Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer

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PEABODY, Elizabeth Palmer

Born 16 May 1804, Billerica, Massachusetts; died 3 January 1894, Boston, Massachusetts

Daughter of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

The oldest of seven children, Elizabeth Peabody was educated by her mother, whose school for local children in Salem, Massachusetts, was dedicated to the principle that every child should be treated as a genius. In 1822 Peabody opened her own school in Boston and established her friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who tutored her in Greek. The school failed, and after two years as a private governess Peabody opened a school in Brookline, a Boston suburb.

Always responsive to "genius," Peabody soon established two more significant friendships. The first, with William Ellery Channing, whose daughter was enrolled in Peabody's school, shaped Peabody's views on education, philosophy, and religion. Peabody eventually became Channing's editor and prepared many of his sermons for the press. Friendship with Bronson Alcott, a leading transcendental philosopher, led Peabody to give up her own school and become his assistant in an experimental school in Boston.

Record of a School (1835) suggests the idealistic philosophy she and Alcott shared. The second edition (1836) attempts to answer the popular outcry against Alcott's discussion of childbirth in a conversation with the school children. Although his concern was to account for the creation of the individual soul, Victorian Boston was outraged he discussed childbirth at all. Peabody defended Alcott, but withdrew from his school and in July 1840 opened a bookshop in Boston, which soon became a center for the transcendental movement. Here Margaret Fuller held her conversations with women, the so-called Transcendental Club met, and its journal—The Dial—was published. When the Dial failed, it was succeeded by Peabody's short-lived journal, Aesthetic Papers. Though influential, the bookshop did not prosper, and closed in 1850.

Peabody taught for a time and through the 1850s campaigned for the adoption of Jozef Bem's chronological history charts in elementary and secondary schools. She also traveled widely to speak in favor of the abolition of slavery. In 1859 Peabody became acquainted with the system of kindergarten education developed by Friedrich Froebel in Germany. From then to the end of her life, often assisted by her sister Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Peabody devoted herself to establishing kindergartens and recruiting kindergarten teachers throughout the U.S. In her eighties, still vigorous, Peabody lectured successfully at Bronson Alcott's Concord School of Philosophy.

Although she was learned and widely read, Peabody was not an effective writer. Pieces like her "Plan of the West Roxbury Community" (The Dial, March 1844) and "Language" (Aesthetic Papers, 1849) suffer from the vague, inflated diction often characteristic of transcendental essays. Record of a School has historical significance as a journal of Alcott's attempt to elicit evidence of an awareness of the Soul from very young children. Peabody's writings on kindergartens, especially The Moral Culture of Infancy (with her sister, 1863) indicate the connection between transcendentalism and this significant movement in modern education. Peabody's warm personal enthusiasms are reflected in her memoirs of Channing (Reminiscences of William Ellery Channing, D.D., 1877) and the painter Washington Allston (Last Evening with Allston, 1886).

Peabody was "an intellectual spinster who lived to become a Boston institution," according to Perry Miller (The Transcendentalists, 1950). Stout and plain, Peabody was eccentric and careless of her appearance. In old age, she is said to have traveled with no luggage but a toothbrush in her pocket and a nightgown under her dress. She is assumed to be the model for Miss Birdseye in Henry James' The Bostonians (1886).

Peabody was a central figure in the transcendental movement, the only woman other than Margaret Fuller to make a considerable intellectual contribution in this religious and philosophic forum. She was fortunate in her friendships with Jones Very, Horace Mann, and Nathaniel Hawthorne (who married her sister Sophia). Peabody's lifelong interest in the development and education of young children stimulated others to contribute to this field.

Other Works:

First Steps to the Study of History by J. M. Gerando (edited by Peabody, 1832). Self-Education (1832). Key to History (1833). The Water-Spirit (1833). Method of Spiritual Culture (1836). Aesthetic Papers (edited by Peabody, 1849). First Nursery Reading Book (1849). Blank Centuries Accompanying the Manual of the Polish-American System of Chronology (1850). Crimes of the House of Austria Against Mankind (1852). Chronological History of the United States (1856). A Sunday School Hymn Book (1857). Memorial of…Wesselhöft (1859). Universal History (1859). American Kindergarten (with M. T. P. Mann,1863). A Plea for Froebel's Kindergartens (1869). Blank Centuries for Monographs of History (1870). The Kindergarten Messenger (edited by Peabody, 1873-1877). Lectures on the Nursery School and Kindergarten (1874). Record of Mr. Alcott's School (1874). Manual of Universal History (1875). Kindergartens (1876). After Kindergarten—What? (1878). Female Education in Massachusetts (1884). Lectures in the Training Schools for Kindergarten (1886). Education in the Home, Kindergarten, and Primary School (1887). The Piutes (1887). Mother-Play and Nursery Songs by F. W. Froebel (edited by Peabody, 1906).

Bibliography:

Baylor, R., "The Contribution of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to Kindergarten Education in the United States," (dissertation, 1960). Bilbo, Q. N., "Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Transcendentalist," (dissertation, 1932). Coultrap-McQuin, S., Doing Literary Business (1990). Gohdes, L. F., The Periodicals of American Transcendentalism (1931). Miller, P., The Transcendentalists (1950). Tharp, L. H., The Peabody Sisters of Salem (1950).