The New Student's Reference Work/Peabody, George

Peabody, George, an American merchant and banker, was born at South Danvers, Mass., Feb. 18, 1795. When 11 he began his business life in a grocery, was next a clerk in Thetford, Vt., and afterwards partner of a dry-goods house in Georgetown, D. C. This business was removed to Baltimore in 1815, and had branches at Philadelphia and New York in 1822. In 1837 he settled in London, starting a banking house and making a large fortune, partly by investing heavily in government bonds during the Civil War. In 1851 he supplied the money needed to fit up the American department of the Great Exhibition at London. His fame rests, not on his wealth, but on his benevolence, as during his lifetime he gave away five and a half million dollars. Among these gifts were $10,000 to the Grinnell expedition to the north pole under Dr. Kane; $200,000 to found Peabody Institute at South Danvers; $50,000 to an institution at North Danvers; $1,000,000 to Peabody Institute at Baltimore; $25,000 each to Phillips Academy, Andover, and Kenyon College, at Gambier, O.; $150,000 each to Harvard and Yale; and $3,500,000 as a fund for educational purposes in the south. He also spent $2,500,000 in building model homes for the poor of London, of which in 1889 there were eighteen groups in different parts of the city, accommodating 20,000 people, while the rents and interest brought in $150,000 net profit. He was offered the title of baron by Queen Victoria, but declined, asking only for “a letter from the queen, which I may carry to America and deposit as a memorial of one of her most faithful sons.” The letter was given with the queen's portrait, and both are deposited in Peabody Institute, South Danvers (now called Peabody in honor of its illustrious citizen). He died at London, Nov. 4, 1869, his body being sent to America in an English warship. There are statues of Peabody at London and Baltimore. See Life by Hanaford, and Beneficent and Useful Lives by Cochrane.