Peabody, Elizabeth

Peabody, Elizabeth (Palmer)

(born May 16, 1804, Billerica, Mass., U.S.—died Jan. 3, 1894, Jamaica Plain, Mass.) U.S. educator and leader in the kindergarten movement in America. She served as secretary to William Ellery Channing (1825–34) and worked with Bronson Alcott in his Temple School. She opened a Boston bookshop in 1839, which became a centre for Transcendentalist activities. She published works by Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne and also published and wrote articles for The Dial. Inspired by the work of Friedrich Froebel, she opened the first English-language kindergarten in the U.S. in 1860 and thereafter devoted herself to organizing public and private kindergartens. Her sisters married Horace Mann and Nathaniel Hawthorne.