Music, for which Mrs. Howe has a cultivated taste, is her favorite recreation. She has composed a number of songs, some of which are well known among her friends, although unpublished. A Unitarian in religion, she is a member of the Church of the Disciples, Boston. For many years she has been the honored and beloved president of the New England omen's Club and of the Association for the Advancement of Women. She is Regent of Liberty Tree Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, and an honorary member of the Society of Colonial Dames in the State of Rhode Island.
To this reprint of sketch published in 1901 may be added that Mrs. Howe has recently passed her eighty-fifth anniversary, and, improving the opportunity of age, is still active with voice and pen in behalf of many good causes. From Tufts College, at its recent Commencement, June 15, 1904, she received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, educator and author, was born in Billerica, Mass., May 16, 1804, daughter of Dr. Nathaniel Peabody and his wife, Elizabeth Palmer. She was the eldest of three notable sisters, of whom in her latest years she was the sole survivor. The one nearest her in age was Mary Tyler, born in Cambridge in 1806, who married Horace Mann; and the other was Sophia Amelia, who became the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The father, Nathaniel Peabody, a lineal descendant of Francis Peabody, of Topsfield, the immigrant progenitor of the family of this name in New England, was graduated at Dartmouth College in 1800. For some years, later in life, he practised dentistry in Salem and Boston. He married in 1802 Elizabeth Palmer, who had been preceptress of the girls' department of an incorporated school in North Andover, Mass., of which he was the principal, the school in 1803 being named Franklin Academy. A "lady of rare gifts and attainments," Miss Palmer was a successful teacher, winning the respect and affection of her pupils and inciting in them a love of learning. She was the daughter of Joseph Pearse and Elizabeth (Hunt) Palmer and grand-daughter of General Joseph Palmer of Revolutionary times, who with his wife Mary, sister of Judge Richard Cranch, came to Boston from Devonshire, England, in 1746. Her maternal grandfather was John Hunt, of Watertown (Harvard College, 1734), whose son, Samuel Hunt, her uncle, was for about thirty years master of the Boston Latin School. Joseph Pearse Palmer (Harvard College, 1771) was one of the Boston Tea Party in December, 1773, and he also served his country in the Revolution. Some years after the close of the war he removed to Framingham, where he taught school. He died in Vermont in 1797, seven years before the birth of the grand-daughter whose name heads the present sketch. After his death his wife and children resided in Watertown.
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, descended from this worthy, patriotic, and scholarly ancestry, was a precocious child, early displaying unusual mental abilities and a fondness for study. At the age of sixteen she began to teach school in Lancaster. She subsequently taught successively in Hallowell, Me., in Brookline, Mass., with her sister Mary, and in Boston. She was acquainted with a number of languages, ancient and modern, learning Polish when she was well advanced in years; and she excelled as a teacher of history, in which she had classes. In September, 1834, Mr. A. Bronson Alcott opened his school at the Masonic Temple, Boston. His diary thus mentions his assistant: "Miss Peabody, whose reputation both as regards original and acquired ability is high: she unites intellectual and practical qualities of no common order."
Miss Peabody's great work, begun after she was fifty years old, was as an interpreter of Froebel's system of education and introducer of the kindergarten into this country.
For about ten years (1840–50) she kept at the family home, 13 West Street, Boston, a shop for the sale of foreign books and journals, and a circulating library, the place becoming for the time a "centre of the finest intellectual culture." Here were held some of Margaret Fuller's conversations.
