Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/728

Rh when, resigning to give his whole time to the completion of literary work that had been long in hand, he was given an emeritus appointment. In 1863 and again during the academic year of 1868-'9 he was acting president of the university. From student days he was ever an active literary worker. Re wrote sixty leading articles in "The Whig Review" in 1837-'59, was editor of the "North American Review " in 1852-'61, and has contributed frequently to "The Christian Examiner," "The New England Magazine," "The American Monthly," and other religious and educational publications. Besides more than a hundred special sermons, addresses, and orations, he has published "Lectures on Christian Doctrine" (Boston, 1844); "Sermons of Consolation" (1847); "Conversation: its Faults and its Graces" (1856); "Christianity the Religion of Nature" (1864); "Sermons for Children" (1866); "Reminiscences of European Travel" (New York, 1868); "Manual of Moral Philosophy"; "Christianity and Science" (Boston, 1874); "Christian Belief and Life" (1875); and "Harvard Reminiscences" (1888). He has also compiled a Sunday-school hymn-book (1840), and edited, with memoirs, the writings of James Kennard, Jr. (1847) ; Rev. Jason Whitman (1849); John W. Foster (1852) ; Cliarles A. Cheever, M. D. (1854); and William Plummer and William Plummer, Jr. (1857). He received the degree of D. D. from Harvard in 1853, and LL. D. from the University of Rochester in 1863.

PEABODY, Elizabeth Palmer, educator, b. in Billerica, Mass., 16 May, 1804; d. at Jamaica Plain, Mass., 3 Jan., 1894. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Peabody, a physician, passed her early life in Salem, and after 1822 resided principally in Boston, where she engaged in teaching. Her sister Sophia married Nathaniel Hawthorne, and her sister Mary married Horace Mann. Miss Peabody, who was the last survivor of her generation, resided at Jamaica Plain, near Boston. She had been successful as a teacher, and was one of the first to introduce the kindergarten system of instruction into the United States, and had been prominent in numerous works of philanthropy. She continued to some extent engaged in literary work, and she published &ldquo;Æsthetic Papers&rdquo; (Boston, 1849); &ldquo;Crimes of the House of Austria,&rdquo; edited (New York, 1852); &ldquo;The Polish-American System of Chronology&rdquo; (Boston, 1852); &ldquo;Kindergarten in Italy,&rdquo; in &ldquo;U. S. Bureau of Education Circular&rdquo; (1872); and a revised edition of Mary Mann's &ldquo;Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class; and Moral Culture of Infancy&rdquo; (New York, 1877); &ldquo;Reminiscences of Dr. Channing&rdquo; (Boston, 1880); &ldquo;Letters to Kindergartners&rdquo; (1886); and &ldquo;Last Evening with Allston, and other Papers&rdquo; (1887).

PEABODY, Ephraim, clergyman, b. in Wilton, N. H., 22 March, 1807; d. in Boston, Mass., 28 Nov., 1856. He was graduated at Bowdoin in 1827, studied theology at Cambridge, and began to preach in 1830 at Meadville, Pa. He was minister for four years in Cincinnati, and pastor of a Unitarian church at New Bedford, Mass., in 1838-'46, and for the remainder of his life of King's chapel, Boston. He was the originator of the Boston provident society, and was otherwise largely interested in devising measures for the relief of the poor. During 1853 he travelled in Europe to benefit his health, and spent the winter of 1855-'6 in St. Augustine, Fla., with the same object. He was favorably known as a pulpit orator. His sermons, with a memoir, were published in 1857, and a volume of his writings, entitled &ldquo;Christian Days and Thoughts,&rdquo; also appeared (1858).

PEABODY, George, philanthropist, b. in Danvers. Mass., 18 Feb., 1795 ; d. in London, 4 Nov., 1869. He was descended from a good English family, his ancestor, Francis Paybody, having settled in New England in 1635. After he had been taught to read and write at the Danvers school, he became a clerk at the age of eleven years, afterward serving in the same capacity at Thetford. Vt., and in Newburyport, Mass., when he went to Georgetown, D. C., and assumed the management of a store belonging to his uncle, John Peabody. In 1814 he became a partner of Elisha Riggs in a dry-goods house, which a year later was removed to Baltimore, Md., and in 1833 established branches in New York and Philadelphia. By the retirement, in 1829, of Mr. Riggs, he became the head of the firm, and in 1837 he settled in London, establishing the banking-house of George Peabody and Company. For negotiating the sale of $8,000,000 worth of bonds, in 1835, in London, when others had failed, by which he sustained the credit of Maryland, and giving to the state his commission of $200,000, a vote of thanks was returned to him by the legislature. This was his first large gift. He supplied the sum required to arrange and display the contributions from the United States to the great London exhibition of 1851. The same year he gave the first of a series of 4th-of-July dinners in London, which was attended by the Duke of Wellington and many other distinguished personages, and to which the Queen sent her own and Prince Albert's portraits to decorate the hall. These annual entertainments were a source of great satisfaction to Mr. Peabody, who believed that they contributed in no small degree to a better feeling between his native and his adopted country. The year following he presented $10,000 to the second Grinnell expedition, under Dr. Elisha K. Kane, sent in search of Sir John Franklin, and $30,000 to found the Peabody institute and library at Danvers (now Peabody), to which he subsequently added $170,000, with $50,000 more for a similar institution in North Danvers. On the occasion of his revisiting the United States in 1857, he founded the Peabody institute in Baltimore, with $300,000, subsequently increased to $1,000,000. He also gave $25,000 to Phillips Andover academy, and $25,000 to Kenyon college. Mr. Peabody matured his plans in 1863 for building lodging-houses for the poor of London, contributing in all $3,500,000, with which, to the present time (1888), buildings have been erected in different districts of the metropolis, capable of accommodating 30,000 persons. Mr. Peabody's great wealth was due in part to his patriotism and sagacity, which induced him to invest largely in U. S. government bonds during the civil war. While on another visit to this country in 1866 he founded an institute of archaeology, in connection with Harvard college, with $150,000, presented a like amount toward a department of physical science in Yale college, and made a gift of $3,100,000, increased in 1869 to $3,500,000, for the promotion of education in the south, besides contributing about $300,000 to various charities. For this unexampled liberality he received the thanks of the United States government, which also voted him a gold medal. When he returned to England in 1867, the Queen offered him a baronetcy, or the grand cross of the Order of the Bath, both of which he declined. In answer to a question as to what gift he would accept, he said : " A letter from the Queen of England which I may carry across the Atlantic and deposit as a memorial of one of her most faithful sons." The Queen complied with this request, writing Mr. Peabody a graceful letter of acknowl-