| George Peabody | |
|---|---|
 George Peabody, circa 1865 |
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| Born | February 18, 1795 Peabody, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | November 4, 1869 (aged 74) London, England |
| Resting place | Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts |
| Occupation | Financier, Banker, Entrepreneur |
| Net worth | $23,700,000,000[1] |
| Religion | Unitarian |
| Spouse(s) | none |
| Children | none |
| Parents | Thomas Peabody and Judith Dodge |
George Peabody (PEE-bu-dee) (February 18, 1795 – November 4, 1869) was an entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded the Peabody Institute. He was born in what was then South Danvers, Massachusetts (now Peabody, Massachusetts), to a family with Puritan antecedents in the state. His birthplace at 205 Washington Street in Peabody is now the George Peabody House Museum, a museum dedicated to preserving his life and legacy. One of George Peabody's longtime business associates and friends was renowned banker and art patron William Wilson Corcoran.
In 1816, Peabody moved to Baltimore, where he would live for the next 20 years. And in 1837, Peabody settled in London, where he would spend the rest of his life.
George Peabody never married. He died in London on November 4, 1869, aged 74. At the request of the Dean of Westminster and with the approval of the Queen, Peabody was given a temporary burial in Westminster Abbey. [2]
His will provided that he be buried in the town of his birth, Danvers, Massachusetts, and Prime Minister Gladstone arranged for Peabody's remains to be returned to America on HMS Monarch, the newest and largest ship in Her Majesty's Navy. He is buried in Salem, Massachusetts, at Harmony Grove Cemetery. Peabody's death and the pair of funerals were international news, with hundreds of people participating in the ceremonies and thousands attending.[3]
The town of South Danvers, Massachusetts, changed its name to The City of Peabody, Massachusetts in honor of its favorite son. Peabody is a member of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans located at the Bronx Community College, at the former site of New York University.
A statue of him stands next to the Royal Exchange in the City of London, unveiled in 1869 shortly before his death. There is a similar statue of him next to the Peabody Institute, in Mount Vernon Park, part of the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland.
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While serving as a volunteer in the War of 1812, Peabody (pronounced PEE-buh-dee) met Elisha Riggs, who, in 1814, provided financial backing for the wholesale dry goods firm of Peabody, Riggs, and Company.
In 1851 he founded George Peabody and Company to meet the increasing demand for securities issued by the American railroads and three years later went into partnership with Junius Spencer Morgan (father of J. P. Morgan) to form Peabody, Morgan and Co., where the two financiers worked together until Peabody’s retirement in 1864. On his retirement, the firm was renamed J. S. Morgan & Co. The former UK merchant bank Morgan Grenfell (now part of Deutsche Bank), international universal bank JPMorgan Chase and investment bank Morgan Stanley can all trace their roots to Peabody's bank.[4]
Peabody is the acknowledged father of modern philanthropy,[5][6][7] having established the practice later followed by Johns Hopkins, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates.
In 1862 in London, Peabody established the Peabody Donation Fund, which continues to this day, as the Peabody Trust, to provide good quality housing "for the deserving poor" in London. The first dwellings opened by the Peabody Trust for the "artisans and labouring poor of London" were opened in Commercial Street, Whitechapel in February 1864. They were designed by the architect H.A. Darbishire in an attractively ornate style, a break from the convention of Gothic that private clients came to require of him.
Peabody was made a Freeman of the City of London, the motion being proposed by Charles Reed in recognition of his financial contribution to London's poor.[8]
In America, Peabody founded and supported numerous institutions in New England and elsewhere. At the close of the American Civil War, he established the Peabody Education Fund to "encourage the intellectual, moral, and industrial education of the destitute children of the Southern States."[9] His grandest beneficence, however, was to Baltimore; the city in which he achieved his earliest success.
George Peabody is known to have provided benefactions of more than $8 million, most of them in his own lifetime. Among the list are included:
GEORGE PEABODY (1795-1869), American philanthropist, was descended from an old yeoman family of Hertfordshire, England, named Pabody or Pebody. He was born in the part of Danvers which is now Peabody, Mass., on the 18th of February 1 795. When eleven years old he became apprentice at a grocery store. At the end of four years he became assistant to his brother, and a year afterwards to his uncle, who had a business in Georgetown, District of Columbia. After serving as a volunteer at Fort Warburton, Maryland, in the War of 1812, he became partner with Elisha Riggs in a dry goods store at Georgetown, Riggs furnishing the capital, while Peabody was manager. Through his energy and skill the business increased with astounding rapidity, and on the retirement of Riggs about 1830 Peabody found himself at the head of one of the largest mercantile concerns in the world. About 1837 he established himself in London as merchant and money-broker at Wanford Court, in the city, and in 1843 he withdrew from the American business. The number of his benefactions to public objects was very large. He gave £50,000 for educational purposes at Danvers; £ 200,000 to found and endow a scientific Institute in Baltimore; various sums to Harvard University; £700,000 to the trustees of the Peabody Educational Fund to promote education in the southern states; and £50o,000 for the erection of dwelling-houses for the working-classes in London. He received from Queen Victoria the offer of a baronetcy, but declined it. In 1867 the United States Congress awarded him a special vote of thanks. He died in London on the 4th of November 1869; his body was carried to America in a British warship, and was buried in his native town.
See the Life (Boston, 1870) by Phebe A. Hanaford.
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