Endicott Peabody (educator)

The Rev. Endicott Peabody (30 May 1857 - 17 November 1944) was the American Episcopal priest who founded Groton School for Boys (known today simply as Groton School), (in Groton, Massachusetts), in 1884. Peabody served as headmaster at Groton School from 1884 until 1940, and also served as a trustee at Lawrence Academy at Groton. In 1926 Peabody also founded Brooks School, which was named for 19th-century clergyman Phillips Brooks, a well-known preacher and resident of North Andover. Peabody was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's headmaster at Groton, and he officiated at FDR's marriage to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Life

Endicott Peabody, son of Samuel Endicott and Marianne C. (Lee) Peabody, was born in Salem, Massachusetts. His great-grandfather was the distinguished Salem shipowner, Joseph Peabody, who made a fortune importing pepper from Sumatra and was one of the wealthiest men in the United States at the time of his death in 1844. His father, Samuel Endicott Peabody, was a Boston merchant and a partner in the London banking firm of J. S. Morgan and Company (later known as J.P. Morgan & Company). When Endicott Peabody was 13, the family moved to England. He prepared for university at Cheltenham College, a secondary school in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, finishing in 1876 at the age of 19. He was graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1880 with an LL.B. degree. He married his first cousin, Fannie Peabody, daughter of Francis and Helen (Bloodgood) Peabody of Salem, Massachusetts on 18 June 1885 in Salem. (His father and her father were brothers.) They had six children.

In 1882 during his first year at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts (now the Episcopal Divinity School) Peabody, a seminarian not yet a priest, was invited to take charge of a little Episcopal congregation in Tombstone, Arizona (now St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Tombstone). After a long and tortuous trip, Peabody arrived in Tombstone two months after the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral". He had words of praise for Wyatt Earp. Though he spent no more than six months in Tombstone he succeeded in getting the church built, St Paul's Episcopal Church. This church building today is the oldest in the state not belonging to the Roman Catholic Church. He was impressive physically, never losing a boxing match. He began a baseball team in Tombstone. He raised money by walking into the saloons and holding out his hat at the gambling tables. He has been spoken of as patron saint of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona. The importance of this brief moment in his life, recorded in his diaries and correspondence, is that it helps describe the spirit and the presence of the man who was the great headmaster of Groton.

Legacy

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said of Peabody, "As long as I live his influence will mean more to me than that of any other people next to my father and mother." His family has been called Boston Brahmins. Governor Endicott Peabody was a grandchild, and his great-grandchildren include author Frances FitzGerald, model Penelope Tree, and actress Kyra Sedgwick, wife of Kevin Bacon.

Notes

External links

• Groton School
• Brooks School

Other Sources

A Church for Helldorado: the 1882 Tombstone Diary of Endicott Peabody by SJ Reidhead