref>Library of Congress Today in History: May 16</ref>

LegacyEdit

The Elizabeth Peabody House in Somerville, MA continues to educate children, after evolving from an early 20th century settlement house and moving out of the West End of Boston.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

CareerEdit

EducatorEdit

Peabody operated a private school for girls in Boston from 1822 to 1823.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> She was a governess to the children of Benjamin Vaughn in Hallowell, Maine, and taught other children in Maine.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> In 1825, Peabody set up a school in Boston, and Mary helped run it.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> Peabody and Mary developed an "active interest" in the work of Samuel Gridley Howe and his school, Perkins School for the Blind, after they visited the school with Mann, who sat on the board of trustees.Template:Sfn

After 1822, Peabody resided principally in Boston where she engaged in teaching.<ref name="appletons">Template:Cite Appletons'</ref> She also became a writer and a prominent figure in the Transcendental movement.Template:Sfn Peabody and her sister Mary operated a school in Brookline, Massachusetts, from 1825 to 1832, when there was a scandal about finances.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> Peabody opened a school for women to empower women. She held reading parties, gave lectures, and conducted discussions on a variety of subjects.<ref name="SPL sisters" />

File:1834 TempleSchool BAlcott EPeabody PendeltonsLith Boston.png

Bronson Alcott's Temple School opened in 1834 in the Masonic Temple, Tremont Street, Boston. Engraving by Pendelton's Lithography

During 1834 and 1835, Peabody worked as an assistant teacher to Amos Bronson Alcott at his experimental Temple School in Boston.Template:Sfn After the school closed, Peabody published Record of a School, outlining the plan of the school and Alcott's philosophy of early childhood education, which had drawn on German models.

Template:AnchorKindergartenEdit

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Site of Elizabeth and Mary Peabody's Kindergarten, Pinckney Street, Boston, Massachusetts

In 1859Template:Sfn or 1860, Peabody opened the first English language kindergarten in the country on Beacon Hill in Boston with her sister Mary. They influenced the creation of public kindergarten schools.<ref name="SPL sisters" />Template:Sfn The school taught reading, writing, arithmetic, gymnastics, singing, and French. They encouraged moral and positive social engagement among the children.Template:Sfn The sisters wrote the Moral Culture of Infancy and Kindergarten Guide in 1863 to provide information about how to set up and operate a kindergarten.Template:Sfn

When Peabody opened her kindergarten in 1860, the practice of providing formal schooling for children younger than six was largely confined to Germany.Template:Cn She had a particular interest in the educational methods of Friedrich Fröbel,<ref name="SPL sisters" /> particularly after meeting one of his students, Margarethe Schurz, in 1859. In 1867, Peabody visited Germany to study Fröbel's teachings more closely.<ref name="eb1911">Template:Cite EB1911</ref> Through her kindergarten and as editor of the Kindergarten Messenger (1873–1877), Peabody helped establish kindergarten as an accepted institution in American education.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> In 1877, she organized the American Froebel Union.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> She also wrote numerous books in support of the cause. The extent of her influence is apparent in a statement submitted to Congress on February 12, 1897, in support of free kindergartens:

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Bookstore ownerEdit

In 1840, Peabody established the West Street Bookshop near Beacon Hill and Boston Common in Boston and had a home above the bookstore where her sisters and parents lived with her. Sophia and Mary lived there until they were married.Template:Sfn Peabody purchased foreign journals and books for her business, which was part bookstore, a lending library, and a place for scholars, liberal thinkers, and transcendentalists to meet.Template:Sfn Template:Efn

It was there that Margaret Fuller held "Conversations" for women beginning on November 6, 1839.<ref name=Slater43>Slater, Abby. In Search of Margaret Fuller. New York: Delacorte Press, 1978: 43. Template:ISBN</ref> Topics for these discussions and debates included fine arts, history, mythology, literature, and nature.<ref>Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 134. Template:ISBN</ref> Fuller served as the "nucleus of conversation" and hoped to answer the "great questions" facing women: "What were we born to do? How shall we do it? which so few ever propose to themselves 'till their best years are gone by",<ref>Marshall, Megan. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005: 387. Template:ISBN</ref> Many figures in the woman's rights movement took part, including Sophia Dana Ripley, Caroline Sturgis,<ref>Marshall, Megan. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. Boston: Mariner Books, 2005: 386–387. Template:ISBN</ref> and Maria White Lowell.<ref name=Slater43/>

Peabody lived above the bookstore until 1852,<ref name="Closing down" /><ref>"Foreign books & circulating library, 13 West" Street; cf. Boston Directory. 1848, 1851, 1852</ref>Template:Efn when the bookstore and library closed down. Members of the Transcendentalist movement had begun to disperse since the mid-1840s, and income from the bookstore gradually declined. In 2011, the Boston Landmarks Commission designated the building a Boston Landmark.

The DialEdit

File:ElizabethPeabody portrait2.png

Elizabeth Peabody

For a time, Peabody was the business manager of The Dial, the main publication of the Transcendentalists. In 1843, she noted that the journal's income was not covering the cost of printing and that subscriptions totaled just over two hundred. In 1844 the magazine published Peabody's translation of a chapter of the Lotus Sutra from French, which was the first English version of a Buddhist scripture.<ref name=ford>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The publication ceased shortly thereafter in April 1844.<ref>Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 130. Template:ISBN</ref>

Author and publisherEdit

Peabody published antislavery literature and books, like Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau and children's stories written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. She was one of the country's first female publisher.<ref name="SPL sisters" /> In the 1860s and 1870s, Peabody wrote about social and educational reform, producing 50 articles and 10 books.<ref name="SPL sisters" />