Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer

PEABODY, Elizabeth Palmer, educator, b. in Billerica, Mass., 16 May, 1804; d. at Jamaica Plain, Mass., 3 Jan., 1894. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Peabody, a physician, passed her early life in Salem, and after 1822 resided principally in Boston, where she engaged in teaching. Her sister Sophia married Nathaniel Hawthorne, and her sister Mary married Horace Mann. Miss Peabody, who was the last survivor of her generation, resided at Jamaica Plain, near Boston. She had been successful as a teacher, and was one of the first to introduce the kindergarten system of instruction into the United States, and had been prominent in numerous works of philanthropy. She continued to some extent engaged in literary work, and she published “Æsthetic Papers” (Boston, 1849); “Crimes of the House of Austria,” edited (New York, 1852); “The Polish-American System of Chronology” (Boston, 1852); “Kindergarten in Italy,” in “U. S. Bureau of Education Circular” (1872); and a revised edition of Mary Mann's “Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class; and Moral Culture of Infancy” (New York, 1877); “Reminiscences of Dr. Channing” (Boston, 1880); “Letters to Kindergartners” (1886); and “Last Evening with Allston, and other Papers” (1887).