Mary Peabody Mann

She left home at age 18 and eventually served as a teacher in Maine and later in Boston.

In 1833, Peabody accepted a job as a governess in Cuba. She traveled to the island with her younger sister, Sophia, who was suffering from poor health. Sophia recuperated while there.

The sisters returned to the U.S. in 1835 and started a school in Boston.

Peabody had met Horace Mann at their boardinghouse before she moved to Cuba. When the sisters returned, she not only taught school but also helped Mann as an assistant and secretary. He was then serving as the secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. She helped him influence public opinion about education and raised support for increased teachers’ pay and improved teacher training.

In 1838, Peabody published a children’s book about flowers. It was titled, “The Flower People: Being an Account of the Flowers by Themselves; Illustrated with Plates.” It was popular with both children and parents.

Her sister, Sophia, married Nathanial Hawthorn in 1842.

The following year Peabody married Horace Mann. They honeymooned in Europe, visiting schools, prisons and other institutions.

The couple had three sons: Horace Jr., George, and Benjamin.

When Horace Mann became president of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1853, she was the unofficial dean of women. The couple hoped, through this effort, to reshape education into an institution that was co-educational and without prejudice.

While living in Yellow Springs, Peabody wrote a book titled, “Christianity in the Kitchen,” which reflected her belief that good nutrition was a moral duty.

After her husband’s death in 1859, Peabody returned to Massachusetts. There she wrote her husband’s biography.

She and her sister, Elizabeth, established the first kindergarten in the U.S. in Boston.

They wrote a kindergarten guide and published articles in periodicals about education topics.

On Feb. 11, 1887 in Jamaica Plain, Mass., Mary Peabody Mann, the woman who had done so much for education reform, died. She was buried in the North Burial Ground Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island.