Salem Women's
History and
Business Community
History and
Business Community
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
Salem sites:
• Brown Building, corner of Union
and Essex Streets (home)
• 53 Charter Street (home)
• Phillips Library, Peabody Essex
Museum (portrait)
Associated Salem women:
• Mary Peabody Mann
• Sophia Peabody Hawthorne
Learn more:
• Boston Women's Heritage Trail
• Brown Building, corner of Union
and Essex Streets (home)
• 53 Charter Street (home)
• Phillips Library, Peabody Essex
Museum (portrait)
Associated Salem women:
• Mary Peabody Mann
• Sophia Peabody Hawthorne
Learn more:
• Boston Women's Heritage Trail
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-94), the oldest of the three Peabody sisters of Salem, was one of the most important women of her time. The daughter of a dentist and a school teacher, she was drawn into the world of education and ideas early in life. By the age of thirty, she had opened and run two schools and worked at Bronson Alcott's progressive Temple School in Boston. Elizabeth later opened the nation's first kindergarten — on Boston's Beacon Hill, in 1861 — and was largely responsible for the spread of the kindergarten movement in America.
Elizabeth was also one of America's first female publishers, printing antislavery tracts, children's books by Nathaniel Hawthorne (her brother-in-law), and the Dial, the journal of her Transcendentalist friends who gathered at her Boston bookstore. Elizabeth's own writing reveals her connections to some of the most important thinkers of her time: Reminiscences of Rev. William Ellery Channing (whose Unitarian church in Boston she attended), Record of a School (Bronson Alcott's Temple School), and A Last Evening with Allston (the painter Washington Allston who admired and encouraged her sister Sophia as an artist).
Elizabeth's bookstore was the site of "Conversations" held by Margaret Fuller
(1810-50), in which women and, briefly, men engaged in high-level intellectual and political discussions. In this way, Elizabeth provided an early forum for women lecturers such as Harriet Martineau.
Throughout her long life, Elizabeth worked to improve the lives of women and minorities, and founded a school for the orphaned children of former southern slaves. After her death in 1894, Elizabeth's friends opened the Elizabeth Peabody House — a combination social service agency and kindergarten in Boston — to carry on her work. The house continues to function today.
One of her portraits (but not the one displayed above) may be seen at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, in the Phillips Library.
Elizabeth was also one of America's first female publishers, printing antislavery tracts, children's books by Nathaniel Hawthorne (her brother-in-law), and the Dial, the journal of her Transcendentalist friends who gathered at her Boston bookstore. Elizabeth's own writing reveals her connections to some of the most important thinkers of her time: Reminiscences of Rev. William Ellery Channing (whose Unitarian church in Boston she attended), Record of a School (Bronson Alcott's Temple School), and A Last Evening with Allston (the painter Washington Allston who admired and encouraged her sister Sophia as an artist).
Elizabeth's bookstore was the site of "Conversations" held by Margaret Fuller
(1810-50), in which women and, briefly, men engaged in high-level intellectual and political discussions. In this way, Elizabeth provided an early forum for women lecturers such as Harriet Martineau.
Throughout her long life, Elizabeth worked to improve the lives of women and minorities, and founded a school for the orphaned children of former southern slaves. After her death in 1894, Elizabeth's friends opened the Elizabeth Peabody House — a combination social service agency and kindergarten in Boston — to carry on her work. The house continues to function today.
One of her portraits (but not the one displayed above) may be seen at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, in the Phillips Library.
