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Elizabeth Peabody

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
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(born May 16, 1804, Billerica, Mass., U.S. — died Jan. 3, 1894, Jamaica Plain, Mass.) U.S. educator and leader in the kindergarten movement in America. She served as secretary to William Ellery Channing (1825 – 34) and worked with Bronson Alcott in his Temple School. She opened a Boston bookshop in 1839, which became a centre for Transcendentalist activities. She published works by Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne and also published and wrote articles for The Dial. Inspired by the work of Friedrich Froebel, she opened the first English-language kindergarten in the U.S. in 1860 and thereafter devoted herself to organizing public and private kindergartens. Her sisters married Horace Mann and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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Biography: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
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Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894), an American educator, author, and prominent member of the New England intellectual community, promoted the new kindergarten movement in the United States.

Elizabeth Peabody was born in Billerica, Mass., on May 16, 1804. Her sister Mary married educator Horace Mann, and her sister Sophia married author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Elizabeth's early education was at her mother's schools in Salem and Lancaster, Mass., where, although still a child, she did much of the instruction. This experience nourished her sense of mission and reform.

Beginning in 1820, Peabody made a number of unsuccessful attempts to establish her own schools, meanwhile serving as unpaid secretary to William Ellery Channing, the Unitarian leader. Her Reminiscences of William Ellery Channing, D.D. (1880) discloses the extensive influence of Channing on her career and educational thought. In 1834 she became Bronson Alcott's assistant in the famous Temple School in Boston, described in her Record of a School (1835). When it closed, she opened a bookstore and publishing business which provided an outlet for the early efforts of Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller. The store endured for 10 years, becoming a transcendentalist salon. In addition, in 1842-1843 she published the Dial, a journal of transcendentalist opinion.

Peabody returned to her first interest, education, in 1845. Although teaching, she found time to write grammar and history texts and, in 1849, to establish a short-lived literary journal, Aesthetic Papers. She also toured to promote the study of history and wrote the Chronological History of the United States (1865).

Increasingly Peabody's attention turned to the education of the very young, and from 1860 to 1880 she devoted herself to organizing kindergartens along lines established by the German educator Friedrich Froebel. Her purpose was to develop children "morally and spiritually as well as intellectually" and "to awaken the feelings of harmony, beauty, and conscience" in the pupils. Her efforts resulted in a publicly supported kindergarten in Boston in 1860, the first in the country. But uncertainty about the institutions's effectiveness led her to make a pilgrimage to Germany in 1867 to observe Froebel's disciples. After returning she furthered the cause through public lectures and, from 1873 to 1875, as publisher of the Kindergarten Messenger.

Peabody's remaining years were absorbed in championing Native American education, lecturing in Alcott's Concord School of Philosophy, and writing. Despite failing vision she finished Last Evening with Allston (1886), a tribute to the Boston painter and poet Washington Allston, and a collection of her earlier essays. She died on Jan. 3, 1894.

Further Reading

Ruth M. Baylor, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: Kindergarten Pioneer (1965), is a thoroughly documented study with an excellent bibliography. Louise H. Tharp, The Peabody Sisters of Salem (1950), is a more popular treatment and, although sometimes impressionistic, is well written. See also the essay on Miss Peabody in Gladys Brooks, Three Wise Virgins (1957).

Additional Sources

Tharp, Louise Hall, The Peabody sisters of Salem, Boston: Little, Brown, 1988.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
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Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer (pē'bädē, -bədē), 1804-94, American educator, lecturer, and reformer, b. Billerica, Mass. The Peabody family moved (c.1809) to Salem, where the father began practicing dentistry. Of the three Peabody sisters, the second, Mary, married Horace Mann, and the youngest, Sophia, married Nathaniel Hawthorne. Elizabeth, after a period as governess in Hallowell, Maine, with her sister Mary, established a school for girls in what is now Brookline, Mass. Although she was an inspired teacher, she was a poor businesswoman, and her ventures were short-lived. After giving up this school she wrote a series of history textbooks and became a successful lecturer on history. She assisted Bronson Alcott in his Temple School and created an annotated transcript of conversations regarding his educational theories in Record of a School (1835). Her path crossed those of most of the great New Englanders of her day-Emerson, William Ellery Channing, Henry David Thoreau, and many others.

The bookshop Peabody opened in Boston in 1840 was a literary center. Margaret Fuller held her conversation classes there, and Elizabeth soon found herself a publisher as well as a bookseller; the transcendental magazine, the Dial, pamphlets of the Anti-Slavery Society, and several of Hawthorne's early works were published by her. Of a projected periodical, Aesthetic Papers, only one number appeared, in 1849. After closing her bookshop she traveled about, lecturing and selling historical charts. An ardent abolitionist, Elizabeth went to Richmond in 1859 to plead unsuccessfully with the governor of Virginia for the life of one of John Brown's aides at Harpers Ferry. In Boston she opened (1861) one of the first kindergartens in the country. With her sister Mary she wrote Moral Culture of Infancy and Kindergarten Guide (1866). In 1867-68 she studied Froebel's methods in Germany and on her return she established a Froebel Union and opened the first kindergarten training school in the country. From then on kindergarten training was the cause that took her traveling about the country. Two years after her death a Boston settlement, Elizabeth Peabody House, was established as a memorial; it moved to Somerville, Mass., in the 1950s and is still in operation.

Bibliography

See L. H. Tharp, The Peabody Sisters of Salem (1950); study by R. M. Baylor (1965); M. Marshall, The Peabody Sisters (2005).

Works: Works by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
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(1804-1894)

1835Record of a School, Exemplifying the General Principles of Spiritual Culture. A record of the methods of discipline and inductive lessons at Amos Bronson Alcott's experimental Temple School, where Peabody served as an assistant from 1834 to 1836. The work advances the reputation of the school and is an important document in Transcendentalism and a record of Alcott's educational theories. Hawthorne's sister-in-law, whose Boston bookshop became a favorite meeting place for the Transcendentalist Club, Peabody opened the first kindergarten in the United States in 1860.

Wikipedia: Elizabeth Peabody
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Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
Born May 16, 1804 (1804-05-16)
Billerica, Massachusetts, USA
Died January 3, 1894 (1894-01-04)
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
Education Tutored in Greek by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Occupation Teacher
Writer/Editor
Parents Nathaniel Peabody

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (May 16, 1804 – January 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.

Contents

Biography

Peabody was born in Billerica, Massachusetts on May 16, 1804. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Peabody, a physician, and spent her early years in Salem. After 1822 she resided principally in Boston where she engaged in teaching.[1] She also became a writer and a prominent figure in the Transcendental movement. During 1834–1835, she worked as assistant teacher to Amos Bronson Alcott at his experimental Temple School in Boston. 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.

She later opened a book store, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's West Street Bookstore, at her home in Boston, and it was there that the "Conversations" were held, organized by Margaret Fuller. The first of these meetings between women was held on November 6, 1839.[2] Topics for these discussions and debates varied but subjects were as diverse as fine arts, history, mythology, literature, and nature.[3] 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".[4] Many figures in the woman's rights movement took part, including Sophia Dana Ripley, Caroline Sturgis,[5] and Maria White Lowell.[2]

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. The publication ceased shortly thereafter in April 1844.[6]

When Peabody opened her kindergarten in 1860, the concept of providing formal schooling for children younger than six was largely confined to German practice. She had a particular interest in the educational methods of Friedrich Fröbel, and in 1867 visited Germany for the purpose of studying them more closely.[7] Through her own kindergarten, and as editor of the Kindergarten Messenger (1873–1877), Peabody helped establish kindergarten as an accepted institution in American education. 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:

The advantage to the community in utilizing the age from 4 to 6 in training the hand and eye; in developing the habits of cleanliness, politeness, self-control, urbanity, industry; in training the mind to understand numbers and geometric forms, to invent combinations of figures and shapes, and to represent them with the pencil—these and other valuable lessons… will, I think, ultimately prevail in securing to us the establishment of this beneficent institution in all the city school systems of our country.
Grave of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

Peabody died January 3, 1894. She is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.[8]

Diverse activities

With grounding in history and literature and a reading knowledge of ten languages, in 1840 she also opened a bookstore which held Margaret Fuller's "Conversations" and 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. Moreover, she also led decades of efforts for the rights of the Paiute Indians.

Works

Peabody published a number of works, including:

  • Crimes of the House of Austria (editor; New York, 1852)
  • The Polish-American System of Chronology (Boston, 1852)
  • Kindergarten Culture (1870)
  • Kindergarten in Italy (1872)
  • Reminiscences of Dr. Channing (1880)
  • Letters to Kindergarteners (1886)
  • Last Evening with Allston, and other Papers (1887)
  • Lectures in the Training Schools for Kindergartners (1888)

See also

References

  1. ^ Wikisource-logo.svg "Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. 
  2. ^ a b Slater, Abby. In Search of Margaret Fuller. New York: Delacorte Press, 1978: 43. ISBN 0-440-03944-4
  3. ^ Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 134. ISBN 0-8090-3477-8
  4. ^ Marshall, Megan. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005: 387. ISBN 978-0-618-71169-7
  5. ^ Marshall, Megan. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. Boston: Mariner Books, 2005: 386–387. ISBN 978-0-618-71169-7
  6. ^ Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 130. ISBN 978-0-8090-3477-2
  7. ^ Wikisource-logo.svg "Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. 
  8. ^ Library of Congress Today in History: May 16

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Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
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