Peabody, Elizabeth

• One of the famed "Peabody Sisters" of Salem, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894) was one of the most important women of her time.
• She opened and ran two schools in Boston. She later opened and ran the nation's first kindergarten and was largely responsible for the spread of the kindergarten movement in America.
• She was also a publisher, one of the first female publishers, printing anti-slavery tracts, children's books by Nathaniel Hawthorne (husband to her sister Sophia) and published, the Dial, a journal of the Transcendentalists who gathered at her Boston bookstore.
• She thought it was important to improve the lives of women and minorities, and founded a school for orphaned children of former slaves.
• After her death, friends opened the Elizabeth Peabody House, a combination social service agency and kindergarten in Boston, to carry on her work.

See Also

• Salem Women's Heritage Trail by Bonnie Hurd Smith, p. 20.

• The Peabody Sisters of Salem by Louise Hall Tharp

• Peabody Sisters of Salem by Megan Marshall