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Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY (1804-1894), American educationist, was born at Billerica, Massachusetts, on the 16th of May 1804. Early in life she was assistant in A. Bronson Alcott's school in Boston, Mass., the best account of which is probably her Record of Mr Alcott's School (1835). She had been instructed in Greek by Emerson at Concord when she was eighteen years old. She became interested in the educational methods of Froebel, and in 1860 opened in Boston a small school resembling a kindergarten. In 1867 she visited Germany for the purpose of studying Froebel's methods. It was largely through her efforts that the first public kindergarten in the United States was established in Boston in 1870. She died at Jamaica Plain, Boston, on the 3rd of January 1894. She was the sister-in-law of Nathaniel Hawthorne and of Horace Mann.

Among her publications are: Kindergarten in Italy (1872); Reminiscences of William Ellery Channing (1880); Lectures in the Training Schools for Kindergartners (1888); and Last Evening with Allston, and other Papers (1886).