Elizabeth Peabody

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804 to 1894) was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. She held that children's play has intrinsic developmental and educational value, a view few educators of her time shared. After teaching in schools of her own and assisting Bronson Alcott at his Temple School in Boston, she became interested in the educational methods of Friedrich Froebel, visited Germany in 1867 to study them more closely, edited the Kindergarten Messenger and in 1877 organized the American Froebel Union. With her sister Mary she wrote the Moral Culture of Infancy and Kindergarten Guide, and her efforts helped make kindergarten an accepted part of American public education. She also ran a Boston bookshop, published the Transcendentalists and worked for antislavery and Native American rights.