Elizabeth Palmer Peabody - Infinite Women

Born: 16 May 1804, United States
Died: 31 January 1894
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894), the educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States, was born on May 16, 1804, in Billerica, Massachusetts. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children’s play has intrinsic developmental and educational value.

Peabody was a teacher, writer, and prominent figure in the Transcendental movement, editing The Dial, the chief literary publication of the movement, for two years, beginning in 1841. From 1834-36, she worked as assistant teacher to Bronson Alcott at his experimental Temple School in Boston.

After the school closed, Peabody published Record of a School, outlining the plan of the school and Alcott’s philosophy of early childhood education, which had drawn on German models. When she opened her kindergarten in 1860—the first formally organized kindergarten in the United States–she was inspired by German educators such as Friedrich Fröbel, a pioneer in the provision of formal schooling for children younger than six.

Through her own kindergarten, and as editor of the Kindergarten Messenger (1873-77), Peabody helped establish kindergarten as an accepted institution in U.S. education. She also wrote numerous books in support of the cause.

The extent of her influence is apparent in a statement submitted to Congress on February 12, 1897, in support of free kindergartens:
“The advantage to the community in utilizing the age from 4 to 6 in training the hand and eye; in developing the habits of cleanliness, politeness, self-control, urbanity, industry; in training the mind to understand numbers and geometric forms, to invent combinations of figures and shapes, and to represent them with the pencil—these and other valuable lessons…will, I think, ultimately prevail in securing to us the establishment of this beneficent institution in all the city school systems of our country.”

The following is excerpted from Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company.

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, an American writer and educator. She engaged in teaching at sixteen and later studied Greek under Emerson.
After having been an assistant at A. Bronson Alcott’s School, the best account of which is probably her Record of Mr. Alcott’s School, she was for a time secretary to William Ellery Channing.
Having become interested in the educational methods of Froebel, she visited Germany in 1867 for the purpose of study the method, and it was largely through her efforts that the first public kindergarten in the United States was established in Boston in 1870.
Among her publications are: First Steps in History, Crimes of the House of Austria, Reminiscences of Dr. Channing and Kindergarten Culture.