Search Results for: Elizabeth Thorn

Elizabeth Thorn

• Maggie

Caretaker of Gettysburg’s Evergreen Cemetery At the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, Elizabeth Thorn was caretaker of Evergreen Cemetery, a job normally performed by her husband Peter but he was away serving in the Union Army. Her elderly parents and her three small sons were living with her in the cemetery gatehouse, and she was six months pregnant. The cemetery grounds were littered with dead soldiers and horses, and it was her responsibility to bury them. Image: Elizabeth Thorn Monument This 7-foot bronze statue created by sculptor Ron Tunison of Cairo, New York, depicts a weary Elizabeth Thorn, leaning on a shovel as she rests from her work. The memorial was dedicated in November 2002 and honors the contributions…

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Elizabeth Shaw Melville

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Wife of Author Herman Melville Elizabeth Shaw Melville copied her husband’s works and edited his manuscripts when asked, before and after his death. She was devoted to the author, even when his behavior was erratic. Elizabeth Shaw was born June 13, 1822 in Boston, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Elizabeth Knapp Shaw and Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and an old friend of the Melville family. It seems that everyone called her Lizzie. Her siblings were all boys, John Oakes, Lemuel and Samuel Savage Shaw. Herman Melville (1819-1891) was not only a novelist and a poet, he was also an adventurer. In 1841, he signed on the whaler Acushnet, on a three-year whaling voyage. He…

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Elizabeth Peabody

• Maggie

Founder of the First Public Kindergarten Elizabeth Peabody (1804–1894), the oldest of the three Peabody sisters of Salem, was one of the most important women of her time. She was an educator and education reformer who opened the first kindergarten in the United States. Long before most teachers, Peabody embraced the premise that children’s play has intrinsic developmental and educational value. Her sisters were painter Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, wife of author Nathaniel Hawthorne and writer Mary Peabody Mann, wife of educator Horace Mann. Elizabeth Peabody spent her early years in Salem, Massachusetts, and was drawn to the world of education and ideas early in life. Peabody was born in Billerica, Massachusetts on May 16, 1804, the daughter of Nathaniel and…

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Sophia Hawthorne

• Maggie

  Writer, Artist and Wife of Author Nathaniel Hawthorne Sophia Hawthorne (September 21, 1809 – February 26, 1871) was a writer and painter, and one of the famous Peabody sisters. She took up drawing and painting in 1829, and was an accomplished artist before her marriage to author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Sophia also published her journals and some of Nathaniel’s notebooks, which she edited and published after his death. Sophia Amelia Peabody was born September 21, 1809, in Salem, Massachusetts. Her father was dentist Nathaniel Peabody and her mother was the strong Unitarian Eliza Palmer Peabody. She had three brothers; her sisters were Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Mary Tyler Peabody (later wife of Horace Mann). With a father who had originally…

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Hannah Jack Thornton

• Maggie

Wife of Declaration Signer Dr. Matthew Thornton Hannah Jack was born in 1742, daughter of Andrew and Mary Morrison Jack of Chester, New Hampshire. Her family had emigrated from Londonderry, Ireland, but they were originally Scottish. Matthew Thornton was born in 1714 in Northern Ireland, and was brought to this country at the age of three years by his parents, James and Elizabeth Jenkins Thornton. Their family is said to have been among the 120 families who in five small ships, arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 17, 1718, and in the fall of that year went to Maine. When their ship landed in Maine in mid-winter, the passengers had no place to live, so they remained aboard ship. Dr….

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Jean Margaret Davenport

• Maggie

Civil War Nurse and Stage Actress Jean Margaret Davenport (May 3, 1829, Wolverhampton, England – August 3, 1903, Washington, D.C.), later Mrs. Frederick William Lander, was an English actress with a career in both England and the United States. American Civil War nurse and English-American stage actress Early Years Jean Margaret Davenport was born May 3, 1829, in Wolverhampton, England. Her father was a lawyer, but he left the bar for the stage and became the manager of the Richmond Theatre in the London borough of Richmond Upon Thames. At the age of seven, Jean made her first professional appearance at that theater as Little Pickle in The Manager’s Daughter, and in Dion Boucicault’s version as The Young Actress. Jean…

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Mary Peabody Mann

• Maggie

Activist, Educator, and Wife of Horace Mann Mary Peabody Mann was a teacher, author, and wife of education reformer Horace Mann. Mary carried a passion for education, especially of young children, in her breast from her youngest days. She was well educated by her mother and role model Eliza Palmer Peabody, who ran a school from their home and was an early advocate of women’s rights. Early Years Mary Tyler Peabody was born November 16, 1806 in Cambridge and grew up in Salem, both in Massachusetts. Her parents, Nathaniel and Elizabeth Peabody were schoolteachers when they married; after the wedding, they reserved one room in their home as a classroom.

First American Women Painters

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First Professional Women in Art In the nineteenth century, women artists signed their work with a first initial and last name to conceal their gender. Not until the second half of the 19th century did women artists make significant progress. In the United States, women gradually became a force on the American art scene, winning prestigious commissions and awards. Image: Kaaterskill Clove by Harriet Cany Peale This deep gorge in New York’s Catskill Mountains inspired the Hudson River School of Art, our nation’s first artistic style. Harriet Cany Peale Harriet Cany Peale (1800-1869) was born in Philadelphia, where she studied with well-known portrait and historical genre painter, Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860). In 1840 she married Peale and exhibited for the first…

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Annie Adams Fields

• Maggie

Writer, Philanthropist and Suffragist in Boston Annie Adams Fields was a poet, philanthropist and social reformer, who wrote dozens of biographies of famous writers who were also her friends. She founded innovative charities to assist the poor residents of Boston and campaigned for the rights of women, particularly the right to vote and to earn a medical degree. Image: Young Annie Adams Fields Annie Adams was born June 6, 1834, the sixth of seven children of a wealthy family in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents believed in progressive education for young women; as a girl, she attended a school in Boston that emphasized the classics and literature, which was run by George Emerson.

Women of Brook Farm

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A Massachusetts Commune Image: Farmhouse at Brook Farm Brook Farm, the most famous utopian community in America, was founded by Unitarian minister and author George Ripley and his wife Sophia in rural West Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1841. The Ripleys were interested in a more balanced society where equality was the norm and class distinction and wage discrepancy were not. The Philosophy In October 1840, George Ripley announced to the Transcendental Club that he was planning to form a Utopian community. Brook Farm, as it would be called, was based on the ideals of Transcendentalism. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson was the center of the transcendental movement, setting out most of its ideas and values in a little book entitled Nature (1836)…

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