Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

American educator

• Born: May 16, 1804
• Birthplace: Billerica, Massachusetts
• Died: January 3, 1894
• Place of death: Boston, Massachusetts

Peabody founded the first English-language kindergarten in the United States, published the Kindergarten Messenger, promoted Friedrich Froebel’s educational theories after studying his methods for a year in Germany, and ran a book shop in Boston that became a gathering place for New England intellectuals.

Early Life

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was the daughter of Nathaniel Peabody, a teacher who became a dentist, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, who ran an experimental school in Salem, Massachusetts. Elizabeth was the oldest of the seven Peabody children, four of whom were girls. Her parents both concerned themselves directly with their children’s education. When Elizabeth was quite young, her father taught her Latin and encouraged her to study other languages. By the age of sixteen, Elizabeth had a reasonable mastery of ten different languages.

Elizabeth’s mother believed that all her students, including Elizabeth, should be encouraged to strive toward achieving the highest educational goals possible. She individualized her instruction in ways that would enhance her students’ self-confidence. In an era when children were often expected to be seen and not heard, the emphasis of Elizabeth’s mother on self-expression in her teaching was revolutionary.

Clearly a prodigy, Elizabeth developed strong backgrounds in philosophy, history, literature, and theology at an age when many young women were still playing with their dolls. Before long, she was teaching at her mother’s school. At the age of sixteen, she opened her own school in Lancaster, Massachusetts. After that school failed in 1723, she spent two years in Maine as a governess and tutor to the children of two wealthy families. This period essentially marked the end of Elizabeth’s informal teaching apprenticeship. Her next venture, embarked upon with her sister Mary, was to open a school in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Life’s Work

Peabody’s path toward Transcendentalism, the philosophy she came to espouse and that most influenced her thinking, grew out of her coming to know William Ellery Channing, a liberal-minded Unitarian preacher. Channing had first impressed Elizabeth during her childhood when she had heard him preach in Salem. She began corresponding with Channing during her residence in Maine, but her close association with him began only in 1826, when he enrolled his only daughter in Elizabeth’s Brookline school.

Intrigued by Channing’s engaging intellect, Elizabeth encouraged him to confer frequently with her about his daughter’s academic progress. In these conferences the two shared their educational philosophies and Channing introduced her to the philosophical tenets of Emanuel Swedenborg, the noted eighteenth century Swedish Transcendentalist. During the late 1820’s and throughout the 1830’s, Channing and Peabody explored the philosophical currents of their day, often joined by other intellectuals.

In 1832, Elizabeth was forced to close her school when she could no longer meet its expenses. She then struggled along, living on tutorial fees and on the meager royalties from her book First Steps to the Study of History (1832). She and her sisters lived in a Boston boarding house in which the educational pioneer Horace Mann also resided. Elizabeth formed a close friendship with him and the two seemed destined to marry; however, Mann instead married Elizabeth’s sister Mary.

Bronson Alcott often participated in the Peabody-Channing discussions. In 1834, Elizabeth became Alcott’s assistant at his Temple School in Boston. Elizabeth continued the work she had begun earlier as Channing’s copyist, preparing many of his papers for publication. Between 1826 and 1844, she prepared more than fifty of his sermons for press. At the same time, she was being exposed to the educational philosophies of both Alcott and Mann.

During the 1830’s, Transcendentalism became the strongest philosophical force in New England. In 1837, when the Transcendentalist Club was formed, Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller became charter members and were the only women to gain membership. Transcendentalism touted the primacy of the spiritual over the material, of mind over matter.

In 1835, Elizabeth published Record of a School , which was essentially the journal she kept during her work with Alcott. This publication brought Bronson Alcott, who soon published his own book, Conversations with Children on the Gospels , to public attention. Alcott included some excerpts from Elizabeth’s journal. Both books were considered revolutionary in their day. Alcott’s book, in particular, evoked harsh criticism from many quarters. Although Elizabeth was embarrassed by portions of Alcott’s book, she came to his defense in a long article.

Elizabeth’s defense of Alcott brought her into the public eye in ways that affected her professional life negatively. In 1836, after resigning from Temple School, she was unable to find gainful employment. The national economy was weakening during the months leading up to the so-called Panic of 1837. Elizabeth’s only recourse was to return to her family’s home in Salem. Over the next four years, she lived a marginal existence there without a job and with little income.

During this otherwise bleak period in her life, Elizabeth’s association with Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom she had known since the 1820’s when he taught her Greek, was a saving grace for her. On her visits to Emerson in Concord, she introduced him to the mystical and little-known poet Jones Very, whose excellence Emerson quickly appreciated. In 1839, Emerson edited and published Very’s Poems and Essay , through which Very was introduced to the literary world. Also during this period, Elizabeth used her connections to secure for Nathaniel Hawthorne a post in the Boston Custom House. In 1842, Hawthorne married Elizabeth’s sister Sophia.

Finally, in 1839, Elizabeth moved to Boston with her sisters. The following year, she converted the parlor of their house into one of the most interesting book stores in New England. It quickly became a gathering place for New England intellectuals, mostly those espousing the Transcendentalism to which Elizabeth subscribed. This movement began to fade during the mid-1840’s, and by 1850, Elizabeth closed her book store, but not before she had established herself as the first female publisher in the United States, printing and distributing important works of many writers, including Henry David Thoreau’s landmark essay, “On Civil Disobedience.”

Elizabeth now directed her energies into promoting Christian-Transcendental education for young people. She taught in various venues during the 1850’s and 1860’s. Between 1850 and 1884 she produced ten books and more than fifty articles on education. In 1859, she first heard of the kindergarten movement founded in Germany by Friedrich Froebel. The next year, she opened the first English-speaking kindergarten in the United States. This school was well received, as was Elizabeth’s book Moral Culture of Infancy and Kindergarten Guide (1863).

Unsure that she had truly grasped Froebel’s concepts, Elizabeth visited kindergartens in Germany that were run according to Froebel’s ideal during 1867-1868. On her return, she continued to teach and, in 1873, began publishing her Kindergarten Messenger, which, in the two years it existed, introduced the kindergarten concept across the United States.

In her later years, Peabody taught in Bronson Alcott’s Concord School of Philosophy and continued to publish. She never tired of engaging in conversations about philosophy and education. She died in Boston on January 3, 1894, during her ninetieth year.

Significance

Elizabeth Peabody was not a militant crusader for women’s rights. She had little need to be. She lived in an environment of liberal intellectuals who accepted her for who she was and her work for what it was. She was intellectually equal to the most renowned New England intellectuals of her age. She is remembered both for founding the first English-speaking kindergarten and for promoting Friedrich Froebel’s educational ideals in the United States. She was also a formidable Transcendental philosopher, having been exposed for years to the Transcendentalism of such luminaries as Alcott Bronson and William Ellery Channing, both of whom introduced her to Transcendental thought as it existed in Europe.

A major portion of Peabody’s legacy consists of the books she published during her lifetime, both her own and those of such notable authors as Raph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Peabody was a successful organizer, able quite deftly to persuade people to work toward her most cherished goals.

Bibliography

Baylor, Ruth M. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: Kindergarten Pioneer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965. Thoughtful, well-documented study that captures the essence of what Peabody achieved as the founder, along with Margarethe Shurz, of the kindergarten movement in the United States.

Marshall, Megan. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Combined biography of Elizabeth and her two younger sisters, Mary and Sophia. Meticulously detailed, the book illuminates the sisters’ lives and times.

Ronda, Bruce A., ed. Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: American Renaissance Woman. Middlebury, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984. Reading Peabody’s correspondence reveals the growth of her thinking from its earliest stages through her studies of Froebel in Germany.

Tharpe, Louise Hall. The Peabody Sisters of Salem. Boston: Little, Brown, 1950. This book remains the most thorough and reliable source on the Peabody sisters, detailing well their lives and contributions.

Warren, James Perrin. Culture of Eloquence: Oratory and Reform in Antebellum America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. In chapter 4, “Fuller, Peabody, and the Mother Tongue,” Warren explores the dynamics of how Elizabeth Peabody disseminated her educational and transcendental ideas.