William Heard Kilpatrick (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), Progressive Educator and Progressive Philosopher of Education, by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net
KILPATRICK, WILLIAM HEARD (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), educator and philosopher of progressive education, was born in White Plains, GA, son of James Hines Kilpatrick, a Southern Baptist minister, and Edna Perrin Heard, a teacher.
Kilpatrick had an orthodox upbringing and did well in school. In 1888 he entered the sophomore class at Mercer University (Baptist, Macon, GA), excelled in mathematics, and earned the B.A. degree in 1891. A Mercer trustee encouraged him to study mathematics and physics at Johns Hopkins University, 1891-92. There he was transported from a conservative rural atmosphere to a liberal community of inquiring scholars. Mercer granted him the M.A. degree in 1892 for his Johns Hopkins graduate study. Because of administrative changes, he did not get a hoped-for Mercer teaching job.
His first teaching post at Blakely Institute, a combined elementary and secondary public school in southwest Georgia, required that he attend a July 1892 summer session at Rock College Normal School, Athens, GA. There he learned of the educational theories of German educator Friedrich Froebel, kindergarten founder and learning-through-play advocate (Kilpatrick later wrote Froebel's Kindergarten Principles Critically Examined, New York: Macmillan, 1916); and of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who urged teaching by encouragement without harsh discipline. He was impressed by Education Professor Otis Ashmore, who told of the interest stimulated among his students at Chatham Academy, Savannah, GA, so that they studied without supervision in his absence. Ashmore's example, Kilpatrick later wrote, was the origin for his 1918 project method article. At an April 8, 1893, Chautauqua tent meeting at nearby Albany, GA, he heard visiting Cook County (IL) Normal School director and progressive educator Francis Wayland Parker. He then read Leila E. Patridge, The "Quincy Method" Illustrated (New York: E.L. Kellogg, 1885), describing Parker's successful progressive education methods used while he was Quincy, MA, school superintendent. He taught mathematics in the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades at Blakely and was co-principal, 1892-95. There he first experimented with nontraditional teaching and administration.
He again studied at Johns Hopkins University, summer 1895; then taught seventh grade at and was principal of Anderson Elementary School, Savannah, GA, 1896-97. He also studied at the University of Chicago under John Dewey, summer 1898, later noting that he was not initially impressed by Dewey. He was at Mercer University, 1897-1906, taught mathematics, was vice president, 1900, and acting president, 1904-06, but resigned when the trustees were concerned about his doubting the virgin birth. Summer sessions he attended while at Mercer University included Cornell University, summer 1900, under Charles de Garmo, disciple of Johann Friedrich Herbart, and a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored summer school for teachers, Knoxville, TN, where he heard psychologist G. Stanley Hall. He taught in Columbus, OH, in 1906-07 before enrolling as a student at Teachers College, Columbia University (hereafter TCCU), in 1907.
Dean James Earl Russell had merged progressivism and professionalism to make TCCU a leading U.S. teacher education center. Kilpatrick studied under Dewey, who had left Chicago for Columbia University in 1904, Paul Monroe, major U.S. educational historian, E. L. Thorndike, and others. He impressed Monroe in a class paper documenting the beginning of Dutch schools in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1638, not 1633, as previously believed. Teaching history of education part time, he began a dissertation on Benedict Spinoza, did not find enough material, returned to the origin of Dutch schools, and completed his dissertation in 1911 (Monroe helped get it published by the Department of the Interior as The Dutch Schools of New Netherland and Colonial New York. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1912).
In 1908 Kilpatrick wrote in his diary, "Professor Dewey has made a great difference in my thinking." Dewey wrote to Professor John A. MacVannel, Kilpatrick's major professor, "He is the best I ever had." Kilpatrick spent the rest of his professional career and long life at TCCU where he was a student, 1907-09; received the Ph.D. in 1912, was lecturer in education, 1909-11; assistant professor, 1911-15; associate professor, 1915-18; professor of philosophy of education, 1918-37; and thereafter emeritus professor.
Kilpatrick was catapulted to fame by his 1918 article, "The Project Method," Teachers College Record, 19 (September 1918), pp. 319-335. By "project" Kilpatrick meant any purposeful learning activity which the student wanted to do wholeheartedly. This active, interest-motivated, and life-like activity was seized upon by progressive teachers as a useful curriculum device. Course content was divided into units or projects students could complete alone or in small groups under teacher guidance. The project method, seen as a welcome antidote to traditional education, gave Dewey's child-centered education a practical teaching methodology and helped the shift from subject- and teacher-based education to child-centered education. It was popular in progressive elementary schools in the 1930s and was revived in the open classroom atmosphere of the late 1960s.
Kilpatrick commanded attention at TCCU by his courtly manner, erect stature, and lion-like mane of silvery white hair. He attracted students by using small group discussions. With notable skill he divided educational problems among small groups in a large class, each group discussed a specific problem, a group chair reported findings to the large class (numbering in the hundreds), followed by discussion and debate. His success in this procedure earned for him the title of the "Million Dollar Professor," which came from the headline of a New York Post article (March 6, 1937) by David Davidson, estimating that his 35,000 graduate students paid over a million dollars in tuition fees to TCCU before he retired in 1937.
He married Marie Beman Guyton (they had three children) on December 27, l898 (she died May 1907); he then married Margaret Manigault Pinckney on November 26, 1908 (she died November 1938); and finally married Marion Y. Ostrander on May 8, 1940 (she had been his secretary).
He taught summers at the University of Georgia, 1906, 1908, and 1909; the University of the South (Knoxville), 1907; was visiting professor, Northwestern University, 1937-38, and taught summer sessions there, 1939, 1940, 1941; taught summer sessions, Stanford University, 1938; University of Kentucky, 1942; University of North Carolina, 1942; and University of Minnesota, 1946. His trips abroad included school visits, lectures, and meetings with prominent educators in Italy, Switzerland, and France, May-June 1912; Europe and Asia, August 1926-June 1927; and round the world, August-December 1929.
He received honorary LL.D. degrees from Mercer University, 1926; Columbia University, 1929; and Bennington College, 1938 (which he helped found in 1923 and where he was president of the board of trustees, 1931-38); the honorary D.H.L. degree from the College of Jewish Studies, 1952; and the Brandeis Award for humanitarian service, 1953.
After retiring from TCCU, 1937, he was president of the New York Urban League, 1941-51; chairman of American Youth for World Youth, 1946-51; chairman of the Bureau of International Education, 1940-51; and on the board of directors of the League for Industrial Democracy.
Kilpatrick had severe critics but many more admirers and followers. His eighty-fifth birthday, November 20, 1956, celebrated at Horace Mann Auditorium, TCCU, resulted in a special March 1957 issue of Progressive Education, "William Heard Kilpatrick Eighty-Fifth Anniversary," containing 10 articles. Both heralded and criticized as John Dewey's chief educational interpreter, Kilpatrick was a leading advocate of progressive education. He died after a long illness at age 93 on February 13, 1965.
References
Kilpatrick gave to the Special Collections, Teachers College Library, Columbia University a handwritten diary (begun 1904) of over 40 volumes, scrapbooks, unpublished papers, and a two-volume typescript from taped interviews with his biographer, Samuel Tenenbaum. An oral history memoir is in the Special Collections, Butler Library, Columbia University Archives. His 14 books and 375 articles are listed in "Writings of William Heard Kilpatrick," Studies in Philosophy and Education, Vol. 1 (November 1961), pp. 220-230.
His more important books include Foundations of Method, New York: Macmillan, 1925, which expands on his project method (translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Russian); Education for a Changing Civilization, Macmillan, 1926 (translated into Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, German, and Italian); Education and the Social Crisis, A Proposed Program, New York: Liveright, 1932; The Educational Frontier, New York: Appleton-Century, 1933, containing his articles and articles by other leading progressives (he was book editor), and said to be the characteristic progressivist work of the 1930s; Group Education for a Democracy, New York: Association Press, 1940 (translated into Japanese, Korean, and Spanish); and Philosophy of Education, New York, 1951 (translated into Spanish).
Samuel Tenenbaum, William Heard Kilpatrick: Trailblazer in Education, New York: Harper, 1951, is the authorized biography based on taped interviews. Other biographical sketches are William Graebner, "William Heard Kilpatrick" in the Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Seven, 1961-1965, John A. Garraty, editor, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981, pp. 434-436; and Franklin Parker, "William Heard Kilpatrick, 1871-1965," School and Society, Vol. 93, No. 2264 (October 16, 1965), pp. 368-371. Insights about Kilpatrick's influence are in John L. Childs, American Pragmatism and Education, New York: Holt, 1956; Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education,1876-1957, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961; Ernst Papanek, "William Heard Kilpatrick's International Influence: Teacher of World's Teachers," Progressive Education, Vol.34, No.2 (March 1957), pp. 54-57 (entire issue has 10 evaluative articles honoring Kilpatrick on his eighty-fifth birthday); and "W. H. Kilpatrick: After 93 Years," Teachers College Record, Vol. 66, No.4 (January 1965), pp. 346-364, containing three articles. Topical selections from his writings are compared with others in Leslie R. Perry, editor, Bertrand Russell, A.S. Neill, Homer Lane, W.H. Kilpatrick: Four Progressive Educators, London: Collier-Macmillan, 1967.
Critics include Albert Lynd, Quackery in the Public Schools, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1953, pp. 212-253; and Augustin G. Rudd, Bending the Twig: The Revolution in Education and Its Effect on Our Children, New York: Sons of the American Revolution, 1957. A Catholic critic is Joseph McGlade, Progressive Educators and the Catholic Church, Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1953.
Thirteen contributors evaluated his influence in a special issue on "William Heard Kilpatrick, 1875-1965," Educational Theory, Vol. 16, No.1 (January 1966), 98 pp. Obituaries appeared in The New York Times, February 14, 1965, p. 92; New York Herald Tribune, February 15, 1965; and San Francisco Chronicle, February 15, 1965, p. 26. END OF MANUSCRIPT.
Send comments, corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net
Addendum: 24 of Franklin and Betty J. Parker’s book titles are listed in: http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P
For their writings in blog form, enter bfparker in google.com or in any other search engine.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
William Heard Kilpatrick (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), Progressive Educator and Progressive Philosopher of Educationl
William Heard Kilpatrick (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), Progressive Educator and Progressive Philosopher of Education, by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net
KILPATRICK, WILLIAM HEARD (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), educator and philosopher of progressive education, was born in White Plains, GA, son of James Hines Kilpatrick, a Southern Baptist minister, and Edna Perrin Heard, a teacher.
Kilpatrick had an orthodox upbringing and did well in school. In 1888 he entered the sophomore class at Mercer University (Baptist, Macon, GA), excelled in mathematics, and earned the B.A. degree in 1891. A Mercer trustee encouraged him to study mathematics and physics at Johns Hopkins University, 1891-92. There he was transported from a conservative rural atmosphere to a liberal community of inquiring scholars. Mercer granted him the M.A. degree in 1892 for his Johns Hopkins graduate study. Because of administrative changes, he did not get a hoped-for Mercer teaching job.
His first teaching post at Blakely Institute, a combined elementary and secondary public school in southwest Georgia, required that he attend a July 1892 summer session at Rock College Normal School, Athens, GA. There he learned of the educational theories of German educator Friedrich Froebel, kindergarten founder and learning-through-play advocate (Kilpatrick later wrote Froebel's Kindergarten Principles Critically Examined, New York: Macmillan, 1916); and of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who urged teaching by encouragement without harsh discipline. He was impressed by Education Professor Otis Ashmore, who told of the interest stimulated among his students at Chatham Academy, Savannah, GA, so that they studied without supervision in his absence. Ashmore's example, Kilpatrick later wrote, was the origin for his 1918 project method article. At an April 8, 1893, Chautauqua tent meeting at nearby Albany, GA, he heard visiting Cook County (IL) Normal School director and progressive educator Francis Wayland Parker. He then read Leila E. Patridge, The "Quincy Method" Illustrated (New York: E.L. Kellogg, 1885), describing Parker's successful progressive education methods used while he was Quincy, MA, school superintendent. He taught mathematics in the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades at Blakely and was co-principal, 1892-95. There he first experimented with nontraditional teaching and administration.
He again studied at Johns Hopkins University, summer 1895; then taught seventh grade at and was principal of Anderson Elementary School, Savannah, GA, 1896-97. He also studied at the University of Chicago under John Dewey, summer 1898, later noting that he was not initially impressed by Dewey. He was at Mercer University, 1897-1906, taught mathematics, was vice president, 1900, and acting president, 1904-06, but resigned when the trustees were concerned about his doubting the virgin birth. Summer sessions he attended while at Mercer University included Cornell University, summer 1900, under Charles de Garmo, disciple of Johann Friedrich Herbart, and a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored summer school for teachers, Knoxville, TN, where he heard psychologist G. Stanley Hall. He taught in Columbus, OH, in 1906-07 before enrolling as a student at Teachers College, Columbia University (hereafter TCCU), in 1907.
Dean James Earl Russell had merged progressivism and professionalism to make TCCU a leading U.S. teacher education center. Kilpatrick studied under Dewey, who had left Chicago for Columbia University in 1904, Paul Monroe, major U.S. educational historian, E. L. Thorndike, and others. He impressed Monroe in a class paper documenting the beginning of Dutch schools in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1638, not 1633, as previously believed. Teaching history of education part time, he began a dissertation on Benedict Spinoza, did not find enough material, returned to the origin of Dutch schools, and completed his dissertation in 1911 (Monroe helped get it published by the Department of the Interior as The Dutch Schools of New Netherland and Colonial New York. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1912).
In 1908 Kilpatrick wrote in his diary, "Professor Dewey has made a great difference in my thinking." Dewey wrote to Professor John A. MacVannel, Kilpatrick's major professor, "He is the best I ever had." Kilpatrick spent the rest of his professional career and long life at TCCU where he was a student, 1907-09; received the Ph.D. in 1912, was lecturer in education, 1909-11; assistant professor, 1911-15; associate professor, 1915-18; professor of philosophy of education, 1918-37; and thereafter emeritus professor.
Kilpatrick was catapulted to fame by his 1918 article, "The Project Method," Teachers College Record, 19 (September 1918), pp. 319-335. By "project" Kilpatrick meant any purposeful learning activity which the student wanted to do wholeheartedly. This active, interest-motivated, and life-like activity was seized upon by progressive teachers as a useful curriculum device. Course content was divided into units or projects students could complete alone or in small groups under teacher guidance. The project method, seen as a welcome antidote to traditional education, gave Dewey's child-centered education a practical teaching methodology and helped the shift from subject- and teacher-based education to child-centered education. It was popular in progressive elementary schools in the 1930s and was revived in the open classroom atmosphere of the late 1960s.
Kilpatrick commanded attention at TCCU by his courtly manner, erect stature, and lion-like mane of silvery white hair. He attracted students by using small group discussions. With notable skill he divided educational problems among small groups in a large class, each group discussed a specific problem, a group chair reported findings to the large class (numbering in the hundreds), followed by discussion and debate. His success in this procedure earned for him the title of the "Million Dollar Professor," which came from the headline of a New York Post article (March 6, 1937) by David Davidson, estimating that his 35,000 graduate students paid over a million dollars in tuition fees to TCCU before he retired in 1937.
He married Marie Beman Guyton (they had three children) on December 27, l898 (she died May 1907); he then married Margaret Manigault Pinckney on November 26, 1908 (she died November 1938); and finally married Marion Y. Ostrander on May 8, 1940 (she had been his secretary).
He taught summers at the University of Georgia, 1906, 1908, and 1909; the University of the South (Knoxville), 1907; was visiting professor, Northwestern University, 1937-38, and taught summer sessions there, 1939, 1940, 1941; taught summer sessions, Stanford University, 1938; University of Kentucky, 1942; University of North Carolina, 1942; and University of Minnesota, 1946. His trips abroad included school visits, lectures, and meetings with prominent educators in Italy, Switzerland, and France, May-June 1912; Europe and Asia, August 1926-June 1927; and round the world, August-December 1929.
He received honorary LL.D. degrees from Mercer University, 1926; Columbia University, 1929; and Bennington College, 1938 (which he helped found in 1923 and where he was president of the board of trustees, 1931-38); the honorary D.H.L. degree from the College of Jewish Studies, 1952; and the Brandeis Award for humanitarian service, 1953.
After retiring from TCCU, 1937, he was president of the New York Urban League, 1941-51; chairman of American Youth for World Youth, 1946-51; chairman of the Bureau of International Education, 1940-51; and on the board of directors of the League for Industrial Democracy.
Kilpatrick had severe critics but many more admirers and followers. His eighty-fifth birthday, November 20, 1956, celebrated at Horace Mann Auditorium, TCCU, resulted in a special March 1957 issue of Progressive Education, "William Heard Kilpatrick Eighty-Fifth Anniversary," containing 10 articles. Both heralded and criticized as John Dewey's chief educational interpreter, Kilpatrick was a leading advocate of progressive education. He died after a long illness at age 93 on February 13, 1965.
References
Kilpatrick gave to the Special Collections, Teachers College Library, Columbia University a handwritten diary (begun 1904) of over 40 volumes, scrapbooks, unpublished papers, and a two-volume typescript from taped interviews with his biographer, Samuel Tenenbaum. An oral history memoir is in the Special Collections, Butler Library, Columbia University Archives. His 14 books and 375 articles are listed in "Writings of William Heard Kilpatrick," Studies in Philosophy and Education, Vol. 1 (November 1961), pp. 220-230.
His more important books include Foundations of Method, New York: Macmillan, 1925, which expands on his project method (translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Russian); Education for a Changing Civilization, Macmillan, 1926 (translated into Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, German, and Italian); Education and the Social Crisis, A Proposed Program, New York: Liveright, 1932; The Educational Frontier, New York: Appleton-Century, 1933, containing his articles and articles by other leading progressives (he was book editor), and said to be the characteristic progressivist work of the 1930s; Group Education for a Democracy, New York: Association Press, 1940 (translated into Japanese, Korean, and Spanish); and Philosophy of Education, New York, 1951 (translated into Spanish).
Samuel Tenenbaum, William Heard Kilpatrick: Trailblazer in Education, New York: Harper, 1951, is the authorized biography based on taped interviews. Other biographical sketches are William Graebner, "William Heard Kilpatrick" in the Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Seven, 1961-1965, John A. Garraty, editor, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981, pp. 434-436; and Franklin Parker, "William Heard Kilpatrick, 1871-1965," School and Society, Vol. 93, No. 2264 (October 16, 1965), pp. 368-371. Insights about Kilpatrick's influence are in John L. Childs, American Pragmatism and Education, New York: Holt, 1956; Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education,1876-1957, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961; Ernst Papanek, "William Heard Kilpatrick's International Influence: Teacher of World's Teachers," Progressive Education, Vol.34, No.2 (March 1957), pp. 54-57 (entire issue has 10 evaluative articles honoring Kilpatrick on his eighty-fifth birthday); and "W. H. Kilpatrick: After 93 Years," Teachers College Record, Vol. 66, No.4 (January 1965), pp. 346-364, containing three articles. Topical selections from his writings are compared with others in Leslie R. Perry, editor, Bertrand Russell, A.S. Neill, Homer Lane, W.H. Kilpatrick: Four Progressive Educators, London: Collier-Macmillan, 1967.
Critics include Albert Lynd, Quackery in the Public Schools, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1953, pp. 212-253; and Augustin G. Rudd, Bending the Twig: The Revolution in Education and Its Effect on Our Children, New York: Sons of the American Revolution, 1957. A Catholic critic is Joseph McGlade, Progressive Educators and the Catholic Church, Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1953.
Thirteen contributors evaluated his influence in a special issue on "William Heard Kilpatrick, 1875-1965," Educational Theory, Vol. 16, No.1 (January 1966), 98 pp. Obituaries appeared in The New York Times, February 14, 1965, p. 92; New York Herald Tribune, February 15, 1965; and San Francisco Chronicle, February 15, 1965, p. 26. END OF MANUSCRIPT.
Send comments, corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net
Addendum: 24 of Franklin and Betty J. Parker’s book titles are listed in: http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P
For their writings in blog form, enter bfparker in google.com or in any other search engine.
KILPATRICK, WILLIAM HEARD (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), educator and philosopher of progressive education, was born in White Plains, GA, son of James Hines Kilpatrick, a Southern Baptist minister, and Edna Perrin Heard, a teacher.
Kilpatrick had an orthodox upbringing and did well in school. In 1888 he entered the sophomore class at Mercer University (Baptist, Macon, GA), excelled in mathematics, and earned the B.A. degree in 1891. A Mercer trustee encouraged him to study mathematics and physics at Johns Hopkins University, 1891-92. There he was transported from a conservative rural atmosphere to a liberal community of inquiring scholars. Mercer granted him the M.A. degree in 1892 for his Johns Hopkins graduate study. Because of administrative changes, he did not get a hoped-for Mercer teaching job.
His first teaching post at Blakely Institute, a combined elementary and secondary public school in southwest Georgia, required that he attend a July 1892 summer session at Rock College Normal School, Athens, GA. There he learned of the educational theories of German educator Friedrich Froebel, kindergarten founder and learning-through-play advocate (Kilpatrick later wrote Froebel's Kindergarten Principles Critically Examined, New York: Macmillan, 1916); and of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who urged teaching by encouragement without harsh discipline. He was impressed by Education Professor Otis Ashmore, who told of the interest stimulated among his students at Chatham Academy, Savannah, GA, so that they studied without supervision in his absence. Ashmore's example, Kilpatrick later wrote, was the origin for his 1918 project method article. At an April 8, 1893, Chautauqua tent meeting at nearby Albany, GA, he heard visiting Cook County (IL) Normal School director and progressive educator Francis Wayland Parker. He then read Leila E. Patridge, The "Quincy Method" Illustrated (New York: E.L. Kellogg, 1885), describing Parker's successful progressive education methods used while he was Quincy, MA, school superintendent. He taught mathematics in the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades at Blakely and was co-principal, 1892-95. There he first experimented with nontraditional teaching and administration.
He again studied at Johns Hopkins University, summer 1895; then taught seventh grade at and was principal of Anderson Elementary School, Savannah, GA, 1896-97. He also studied at the University of Chicago under John Dewey, summer 1898, later noting that he was not initially impressed by Dewey. He was at Mercer University, 1897-1906, taught mathematics, was vice president, 1900, and acting president, 1904-06, but resigned when the trustees were concerned about his doubting the virgin birth. Summer sessions he attended while at Mercer University included Cornell University, summer 1900, under Charles de Garmo, disciple of Johann Friedrich Herbart, and a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored summer school for teachers, Knoxville, TN, where he heard psychologist G. Stanley Hall. He taught in Columbus, OH, in 1906-07 before enrolling as a student at Teachers College, Columbia University (hereafter TCCU), in 1907.
Dean James Earl Russell had merged progressivism and professionalism to make TCCU a leading U.S. teacher education center. Kilpatrick studied under Dewey, who had left Chicago for Columbia University in 1904, Paul Monroe, major U.S. educational historian, E. L. Thorndike, and others. He impressed Monroe in a class paper documenting the beginning of Dutch schools in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1638, not 1633, as previously believed. Teaching history of education part time, he began a dissertation on Benedict Spinoza, did not find enough material, returned to the origin of Dutch schools, and completed his dissertation in 1911 (Monroe helped get it published by the Department of the Interior as The Dutch Schools of New Netherland and Colonial New York. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1912).
In 1908 Kilpatrick wrote in his diary, "Professor Dewey has made a great difference in my thinking." Dewey wrote to Professor John A. MacVannel, Kilpatrick's major professor, "He is the best I ever had." Kilpatrick spent the rest of his professional career and long life at TCCU where he was a student, 1907-09; received the Ph.D. in 1912, was lecturer in education, 1909-11; assistant professor, 1911-15; associate professor, 1915-18; professor of philosophy of education, 1918-37; and thereafter emeritus professor.
Kilpatrick was catapulted to fame by his 1918 article, "The Project Method," Teachers College Record, 19 (September 1918), pp. 319-335. By "project" Kilpatrick meant any purposeful learning activity which the student wanted to do wholeheartedly. This active, interest-motivated, and life-like activity was seized upon by progressive teachers as a useful curriculum device. Course content was divided into units or projects students could complete alone or in small groups under teacher guidance. The project method, seen as a welcome antidote to traditional education, gave Dewey's child-centered education a practical teaching methodology and helped the shift from subject- and teacher-based education to child-centered education. It was popular in progressive elementary schools in the 1930s and was revived in the open classroom atmosphere of the late 1960s.
Kilpatrick commanded attention at TCCU by his courtly manner, erect stature, and lion-like mane of silvery white hair. He attracted students by using small group discussions. With notable skill he divided educational problems among small groups in a large class, each group discussed a specific problem, a group chair reported findings to the large class (numbering in the hundreds), followed by discussion and debate. His success in this procedure earned for him the title of the "Million Dollar Professor," which came from the headline of a New York Post article (March 6, 1937) by David Davidson, estimating that his 35,000 graduate students paid over a million dollars in tuition fees to TCCU before he retired in 1937.
He married Marie Beman Guyton (they had three children) on December 27, l898 (she died May 1907); he then married Margaret Manigault Pinckney on November 26, 1908 (she died November 1938); and finally married Marion Y. Ostrander on May 8, 1940 (she had been his secretary).
He taught summers at the University of Georgia, 1906, 1908, and 1909; the University of the South (Knoxville), 1907; was visiting professor, Northwestern University, 1937-38, and taught summer sessions there, 1939, 1940, 1941; taught summer sessions, Stanford University, 1938; University of Kentucky, 1942; University of North Carolina, 1942; and University of Minnesota, 1946. His trips abroad included school visits, lectures, and meetings with prominent educators in Italy, Switzerland, and France, May-June 1912; Europe and Asia, August 1926-June 1927; and round the world, August-December 1929.
He received honorary LL.D. degrees from Mercer University, 1926; Columbia University, 1929; and Bennington College, 1938 (which he helped found in 1923 and where he was president of the board of trustees, 1931-38); the honorary D.H.L. degree from the College of Jewish Studies, 1952; and the Brandeis Award for humanitarian service, 1953.
After retiring from TCCU, 1937, he was president of the New York Urban League, 1941-51; chairman of American Youth for World Youth, 1946-51; chairman of the Bureau of International Education, 1940-51; and on the board of directors of the League for Industrial Democracy.
Kilpatrick had severe critics but many more admirers and followers. His eighty-fifth birthday, November 20, 1956, celebrated at Horace Mann Auditorium, TCCU, resulted in a special March 1957 issue of Progressive Education, "William Heard Kilpatrick Eighty-Fifth Anniversary," containing 10 articles. Both heralded and criticized as John Dewey's chief educational interpreter, Kilpatrick was a leading advocate of progressive education. He died after a long illness at age 93 on February 13, 1965.
References
Kilpatrick gave to the Special Collections, Teachers College Library, Columbia University a handwritten diary (begun 1904) of over 40 volumes, scrapbooks, unpublished papers, and a two-volume typescript from taped interviews with his biographer, Samuel Tenenbaum. An oral history memoir is in the Special Collections, Butler Library, Columbia University Archives. His 14 books and 375 articles are listed in "Writings of William Heard Kilpatrick," Studies in Philosophy and Education, Vol. 1 (November 1961), pp. 220-230.
His more important books include Foundations of Method, New York: Macmillan, 1925, which expands on his project method (translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Russian); Education for a Changing Civilization, Macmillan, 1926 (translated into Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, German, and Italian); Education and the Social Crisis, A Proposed Program, New York: Liveright, 1932; The Educational Frontier, New York: Appleton-Century, 1933, containing his articles and articles by other leading progressives (he was book editor), and said to be the characteristic progressivist work of the 1930s; Group Education for a Democracy, New York: Association Press, 1940 (translated into Japanese, Korean, and Spanish); and Philosophy of Education, New York, 1951 (translated into Spanish).
Samuel Tenenbaum, William Heard Kilpatrick: Trailblazer in Education, New York: Harper, 1951, is the authorized biography based on taped interviews. Other biographical sketches are William Graebner, "William Heard Kilpatrick" in the Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Seven, 1961-1965, John A. Garraty, editor, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981, pp. 434-436; and Franklin Parker, "William Heard Kilpatrick, 1871-1965," School and Society, Vol. 93, No. 2264 (October 16, 1965), pp. 368-371. Insights about Kilpatrick's influence are in John L. Childs, American Pragmatism and Education, New York: Holt, 1956; Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education,1876-1957, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961; Ernst Papanek, "William Heard Kilpatrick's International Influence: Teacher of World's Teachers," Progressive Education, Vol.34, No.2 (March 1957), pp. 54-57 (entire issue has 10 evaluative articles honoring Kilpatrick on his eighty-fifth birthday); and "W. H. Kilpatrick: After 93 Years," Teachers College Record, Vol. 66, No.4 (January 1965), pp. 346-364, containing three articles. Topical selections from his writings are compared with others in Leslie R. Perry, editor, Bertrand Russell, A.S. Neill, Homer Lane, W.H. Kilpatrick: Four Progressive Educators, London: Collier-Macmillan, 1967.
Critics include Albert Lynd, Quackery in the Public Schools, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1953, pp. 212-253; and Augustin G. Rudd, Bending the Twig: The Revolution in Education and Its Effect on Our Children, New York: Sons of the American Revolution, 1957. A Catholic critic is Joseph McGlade, Progressive Educators and the Catholic Church, Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1953.
Thirteen contributors evaluated his influence in a special issue on "William Heard Kilpatrick, 1875-1965," Educational Theory, Vol. 16, No.1 (January 1966), 98 pp. Obituaries appeared in The New York Times, February 14, 1965, p. 92; New York Herald Tribune, February 15, 1965; and San Francisco Chronicle, February 15, 1965, p. 26. END OF MANUSCRIPT.
Send comments, corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net
Addendum: 24 of Franklin and Betty J. Parker’s book titles are listed in: http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P
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Gen. Robert E. Lee (1807-70) and Philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869)
General Robert E. Lee (1807-70) and Philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869) at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, July 23-August 30, 1869.
By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, 63 Heritage Loop, Crossville, TN 38571-8270. Email bfparker@frontiernet.net
The hot spring health spas of Virginia were the first gathering places of southern and northern elites after the Civil War. It was at the Greenbrier Hotel, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, the most popular of the hot spring spas, that Robert E. Lee and George Peabody met by chance for a few weeks during July 23-August 30, 1869. For each this meeting was a symbolic turn from Civil War bitterness toward reconciliation and the lifting power of education.
Lee was then president of Washington College, Lexington, Virginia (1865-70, renamed Washington and Lee University from 1871). Peabody had just (June 29, 1869) doubled to $2 million his Peabody Education Fund, begun February 7, 1867, to advance public education in the South.
Historical circumstances had made both Lee and Peabody famous in their time, Lee's fame more lasting; Peabody's, strangely, soon forgotten. Yet when they met in 1869 Peabody was arguably better known in the English speaking world and more widely appreciated.
For Lee, age 62, hero of the lost Confederate cause, it was next to the last summer of life. For Peabody, age 74, best known philanthropist of his time, it was the very last summer of life. They were the center of attention that summer of 1869 at "The Old White." They ate together in the public dining room, walked arm in arm to their nearby bungalows, were applauded by visitors, and were photographed together and with others of prominence.
Robert E. Lee's Father
Born in Stratford, Westmoreland County, Virginia, Robert Edward Lee was the son of Revolutionary War hero Henry Lee (1756-1818), popularly known as "Light Horse Harry." Henry Lee was a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress (1785-88), member of the Virginia Convention for the Continental Congress (1788), served in Virginia's General Assembly (1789-91), was Virginia Governor (1792-95), was appointed by George Washington to command troops to suppress the "Whiskey Insurrection" in Western Pennsylvania (1794), served in the U. S. Sixth Congress (1799-1801), and last served in the War of 1812.
Despite this impressive record (Congress voted him a gold medal for his American Revolutionary War exploits) Henry Lee was a less than satisfactory husband, a poor family breadwinner, an absentee father to his five children, was often hounded by creditors, and was several times imprisoned for debt. Robert E. Lee was age six when he last saw his father, who left to regain his health in the West Indies. Young Lee was age eleven when his father died. Robert E. Lee's biographer, Emory M. Thomas wrote: "All his life, Robert Lee knew his father only at a great distance."
Robert E. Lee's Career
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Robert E. Lee attended private schools in Alexandria, Virginia. At age 18, with family finances prohibiting attending a private college, Robert E. Lee, bent on a military career, applied for admission to the tuition free U. S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. His family and friends sent petitions and letters of recommendation to Secretary of War John C. Calhoun (1782-1850). In the summer of 1825 R. E. Lee entered West Point as one of 107 new cadets.
Forty-seven of that entering class graduated, Lee among them. He was an exemplary cadet, without a single demerit, held every cadet post of honor, and graduated second in his class of 1829. He was assigned to the engineer corps where he soon won a high reputation. On June 30, 1831, two years after graduating, he married Mary Randolph Custis, daughter of a grandson of Mrs. George Washington (Martha Washington, 1731-1802).
Distinguishing himself as chief engineer in river drainage and fort-building projects, he served in the Mexican War, where General Winfield Scott (1786-1866), valuing his military and engineering skills, constantly consulted him.
Lee was superintendent of West Point (1852-55). He was the United States military officer ordered to put down the John Brown (1800-59) insurrection at Harper's Ferry federal arsenal, Virginia, October 16, 1859. Abolitionist Brown's fanatical attempt to steal federal weapons in order to arm slaves for an insurrection against the South helped precipitate the bitter four-year Civil War.
Faced with the "irrepressible conflict," General Winfield Scott reportedly told President Abraham Lincoln that Lee was worth 50,000 men. Lee was offered command of Federal forces, April 18, 1861, but declined. He told Francis Preston Blair (1791-1876), who approached him on behalf of President Lincoln: "...though opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States." Loyal to Virginia, Lee resigned from the United States Army, April 20, 1861.
In Richmond Virginia, at the request of the Virginia Convention, he was placed in command of the Virginia forces, April 23, 1861. Lee's organizing ability, grasp of military strategy, and his integrity held out for four bitter Civil War years against overwhelming Union strength in numbers, manpower, and economic resources. Faced by inevitable crushing defeat Lee surrendered to General U. S. Grant, Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, April 9, 1865.
He told his defeated troops: "...You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that our merciful God extend to you his blessing and protection."
With the Confederate cause lost, Lee sought obscurity and declined to lend his name to commercial ventures. When first invited to the presidency of small, obscure and struggling Washington College, Lexington, Virginia (August 1865), Lee hesitated. He wrote the trustees that he was "an object of censure" to the North, that his presence might "cause injury" to the college.
Knowing that Lee's name and fame would attract students, the trustees persisted. Lee accepted. His biographer Emory M. Thomas wrote that Lee quickly "established himself as a presence in Lexington," and that in the five years of life left to him (1865-1870) became "the savior of Washington College."
Greenbrier Hotel, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
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The first inn at what is now the Greenbrier Hotel, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, was built in 1780, long before West Virginia became a state in 1863. It was a favorite resort for southern elites who gathered there to meet relatives and friends, to rest and recuperate, and to drink and bathe in its healthful mineral springs. Lee, with heart trouble, needing rest, was an occasional health spa visitor, particularly at the Greenbrier.
At the Greenbrier the summer of 1868, Lee heard that some young northern visitors were receiving a frosty reception. He asked the young southern women who surrounded him if one of them would go with him to greet and welcome the young northern guests.
The young lady accompanying him, Christina Bond, asked, "General Lee, did you never feel resentment towards the North?" She recorded his quiet reply, "I believe I may say, looking into my own heart, and speaking as in the presence of my God, that I have never known one moment of bitterness or resentment." The next summer of 1869 at the Greenbrier he met George Peabody for the first and only time.
Peabody's Career George Peabody was third of eight children born to a poor family in Danvers (renamed Peabody, April 13, 1868), 19 miles from Boston, Massachusetts. After four years in a district school (1803-07) and four years apprenticed in a general store (1807-10), the 16-year-old in 1811 worked in his oldest brother's clothing store in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
His father's death that year (May 13, 1811) left the family in debt, their Danvers home mortgaged, with the mother and five younger siblings forced to live with relatives. The Great Fire in Newburyport (May 31, 1811) occurred eleven days after his father's death. The fire, coming as it did during an economic depression in New England, led many to leave that town and migrate to the South.
An improvident paternal uncle whose Newburyport store had burned in the fire encouraged his 16-year-old nephew, George Peabody, to open with him a drygoods store in Georgetown, District of Columbia. Needing credit, backed by Newburyport merchant Prescott Spaulding's (1781-1864) recommendation, Peabody secured a $2,000 consignment of goods, basis of his first commercial venture in the Georgetown drygoods store (1812).
His uncle soon left for other enterprises. Young Peabody operated the store and was also a pack peddler selling goods to homes and stores in the D. C. area. With Washington, D. C., under siege by the British he volunteered and served briefly in the War of 1812.
Fellow soldier and older experienced merchant Elisha Riggs, Sr. (1779-1853), took the 19-year-old Peabody as traveling junior partner in Riggs, Peabody & Co. (1814-29), Georgetown, D.C. The firm, which imported clothing and other merchandise for sale to U. S. wholesalers, moved in 1815 to Baltimore and by 1822 had Philadelphia and New York City warehouses.
Peabody early took on the support of his family. He sent clothes and money to his mother and siblings, and by 1816, at age 21, he paid off the family debts and restored his mother and siblings to their Danvers home. Handling the Peabody home deed, Newburyport, Massachusetts, lawyer Ebon Mosely wrote George Peabody (December 16, 1816): "I cannot but be pleased with the filial affection which seems to evince you to preserve the estate for a Parent."
Peabody paid for the education at Bradford Academy (now Bradford College), Bradford, Massachusetts, of five younger relatives. He bought a house in West Bradford for his relatives studying at the academy, where his mother also lived for several years.
He later paid for the complete education of nephew Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99), first U. S. paleontologist at Yale University; nephew George Peabody Russell (1835-1909), Harvard-trained lawyer, niece Julia Adelaide (née Peabody) Chandler (b. 1835), and others.
Deprived, as I was...
Peabody's May 18, 1831, letter to a nephew named after him, George Peabody (1815-32), son of his oldest brother David Peabody (1790-1841), hinted at his motive for educating his relatives and for his later philanthropies. Particularly fond of this nephew, Peabody paid for his schooling at Bradford Academy and received regular reports of his nephew's progress. When this nephew asked his uncle for financial help to attend Yale College, Peabody replied in a poignant letter.
Peabody wrote his nephew: (his underlining): "Deprived, as I was, of the opportunity of obtaining anything more than the most common education, I am well qualified to estimate its value by the disadvantages I labour under in the society [in] which my business and situation in life frequently throws me, and willingly would I now give twenty times the expense attending a good education could I now possess it, but it is now too late for me to learn and I can only do to those who come under my care, as I could have wished circumstances had permitted others to have done by me." Sadly, this favorite nephew died at age 17 on September 24, 1832, in Boston of scarlet fever, his potential unfulfilled.
Selling Maryland's Bonds Abroad
As purchasing partner in the United States and abroad for Riggs, Peabody & Co. (renamed Peabody, Riggs & Co., 1829-48), Peabody made four buying trips to Europe during 1827-37.
In the mid-1830s several states began internal improvement of roads, canals, and railroads requiring European investment capital through state bonds sold abroad. In 1836 the Maryland legislature voted to finance the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. On his fifth trip abroad, February 1837, Peabody represented both his firm and was also appointed one of three agents to sell abroad Maryland's $8 million bond issue.
In the financial Panic of 1837 the two other agents returned home without success. Peabody remained in London the rest of his life (1837-69), 32 years, except for three visits to the United States. Nine U. S. states in financial difficulty, including Maryland, stopped interest payments on their bonds sold abroad. Peabody faced a depressed market, with British and European investors angry at nonpayment of interest on their U. S. state bonds.
Peabody bombarded Maryland officials with letters urging that interest payments on Maryland bonds be resumed, and retroactively. His letters were published in U. S. newspapers. Abroad, he also publicly assured foreign investors that interest nonpayment was temporary and that repayment would be retroactive. He finally sold his part of the Maryland bonds to London's Baring Brothers. The Panic of 1837 eased. The nine defaulting states resumed their bond interest payments. Peabody's faith that they would do so was justified and appreciated. His integrity became known to an ever-wider circle.
Some minor fame came to Peabody when the Maryland Legislature (1847-48), realizing what he had done, voted him unanimous thanks for upholding its credit abroad and for declining the $60,000 commission due him.
He had not wanted to burden the state treasury during its financial difficulty. In transmitting these resolutions of thanks, Maryland Governor Philip Francis Thomas (1810-90) wrote Peabody, "To you, sir...the thanks of the State were eminently due."
London-Based Banker
In London, Peabody gradually reduced his trade in drygoods and commodities. Under the firm name of George Peabody & Co. (1838-64) he made the transition from merchant to international banker. He sold U. S. state bonds to finance roads, canals, and railroads; helped sell the second Mexican War bonds; bought, sold, and shipped European iron and later steel rails for U. S. western railroads; and helped finance the Atlantic Cable Co.
Asked in an interview, August 22, 1869, how and when he made most of his money, the London-based securities broker and international banker said, "I made pretty much of it in 20 years from 1844 to 1864. Everything I touched within that time seemed to turn to gold. I bought largely of United States securities when their value was low and they advanced greatly."
Morgan Partnership
Often ill and urged by business friends to take a partner, Peabody on October 1, 1854, at age 59, took as partner Boston merchant Junius Spencer Morgan (1813-90), whose 19-year-old son John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) began his banking career as New York City agent for George Peabody & Co., London On retirement, October 1, 1864, unmarried, without a son, and knowing he would no longer control his firm, Peabody asked that his name be withdrawn.
George Peabody & Co. (1838-64) continued in London as J. S. Morgan & Co. (1864-1909), Morgan Grenfell & Co. (1910-18), Morgan Grenfell & Co., Ltd. (1918-89), and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell (since 1989), a German-owned international banking firm.
Peabody was thus the root of the J. P. Morgan international banking firm. He spent the last five years of his life (1864-69) looking after his philanthropic institutions, begun in 1852 with the motto: "Education: a debt due from present to future generations."
Philanthropist
Peabody early told intimates and said publicly in 1850 that he would found a useful educational institution in every town and city where he had lived and worked. His 1827 will left $4,000 for charity. His 1832 will left $27,000 for educational philanthropy out of a $135,000 estate.
Founded Seven Libraries
Ultimately his philanthropic gifts of some $10 million included seven Peabody institute libraries, with lecture halls and lecture funds. These were, like the lyceums and the later chautauquas, the adult education centers of their time.
Later, Andrew Carnegie's (1835-1919) libraries and other funds, John D. Rockefeller's (1839-1937) funds and foundations, Henry Ford's (1863-1947) funds, and those of others far surpassed Peabody's philanthropy. But it was Peabody's gifts which first initiated, set policies, patterns, and inspired the later vast educational foundation movement.
The seven Peabody Institute Libraries are in: Peabody, Danvers, Newburyport, and Georgetown (all in Massachusetts); and in Baltimore, where the Peabody Institute of Baltimore (from 1857, total gift $1.4 million) consisted of a unique reference library whose books from European estates Peabody, through agents, bought and shipped to Baltimore. The Library of Congress early borrowed from its rare book collection.
The Peabody Institute of Baltimore also had an art gallery, lecture hall and lecture fund, a Conservatory of Music, and gave annual prizes to Baltimore's best public school students. In 1982 the Baltimore Reference Library and the Peabody Conservatory of Music became part of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Other Peabody libraries are in 6-Thetford, Vermont, where he visited his maternal grandparents at age 15, and in 7-Georgetown, D.C.
Three Museums of Science
He endowed the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University (anthropology); the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University (paleontology), both 1866; and what is now the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (1867), containing maritime history and Essex County historical documents, including most of George Peabody's letters and papers.
Other Gifts
He gave the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of Mechanic Arts (Baltimore) $1,000 for a chemistry laboratory and school (1851); Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, $25,000 for a mathematics professorship (1866); Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, $25,000, for a mathematics and civil engineering professorship (November 1866); and former general, then President Robert E. Lee's Washington College (renamed Washington and Lee University, 1871), Lexington, Virginia, $60,000 for a mathematics professorship (September 1869).
He gave $20,000 publication funds each to the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore (November 5, 1866), and the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston (January 1, 1867). He gave to the United States Sanitary Commission to aid Civil War orphans, widows, and disabled veterans $10,000 (1864). To the Vatican charitable San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy, he gave $19,300 (April 5, 1867). He built a Memorial Congregational Church in his mother's memory in her hometown, Georgetown, Massachusetts, $70,000 (1866).
For patriotic causes he gave to the Lexington Monument in what is now Peabody, Massachusetts, $300 (1835); the Bunker Hill Memorial, Boston, Massachusetts, $500 (June 3, 1845); and the Washington Monument, Washington, D. C., $1,000 (July 4, 1854).
Peabody Education Fund
His most influential U. .S. gift was the $2 million Peabody Education Fund (PEF, 1867-1914) to promote public schools in the eleven former Confederate states plus West Virginia, added because of its poverty. For 47 years the PEF helped promote public schools in the devastated post-Civil War South, focusing on public elementary and secondary schools, then on teacher training institutes and normal colleges, and finally on rural public schools.
Without precedent, the PEF was the first multimillion dollar U.S. educational foundation. Historians have cited its example and policies as the model forerunner of all subsequent significant United States educational funds and foundations.
Famous in his time, largely forgotten since, even underrated by most historians, George Peabody was in fact the founder of modern American philanthropy.
Many of the over 50 distinguished PEF trustees (during 1867-1914) who held high offices in the U. S. were also trustees of other later, larger, and richer funds and foundations. They thus helped spread the PEF's influence far and wide.
The common goal of these late nineteenth century, early twentieth century funds and foundations was to use private foundation wealth as levers to help solve education, health, and economic welfare problems in the U. S. South, elsewhere in the U. S., and worldwide.
High Offices Held by PEF Trustees
Twelve of the over 50 PEF trustees were state legislators, two were U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justices, six were U.S. ambassadors, seven U.S. House of Representatives members, two U. S. generals, one U. S. Navy admiral, one U. S. Surgeon-General, three Confederate generals, seven U.S. Senators, three Confederate Congressmen, two church bishops, six U. S. cabinet officers, three U.S. presidents (U.S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Grover Cleveland), or eight U.S. presidents if Peabody Normal College and its predecessor institutions are included, and three financiers.
The three financiers who were PEF trustees included J. P. Morgan, himself an art collector and philanthropist of note; Anthony Joseph Drexel (1826-93), inspired as PEF trustee to found Drexel University, Philadelphia; and Paul Tulane (1801-87), inspired as PEF trustee to found Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Permitted to disband when their mission was accomplished, the PEF trustees gave (1914): $474,000 to fourteen state university colleges of education in the South; $90,000 to Winthrop Normal College, South Carolina; and funds to the Southern Education Fund, Atlanta, still aiding African-American education. The bulk of the PEF, $1.5 million (required matching funds made it $3 million), went to George Peabody College for Teachers (1914-79), Nashville, sited next to Vanderbilt University, which still thrives as Peabody College of Vanderbilt University (hereafter PCofVU, since 1979).
Peabody College of Vanderbilt University
Traced genealogically in Nashville for some 220 years, Davidson Academy (1785-1806) was chartered by North Carolina eleven years before Tennessee's statehood; rechartered as Cumberland College (1806-26); rechartered as the University of Nashville (1826-75); rechartered as Peabody Normal College (1875-1909, created and supported by the PEF); rechartered as George Peabody College for Teachers (1914-79), which continues as PCofVU (from 1979).
Faced with greater class and race divisions and with greater financial difficulties than counterpart colleges in other U.S. sections, what is now Peabody College of Vanderbilt University rose phoenix-like again and again to produce educational leaders for the South, the nation, and the world.
Peabody Homes of London
Wanting to do something for the working poor of London, Peabody followed social reformer Lord Shaftesbury's (1801-85) suggestion--that low-cost housing was the London poor's greatest need. Peabody gave a total of $2.5 million (from 1862) to subsidize low rent model housing in London.
Some 34,500 low income Londoners (March 31, 1999) lived in 14,000 Peabody apartments on 83 estates in 26 of London's boroughs. The Peabody Trust, which built and administers the Peabody Homes of London, valued at some $1.53 billion, is Peabody's most successful philanthropy (and least known by Americans).
Last U.S. Visit
Long ill, sensing his end was near, George Peabody made his last four-month U. S. visit, June 8 to September 29, 1869, to see family and friends and to add gifts to his U. S. institutes. Greatly weakened, he was met in New York City by intimates who also sensed this as his last U.S. visit.
The New York Times, June 9, 1869, reported his arrival "in advanced age and declining health...." "Wherever he goes," the article read, "he is worried by begging letters from individuals expecting him to get them out of some scrape... Now that he is in America he should be left to the quiet and repose he so greatly needs."
He went to Boston (June 10, 1869), then rested in Salem, Massachusetts, at nephew George Peabody Russell's (1835-1909) home.
On July 6, 1869, his nephew wrote to his uncle's intimate business friend William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888), who was at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia: "...Mr. Peabody...is weaker than when he arrived.... He has...decided to go to the White Sulphur Springs...[and asks you to] arrange accommodations for himself, and servant, for Mrs. Russell and myself."
In mid-June 1869 Peabody quietly visited the Boston Peace Jubilee and Music Festival and listened to the chorus. At intermission, Boston Mayor Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff (1810-74) announced Peabody's presence, which brought "a perfect storm of applause."
In a Sunday, June 20, sermon closing the Boston Peace Jubilee, the Reverend William Rounseville Alger (1822-1905) mentioned that George Peabody had done more to keep the peace between Britain and America than a hundred demagogues to destroy it.
On June 29, 1869, in more than doubling his fund for southern education, he wrote his trustees: "I now give you additional bonds [worth] $1,384,000..... I do this [hoping] that with God's blessing...it may...prove a permanent and lasting boon, not only to the Southern States, but to the whole of our dear country...." He added $50,000 to his first Peabody Institute Library (Peabody, Massachusetts, total gift $217,600). At the July 14, 1869, dedication of the Peabody Institute Library, Danvers, Massachusetts (to which he gave a total of $100,000), he said: "I can never expect to address you again collectively.... I hope that this institution will be...a source of pleasure and profit."
At a July 16, 1869, reception, Peabody Institute Library, Peabody, Massachusetts, his 30 guests who arrived by special train from Boston included former Massachusetts Governor Clifford Claflin (1818-1905), Boston Mayor Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff, U.S. Senator Charles Sumner (1811-74), and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94). Poet Holmes read aloud a poem titled "George Peabody" written specially for the occasion.
Two days later (July 18, 1869) Holmes described Peabody in a letter to U.S. Minister to Britain John Lothrop Motley (1814-77) as "the Dives who is going to Abraham's bosom and I fear before a great while...." On July 22, 1869, longtime friend Ohio Episcopal Bishop Charles Pettit McIlvaine (1799-1873) wrote to Peabody's philanthropic advisor Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-94): "The White Sulphur Springs will, I hope, be beneficial to our excellent friend; but it can be only a very superficial good. [His] cough is terrible, and I have no expectation of his living a year...."
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, July 23-Aug. 30, 1869
This was the background when Peabody arrived by special train at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, July 23, 1869. Present was Tennessee Superintendent of Public Instruction and later U.S. Commissioner of Education John Eaton, Jr. (1829-1906).
John Easton wrote in his annual report: "Mr. Peabody shares with ex-Governor Wise the uppermost cottage in Baltimore Row, and sits at the same table with General Lee, Mr. Corcoran, Mr. Taggart, and others.... Being quite infirm, he has been seldom able to come to parlor or dining room, though he has received many ladies and gentlemen at the cottage.... His manners are singularly affable and pleasing, and his countenance one of the most benevolent we have ever seen."
Peabody's confinement to his cottage prompted a meeting on July 27, 1869, at which former Virginia Governor Henry Alexander Wise (1806-76) drew up resolutions of praise read in Peabody's presence the next day (July 28, 1869) in the "Old White" hotel parlor. The resolutions read in part: "On behalf of the southern people we tender thanks to Mr. Peabody for his aid to the cause of education...and hail him 'benefactor.'"
Peabody, seated, replied, "If I had strength, I would speak more on the heroism of the Southern people. Your kind remarks about the Education Fund sound sweet to my ears. My heart is interwoven with its success."
Peabody Ball
Merrymakers at the "Old White" held a Peabody Ball on August 11, 1869. Too ill to attend, Peabody heard the gaiety from his cottage.
Historian Perceval Reniers wrote of this Peabody Ball: "The affair that did most to revive [the Southerners'] esteem was the Peabody Ball...given to honor...Mr. George Peabody.... Everything was right for the Peabody Ball. Everybody was ready for just such a climax, the background was a perfect build-up. Mr. Peabody appeared at just the right time and lived just long enough. A few months later it would not have been possible, for Mr. Peabody would be dead."
The PEF's first administrator Barnas Sears (1802-80), present at White Sulphur Springs that July 23-Aug. 30, 1869, recorded why Peabody's presence there was important to the PEF's work in promoting public education in the South. Sears wrote: "...both on account of his unparalleled goodness and of his illness among a loving and hospitable people [he received] tokens of love and respect from all, such as I have never before seen shown to any one. This visit...will, in my judgment, do more for us than a long tour in a state of good health...."
Famous Photos of George Peabody and Robert E. Lee
Peabody, Lee, and others were central figures in several remarkable photos taken at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, on August 12, 1869. In the main photograph the five individuals seated on cane-bottomed chairs were, left to right: Turkey's Minister to the U.S. Edouard Blacque Bey (1824-95); General Robert E. Lee, Peabody, William Wilson Corcoran, and Richmond, Virginia, judge and public education advocate James Lyons (1801-82).
Standing behind the five seated figures were seven former Civil War generals, their names in dispute until correctly identified in 1935 by Leonard T. Mackall of Savannah, Georgia (from left to right): James Conner (1829-83) of South Carolina, Martin W. Gary (1831-81) of South Carolina, Robert Doak Lilley (1836-86) of Virginia, P.G.T. Beauregard (1818-93) of Louisiana, Alexander Robert Lawton (1818-96) of Georgia, Henry Alexander Wise (1806-76) of Virginia, and Joseph L. Brent (b.1826) of Maryland.
There is also a photo of Peabody sitting alone and a photo of Lee, Peabody, and William Wilson Corcoran sitting together.
Peabody's Gifts to Lee
That August 1869 Peabody gave Lee a small private gift of $100 for Lee's Episcopal church in Lexington, Virginia, in need of repairs (William Wilson Corcoran also gave $100). Peabody also gave to Lee's Washington College Virginia state bonds he owned worth $35,000 when they were lost on the ship Arctic, a Collins Line steamer, sunk with the loss of 322 passengers on September 27, 1854, 20 miles off Cape Race, Newfoundland.
Peabody 's petition to the Virginia legislature to reimburse him for the lost bonds had been unsuccessful when he gave Lee's college the value of the bonds for a mathematics professorship. Eventually the value of the lost bonds and the accrued interest, $60,000 total, were paid by the State of Virginia to Washington and Lee University With wry humor Lee's biographer C.B. Flood described George Peabody's gift: "It was generosity with a touch of Yankee shrewdness: you Southerners go fight it out among yourselves. If General Lee can't get [this lost bond money] out of the Virginia legislature, nobody can."
Peabody left White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, August 30, 1869, in a special railroad car provided by longtime friend, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad President John Work Garrett (1820-84). Lee rode a short distance in the same car with Peabody. They parted, never to meet again.
Peabody recorded his last will (September 9, 1869) in New York City, had his tomb built at Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts (September 10, 1869), ordered a granite sarcophagus to mark his grave, and boarded the Scotia in New York City September 29, 1869. He landed at Queenstown, Ireland, October 8, 1869, and was rushed to rest at the London home of longtime business friend Sir Curtis Miranda Lampson (1806-85), where he died November 4, 1869.
Lee Sent His Photograph
On Sept. 25, 1869, at the request of Peabody Institute Librarian Fitch Poole (1803-73, Peabody, Massachusetts), Lee sent Poole a photograph of himself, adding that he would "feel honoured in its being placed among the 'friends' of Mr. Peabody, who can be numbered by the millions, yet all can appreciate the man who has [illumined] his age by his munificent charities during his life, and by his wise provisions for promoting the happiness of his fellow creatures."
Lee on Peabody's Death
Reading of Peabody's death in London (November 4, 1869), Robert E. Lee wrote (November 10, 1869) to Peabody's nephew George Peabody Russell, who had been with his uncle in White Sulphur Springs and there had met Lee: "The announcement of the death of your uncle, Mr. George Peabody, has been received with the deepest regret wherever his name and benevolence are known; and nowhere have his generous deeds--restricted to no country, section or sect--elicited more heartfelt admiration than at the South. He stands alone in history for the benevolent and judicious distribution of his great wealth, and his memory has become entwined in the affections of millions of his fellow-citizens in both hemispheres."
"I beg, in my own behalf," Lee continued, "and in behalf of the Trustees and Faculty of Washington College, Virginia, which was not forgotten by him in his act of generosity, to tender the tribute of our unfeigned sorrow at his death. ¶With great respect, Your obedient servant R.E. Lee."
Concern Over Lee's Attending Peabody's Funeral
Lee had been invited to attend Peabody's final funeral service and eulogy, South Congregational Church, Peabody, Massachusetts, followed by burial in Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts, February 8, 1870. But Peabody's intimates feared that Lee's attendance might evoke an ugly incident. After President Lincoln's assassination, Congressional radical Republicans, bent on revenge, crushed the defeated South with military rule. This anger was also strong among New England abolitionists.
Robert Charles Winthrop, Peabody's philanthropic advisor and president of the PEF trustees, who was to deliver Peabody's funeral eulogy February 8, 1870, feared that Lee's attendance might bring on a demonstration. On February 2, 1870, Winthrop wrote two private and confidential letters, the first to Baltimorean John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870): "There is apprehension here, that if Lee should come to the funeral, something unpleasant might occur, which would be as painful to us as to him. Would you contact friends to impart this to the General? Please do not mention that the suggestion came from me."
Winthrop also wrote to Corcoran: "I write to you in absolute confidence. Some friends of ours, whose motives cannot be mistaken, are very anxious that Genl. Lee should not come to the funeral next week. They have also asked me to suggest that. Still there is always apprehension that from an irresponsible crowd there might come some remarks which would be offensive to him and painful to us all. I am sure he would be the last person to involve himself or us, needlessly, in a doubtful position on such an occasion."
Winthrop continued to Corcoran: "The newspapers at first said that he was not coming. Now, there is an intimation that he is. I know of no one who could [more] effectively give the right direction to his views than yourself. Your relation to Mr. Peabody & to Mr. Lee would enable you to ascertain his purposes & shape his course wisely.... I know of no one else to rely on."
One of the two Washington College trustees who planned to attend Peabody's funeral had earlier written to Corcoran (January 26, 1870): "I first thought that General Lee should not go, but have now changed my mind. Some of us believe that if you advise the General to attend he would do so. Use your own discretion in this matter."
Lee Too Ill to Attend
Lee explained in a January 26, 1870, letter to William Wilson Corcoran: "I am sorry I cannot attend the funeral obsequies of Mr. Peabody. It would be some relief to witness the respect paid to his remains, and to participate in commemorating his virtues; but I am unable to undertake the journey. I have been sick all the winter, and am still under medical treatment. I particularly regret that I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you. Two trustees of Washington College will attend the funeral. I hope you can join them."
On the same day Winthrop wrote his letters (February 2, 1870), Lee wrote his daughter Mildred Childe Lee (1846-1904) that he was too ill to attend: "I am sorry that I could not attend Mr. Peabody's funeral, but I did not feel able to undertake the journey, especially at this season."
Corcoran too replied to Winthrop that Lee had no intention of coming. Corcoran could not imagine, he wrote, that so good and great a man as Lee would receive anything but a kind reception. Himself ill, Corcoran wrote to Lee his regret that he could not attend to pay his respects to "my valued old friend." Peabody's intimates were relieved at confirmation that Lee's illness would definitely keep him from the funeral.
Trans-Atlantic Funeral Overview
Lee, Corcoran, and much of the English-speaking reading public, awed by Peabody's unusual 96-day transatlantic funeral, awaited its final scene: Robert Charles Winthrop's eulogy and Peabody's final burial (both February 8, 1870). Peabody's funeral was unprecedented in length, pomp, and ceremony; was marked by cold stormy weather; involved the highest officials of England and the United States; was vastly publicized in the press of both countries; and was observed in person by many thousands of Britons and Americans.
The Peabody funeral included: 1-Westminster Abbey service (November 12, 1869) and temporary burial there for 30 days (November 12-December 11, 1869). When Peabody's will became known requiring burial in Salem, Massachusetts, 2-the British cabinet decided (November 10, 1869), at Queen Victoria's suggestion, to return his remains for burial in the U. S. on Her Majesty's Ship HMS Monarch, Britain's newest and largest warship, repainted for this grim occasion slate gray above the water line, with a specially built mortuary chapel.
Next came a 3-U. S. government decision (made between November 12-15, 1869) to send the United States corvette USS Plymouth from Marseilles, France, to accompany HMS Monarch to the United States. Then followed 4-transfer (December 11, 1869) of Peabody's remains from Westminster Abbey, London, on a special funeral train to Portsmouth, England, impressive ceremonies at the transfer of remains from Portsmouth dock to HMS Monarch, specially outfitted as a funeral vessel.
Next came the 5-transatlantic crossing of HMS Monarch and the USS Plymouth (December 21, 1869 to January 25, 1870) from Spithead near Portsmouth, past Ushant, France, to Madeira Island off Portugal, to Bermuda, and north to Portland, Maine, chosen by the British Admiralty because of its deeper harbor.
A covert rivalry had early erupted between 6-Bostonians and New Yorkers about which city could provide the more solemn ceremony as receiving port. Thinking themselves the center of northeast society and fashion, each was disappointed when the British Admiralty chose Portland, Maine, whose deeper harbor more safely accommodated HMS Monarch's large size.
A contemporary news account described the petty jealousy: "When the mighty men of Boston knew that England's..."Monarch" was bringing the body of the great philanthropist to his last resting place, they called a meeting and decided with what fitting honors and glories it would be received.... but, when the telegraph flashed the astounding news that little Portland was to be the port...all was changed....[Bostonians were sure] that the Portlanders...would blunder...."
On January 14, 1870, on President U. S Grant's approval, 7-U. S. Navy Secretary George Maxwell Robeson (1829-97) ordered Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1801-70), a PEF trustee, to command a U.S. naval flotilla to meet HMS Monarch and USS Plymouth in Portland harbor, Maine (January 25, 1870). HMS Monarch's captain then requested, on behalf of Queen Victoria, 8-that the coffin remain aboard the Monarch in Portland harbor for two days (January 27-28, 1870).as a final mark of respect. Thousands of visitors, drawn to the spectacle, viewed the coffin in the somberly decorated Monarch's mortuary chapel. Peabody's remains then 9-lay in state in Portland City Hall (January 29-February 1, 1870), viewed by thousands. 10-A special funeral train from Portland, Maine, bore the remains to Peabody, Massachusetts (February 1, 1870). 11-Lying in state of Peabody's remains took place at the Peabody Institute Library (February 1-8, 1870).
The final ceremony, the press announced to an awed public, was to be 12-Robert Charles Winthrop's funeral eulogy at the South Congregational Church, Peabody, Massachusetts, attended by New England governors, mayors, Queen Victoria's son Prince Arthur, and other notables (February 8, 1870). Final burial would then follow at 13-Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts.
Why Such Unprecedented Funeral Honors?
Daily reports on Peabody's sinking condition in London had appeared in the British press. After his death the London Daily News recorded (November 8, 1869): "We have received a large number of letters, urging that the honours of a public funeral are due to the late Mr. Peabody's memory." The Dean of Westminster Abbey, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-81), was in Naples, Italy, November 5, 1869, when he read of Peabody's death. Years later he recorded: "I was in Naples, and saw in the public papers that George Peabody had died. Being absent, considering that he was a foreigner, and at the same time, by reason of his benefactions to the City of London, entitled to a burial in Westminster Abbey, I telegraphed to express my wishes that his interment there should take place."
The Alabama Claims
Peabody died during tense, near warlike U. S.-British angers over two U. S. Civil War incidents, the Alabama Claims (1864-72) and the Trent Affair (September 8, 1861). CSS Alabama was a notorious British-built Confederate raider which sank 64 northern cargo ships during 1862-64.
Without a navy, with its southern ports blockaded by the North, Confederate agents slipped secretly to England, bought British-built ships, armed them as Confederate raiders, renamed them Alabama, Florida, Shenandoah, and others, which sank northern ships and cost northern lives and treasure.
Officially neutral in the U. S. Civil War, British officials were continually reminded of their breach of neutrality by U. S. Minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams (1807-86). Official U. S. demands for reparations for damages from British-built raiders (from1862) were resolved at a Geneva international tribunal (1871-72), requiring Britain to pay the United States $15.5 million indemnity.
At Peabody's death, November 4, 1869, this Alabama Claims controversy was unresolved and tense. Americans were angry; Britons were resentful. A desire to defuse angers over the Alabama Claims was one reason British officials first, and then United States officials to surpass them, outdid each other in unusual homage to Peabody's remains during his transatlantic funeral.
Trent Affair
There was also lingering resentment over the still rankling November 8, 1861 Trent Affair. On the stormy night of October 11, 1861, four Confederate emissaries, seeking aid and arms from Britain and France, evaded the Union blockade at Charleston, South Carolina, went by ship to Havana, Cuba, and there boarded the British mail ship Trent, bound for Southampton, England.
The Trent was illegally stopped in the Bahama Channel, West Indies (November 8, 1861) by USS San Jacinto's Captain Charles Wilkes (1798-1877). Confederates James Murray Mason (1798-1871, from Virginia), John Slidell (1793-1871, from Louisiana), and their male secretaries were forcibly removed and imprisoned in Boston harbor's Fort Warren Prison.
Anticipating war with the U. S., Britain sent 8,000 troops to Canada. But United States jingoism subsided. President Abraham Lincoln reportedly told his cabinet, "one war at a time," gentlemen, got the cabinet on December 26, 1861, to disavow the illegal seizure, and released the Confederate prisoners on January 1, 1862. But resentments lingered.
Besides softening near war U .S.-British tensions, another reason behind the Peabody funeral honors was British leaders' sincere appreciation for Peabody's gift of homes for London's working poor. Many marveled that an American would give that kind of gift in that large amount to a city and country not his own. Britons also valued Peabody's two decades of efforts to improve United States-British relations.
Prime Minister Gladstone
On November 9, 1869, in a major speech at the Lord Mayor's Day banquet, Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (1808-98) referred to British-U.S. difficulties and then mentioned Peabody's death: "You will know that I refer to the death of Mr. Peabody, a man whose splendid benefactions...taught us in this commercial age...the most noble and needful of all lessons--...how a man can be the master of his wealth instead of its slave [cheers]."
"And, my Lord Mayor," Gladstone continued, "most touching it is to know, as I have learnt, that while, perhaps, some might think he had been unhappy in dying in a foreign land, yet so were his affections divided between the land of his birth and the home of his early ancestors, that...his [wish] has been realized--that he might be buried in America, [and] that it might please God to ordain that he should die in England [cheers]. My Lord Mayor, with the country of Mr. Peabody we are not likely to quarrel [loud cheers]."
Prime Minister Gladstone's cabinet met at 2:00 P.M., November 10, 1869, and confirmed Queen Victoria's suggestion of a Royal Navy ship to return Peabody's remains. Peabody funeral researcher Allen Howard Welch wrote: "The Queen, in fact, was personally grieved, and it was her own request that a man-of-war be employed to return Peabody to his homeland."
In the handing over ceremony of Peabody's remains from U .S. Minister to Britain John Lothrop Motley to HMS Monarch's Captain John Edmund Commerell (1829-1901), December 11, 1869, Portsmouth, England, U. S. Minister Motley explained: "The President of the United States, when informed of the death of George Peabody, the great philanthropist, at once ordered an American ship to convey his remains to America. Simultaneously, the Queen appointed one of Her Majesty's ships to perform that office. This double honor from the heads of two great nations to a simple American citizen is, like his gift to the poor, unprecedented. The President yields cordially to the wish of the Queen."
Praise for the Peabody Homes of London, 1862
Peabody's housing gift for London's working poor was announced March 12, 1862, while the U. S. and Britain still raged over the September 1861 Trent Affair. Peabody's gift evoked surprise and admiration in the British press, a sampling of which follows.
London Times, March 26, 1862: "Mr. George Peabody has placed £150,000 in the hands of a committee to relieve the condition of the poor of London. It is seldom that good works are done on such a scale as this one by an American in a city where he is only a sojourner.... [He] gives while he lives to those who can make no return.... He does this in a country not his own, in a city he may leave any day for his native land. Such an act is rare...."
London Daily Telegraph, March 27, 1862: "The noble gift of Mr. Peabody actually takes away the public breath...and sends a thrill through the public heart.... A man gives his fortune during his lifetime for an object going back to a resolution he had held more than a quarter of a century...to elevate the poor. Party strife and national bickering have not changed this good American; wars and rumours of wars have not turned him...from his...purpose."
London Morning Herald, March 27, 1862: "One of the merchant princes of the world has just presented [London] with a gift for which thousands will bless his name.... Whilst his countrymen are warring...with each other, this generous American is working out...good-will among his adopted people." London Sun, March 27, 1862: " How can England ever go to war with a nation whose leading man among us thus sympathizes with and blesses her poor? Who of us will not set the deed of Mr. Peabody...against that of Captain Wilkes....?"
London Review, March 29, 1862: "From America of late has come war, desolation, and animosity. The close ties of...friendships that linked Englishmen and Americans...seemed dissolved.... In the midst of this comes Mr. Peabody's gift to discard prejudices on both sides of the Atlantic. We have had a desperate family quarrel, and almost come to blows; Mr. Peabody...by a well-timed act...awakens...better sentiments." Leeds Mercury, March 27, 1862: "An American citizen has now come forward to excite the wonder and admiration of the world."
When friend and sometime agent Horatio Gates Somerby (1805-72), a Vermont-born London resident genealogist, sent Peabody these London newspaper clippings, Peabody replied: "I had not the least conception that it would cause so much excitement over the country."
British Honors
British honors evoked by Peabody's gift to London included membership in the ancient guild of the Clothworkers' Company of London (July 2, 1862). He was granted the Freedom of the City of London (July 10, 1862), the first of only five American so honored; others being President U. S. Grant, June 15, 1877; President Theodore Roosevelt, May 3, 1910; General John J. Pershing, July 18, 1919; and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, June 1, 1945.
Peabody had been denied membership in London's Reform Club (1844) when Americans were disdained because nine U. S. states had stopped interest payments on their bonds sold abroad. When payment was resumed retroactively Peabody, who had publicly urged this course, was admitted to the Parthenon Club (1848), the City of London Club (1850), and the most prestigious Athenaeum Club (March 12, 1862). The Fishmongers' Company of London made Peabody an honorary member (April 18, 1866). When Oxford University granted him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree (June 26, 1867), undergraduates cheered, waved their caps, and beat the arms of their chairs with the flat of their hands. Jackson's Oxford Journal (June 29, 1867) recorded: "The lion of the day was beyond a doubt, Mr. Peabody."
Peabody's seated statue, sculptured and cast by Salem, Massachusetts-born William Wetmore Story (1819-95), paid for by public subscription, was unveiled July 23, 1869, on London's Threadneedle Street, near the Royal Exchange, by Queen Victoria's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. The only four statues of Americans in London include George Peabody (1869), Abraham Lincoln (1920), George Washington (1921), and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1948).
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria's advisors had informed Her Majesty that, when asked privately, Peabody had declined either a baronetcy or the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. To accept would be to lose his U. S. citizenship, which he felt he could not do.
Her Majesty's Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell (1792-1878) suggested instead a letter from the Queen and the gift of a miniature portrait of the Queen, such as was given to foreign ambassadors who signed a treaty with Britain.
The Queen's letter to Peabody, March 28, 1866, expressed thanks for his "noble act of more than princely munificence...to relieve the wants of her poor subjects residing in London. It is an act...wholly without parallel.... "The Queen...understands Mr. Peabody to feel himself debarred from accepting [other] distinctions." [She asks him instead] "to accept a miniature portrait of herself, which she will have painted for him, and which...can...be sent to him in America."
Peabody thanked the Queen by letter on April 3, 1866. He received Her Majesty's miniature portrait from British Ambassador Sir Frederick Bruce (1814-67) in Washington, D.C., March 1867. It was 14" long by 10" wide, had been especially painted for him by British artist F. A. C. Tilt, baked on enamel, and set in a sold gold frame, said to have cost $70,000. It was deposited in a specially built vault, with Peabody's other honors, in the Peabody Institute Library, Peabody, Massachusetts.
John Bright to the Queen on George Peabody
British statesman and Member of Parliament John Bright (1811-89), who had befriended Peabody from 1867 and had gone fishing with him on the Shannon River, Limerick, Ireland, dined with the Queen, December 30, 1868. Bright recorded in his diary the conversation: "Some remarks were made about Mr. Peabody: it arose from something about Ireland, and my having been there on a visit to him. [The Queen] remarked what a very rich man he must be, and how great his gifts."
[Bright recorded that Peabody] "told me how he valued the portrait [the Queen] had given him, that he made a sort of shrine for it, and that it was a thing of great interest in America. Peabody then "said to me, 'The Americans are as fond of your Queen as the English are.' To which she replied, 'Yes, the American people have also been kind to me.'."
Queen Victoria's Second Letter to Peabody
Leaving London suddenly on what he knew would be his last U. S. visit, Peabody was in Salem, Massachusetts, when he received Queen Victoria's second letter. She wrote (June 20, 1869): "The Queen is very sorry that Mr. Peabody's sudden departure has made it impossible for her to see him before he left England, and she is concerned to hear that he is gone in bad health."
The Queen continued: "She now writes him a line to express her hope that he may return to this country quite recovered, and that she may then have the opportunity, of which she has now been deprived, of seeing him and offering him her personal thanks for all he has done for the people."
Publishing the Queen's letter, the New York Times added: "Queen Victoria has paid our great countryman a delicate and graceful compliment. Mr. Peabody left England unexpectedly, his departure known only to a few friends. His feeble health became known to the Queen through London newspapers. With her goodness of heart which Americans never fail to appreciate she sent him a personal letter." On July 19, 1869, Peabody replied, assuring the Queen of his "heartfelt gratitude."
Queen Victoria's Last Contact
Learning of Peabody's hasty return to London (October 8, 1869), before she knew of his precarious condition, she asked her privy councilor Arthur Helps (1813-75) to invite Peabody to visit her at Windsor Castle. Helps wrote to Sir Curtis Lampson in whose London home Peabody rested (Oct. 30, 1869): "'Regarding Mr. Peabody, the Queen thinks the best way would be for her to ask him down to Windsor for one or two nights, where he could rest--and need not come to dinner, or any meals if he feels unequal to it; but where she could see him quietly at any time of the day most convenient to him." But it was too late. Largely unconscious his last days, Peabody died November 4, 1869.
U. S. Honors
Chief among Peabody's U. S. honors was the U. S. Congressional Resolution of Thanks and Gold Medal for his PEF, passed in the U.S. Senate (March 8, 1867), in the U. S. House (March 9, 1867), and signed by President Andrew Johnson (March 16, 1867), who welcomed Peabody at the White House (April 25, 1867). These, his Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard University (July 17, 1867), and his other honors received in the U. S. and England, are displayed in the Peabody Institute Library, Peabody, Massachusetts.
Winthrop's Eulogy, February 8, 1870
All was ready for the final act: Winthrop's eulogy of George Peabody, February 8, 1870, a bitterly cold day. Thousands poured into tiny Peabody, Massachusetts, by special morning trains which ran full from Boston. Large crowds were quiet and respectful. The 50 state troopers had little to do but give directions.
South Congregational Church filled quickly. Queen Victoria's son, Prince Arthur (1850-1942), in the seventh pew from the pulpit, held all eyes. His retinue, including British Minister to the U. S. Sir Edward Thornton, sat nearby.
Behind Prince Arthur sat HMS Monarch Captain John E. Commerell, USS Plymouth's Captain William H. Macomb, Admiral Farragut's staff, Massachusetts Governor William Claflin, Maine Governor Joshua L. Chamberlain, the mayors of eight New England cities, Harvard University President Charles William Eliot (1834-1926), and others.
On the first six rows sat Peabody's relatives, elderly citizens who knew him in youth, and the trustees of his institutes and funds. Anthems were sung. Scripture was read. Robert Charles Winthrop rose to give the eulogy.
Robert Charles Winthrop was the descendant of an early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a Harvard University graduate, trained in Daniel Webster's law office, member and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Peabody's philanthropic advisor, and the PEF board of trustees president.
Winthrop began: "What a career this has been whose final scene lies before us! Who can contemplate his rise from lowly beginnings to these final royal honors without admiration? His death, painless and peaceful, came after he completed his great dream and saw his old friends and loved ones."
Winthrop continued: "He had ambition and wanted to do grand things in a grand way. His public charity is too well known to bear repetition and I believe he also did much private good which remains unknown. The trusts he established, the institutes he founded, the buildings he raised stand before all eyes."
"I have authority for saying," Winthrop continued, "that he planned these for many years, for in private talks he told me all he planned and when I expressed my amazement at the magnitude of his purpose, he said to me with guileless simplicity: 'Why Mr. Winthrop, this is no new idea to me. From the earliest of my manhood, I have contemplated some such disposition of my property; and I have prayed my heavenly Father, day by day, that I might be enabled, before I died, to show my gratitude for the blessings which He has bestowed upon me by doing some great good to my fellow-men.'"
The words underlined above are engraved on Peabody's marker in Westminster Abbey, London, where his remains rested for 30 days, November 12-December 11, 1869. That marker and the above words on it were refurbished for the February 12, 1995, bicentennial ceremony of Peabody's birth held in London's Westminster Abbey.
Winthrop further said: "To measure his gifts in dollars and pounds or in the number of people served is inadequate. He did something more. The successful way he arranged the machinery of world-wide philanthropy compels attention. It is a lesson that cannot be lost to history. It has inspired and will continue to inspire others to do likewise. This was the greatness of his life."
"Now, all that is mortal of him," Winthrop said, "comes back, borne with honors that mark a conquering hero. The battle he fought was the greed within him. His conquest was the victory he achieved over the gaining, hoarding, saving instinct. Such is the conqueror we make ready to bury in the earth this day.
Winthrop continued: "And so was fulfilled for him a prophecy he heard once as the subject of a sermon, on which by some force of reflection lingered in his mind and which he more than once mentioned to me: 'And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear nor dark; but it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, or night: but it shall come to pass that at evening time it shall be light.'" Winthrop said that Peabody first heard this text, Zechariah 14: 6-7, in a sermon by the Reverend Dr. John Lothrop (1772-1820) of Brattle Street, Boston, date not known.
Winthrop concluded: "And so we bid thee farewell, noble friend. The village of thy birth weeps. The flower of Essex County stands at thy grave. Massachusetts mourns her son. Maine does honor to thee. New England and Old England join hands because of thee. The children of the South praise thy works. Chiefs of the Republic stand with royalty at thy bier. And so we bid thee farewell, friend of mankind."
Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Mass.
The New York Times described the final burial scene at Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts, on February 8, 1870: "There were about two hundred sleigh coaches in the procession. The route was shortened somewhat in consequence of the prevalence of the storm. On arriving at the Peabody tomb, there was no special service, the coffin being placed reverently therein, after which the procession returned to the Institute, and the great pageantry attending the obsequies of the great philanthropist was ended."
Harmony Grove Cemetery's 65 acres of avenues and walks, first laid out in 1840, had been a thick walnut grove when Peabody was a boy. He could see it from the attic of the house where he was born. On a knoll where he had once played he had chosen the family burial plot on Anemone Ave., lot number 51. There, where he had brought together the remains of his mother, father, sisters, and brothers, he was laid to rest. Ninety-six days of unprecedented funeral honors had ended. His works remain. Public memory of him has since grown dim, except at his institutes and among those who care to search the records.
Memory has also dimmed of those few days that summer of 1869 at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, when two old men, one from Massachusetts, the other from Virginia, turned from Civil War strife to the healing power of education. One, a lifelong soldier, had become president of a struggling college; the other, a volunteer for 14 days in the War of 1812, merchant, London-based banker, and creator of philanthropic institutions.
The two old men walked arm in arm, enjoyed each other, spoke of educating new generations, of reconciliation, of healing, and of better days to ahead.
END OF MANUSCRIPT. Corrections, errors, suggestions appreciated: bfparker@frontiernet.net
About the Parkers: 24 of their book titles are listed in:
http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P
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By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, 63 Heritage Loop, Crossville, TN 38571-8270. Email bfparker@frontiernet.net
The hot spring health spas of Virginia were the first gathering places of southern and northern elites after the Civil War. It was at the Greenbrier Hotel, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, the most popular of the hot spring spas, that Robert E. Lee and George Peabody met by chance for a few weeks during July 23-August 30, 1869. For each this meeting was a symbolic turn from Civil War bitterness toward reconciliation and the lifting power of education.
Lee was then president of Washington College, Lexington, Virginia (1865-70, renamed Washington and Lee University from 1871). Peabody had just (June 29, 1869) doubled to $2 million his Peabody Education Fund, begun February 7, 1867, to advance public education in the South.
Historical circumstances had made both Lee and Peabody famous in their time, Lee's fame more lasting; Peabody's, strangely, soon forgotten. Yet when they met in 1869 Peabody was arguably better known in the English speaking world and more widely appreciated.
For Lee, age 62, hero of the lost Confederate cause, it was next to the last summer of life. For Peabody, age 74, best known philanthropist of his time, it was the very last summer of life. They were the center of attention that summer of 1869 at "The Old White." They ate together in the public dining room, walked arm in arm to their nearby bungalows, were applauded by visitors, and were photographed together and with others of prominence.
Robert E. Lee's Father
Born in Stratford, Westmoreland County, Virginia, Robert Edward Lee was the son of Revolutionary War hero Henry Lee (1756-1818), popularly known as "Light Horse Harry." Henry Lee was a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress (1785-88), member of the Virginia Convention for the Continental Congress (1788), served in Virginia's General Assembly (1789-91), was Virginia Governor (1792-95), was appointed by George Washington to command troops to suppress the "Whiskey Insurrection" in Western Pennsylvania (1794), served in the U. S. Sixth Congress (1799-1801), and last served in the War of 1812.
Despite this impressive record (Congress voted him a gold medal for his American Revolutionary War exploits) Henry Lee was a less than satisfactory husband, a poor family breadwinner, an absentee father to his five children, was often hounded by creditors, and was several times imprisoned for debt. Robert E. Lee was age six when he last saw his father, who left to regain his health in the West Indies. Young Lee was age eleven when his father died. Robert E. Lee's biographer, Emory M. Thomas wrote: "All his life, Robert Lee knew his father only at a great distance."
Robert E. Lee's Career
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Robert E. Lee attended private schools in Alexandria, Virginia. At age 18, with family finances prohibiting attending a private college, Robert E. Lee, bent on a military career, applied for admission to the tuition free U. S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. His family and friends sent petitions and letters of recommendation to Secretary of War John C. Calhoun (1782-1850). In the summer of 1825 R. E. Lee entered West Point as one of 107 new cadets.
Forty-seven of that entering class graduated, Lee among them. He was an exemplary cadet, without a single demerit, held every cadet post of honor, and graduated second in his class of 1829. He was assigned to the engineer corps where he soon won a high reputation. On June 30, 1831, two years after graduating, he married Mary Randolph Custis, daughter of a grandson of Mrs. George Washington (Martha Washington, 1731-1802).
Distinguishing himself as chief engineer in river drainage and fort-building projects, he served in the Mexican War, where General Winfield Scott (1786-1866), valuing his military and engineering skills, constantly consulted him.
Lee was superintendent of West Point (1852-55). He was the United States military officer ordered to put down the John Brown (1800-59) insurrection at Harper's Ferry federal arsenal, Virginia, October 16, 1859. Abolitionist Brown's fanatical attempt to steal federal weapons in order to arm slaves for an insurrection against the South helped precipitate the bitter four-year Civil War.
Faced with the "irrepressible conflict," General Winfield Scott reportedly told President Abraham Lincoln that Lee was worth 50,000 men. Lee was offered command of Federal forces, April 18, 1861, but declined. He told Francis Preston Blair (1791-1876), who approached him on behalf of President Lincoln: "...though opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States." Loyal to Virginia, Lee resigned from the United States Army, April 20, 1861.
In Richmond Virginia, at the request of the Virginia Convention, he was placed in command of the Virginia forces, April 23, 1861. Lee's organizing ability, grasp of military strategy, and his integrity held out for four bitter Civil War years against overwhelming Union strength in numbers, manpower, and economic resources. Faced by inevitable crushing defeat Lee surrendered to General U. S. Grant, Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, April 9, 1865.
He told his defeated troops: "...You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that our merciful God extend to you his blessing and protection."
With the Confederate cause lost, Lee sought obscurity and declined to lend his name to commercial ventures. When first invited to the presidency of small, obscure and struggling Washington College, Lexington, Virginia (August 1865), Lee hesitated. He wrote the trustees that he was "an object of censure" to the North, that his presence might "cause injury" to the college.
Knowing that Lee's name and fame would attract students, the trustees persisted. Lee accepted. His biographer Emory M. Thomas wrote that Lee quickly "established himself as a presence in Lexington," and that in the five years of life left to him (1865-1870) became "the savior of Washington College."
Greenbrier Hotel, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
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The first inn at what is now the Greenbrier Hotel, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, was built in 1780, long before West Virginia became a state in 1863. It was a favorite resort for southern elites who gathered there to meet relatives and friends, to rest and recuperate, and to drink and bathe in its healthful mineral springs. Lee, with heart trouble, needing rest, was an occasional health spa visitor, particularly at the Greenbrier.
At the Greenbrier the summer of 1868, Lee heard that some young northern visitors were receiving a frosty reception. He asked the young southern women who surrounded him if one of them would go with him to greet and welcome the young northern guests.
The young lady accompanying him, Christina Bond, asked, "General Lee, did you never feel resentment towards the North?" She recorded his quiet reply, "I believe I may say, looking into my own heart, and speaking as in the presence of my God, that I have never known one moment of bitterness or resentment." The next summer of 1869 at the Greenbrier he met George Peabody for the first and only time.
Peabody's Career George Peabody was third of eight children born to a poor family in Danvers (renamed Peabody, April 13, 1868), 19 miles from Boston, Massachusetts. After four years in a district school (1803-07) and four years apprenticed in a general store (1807-10), the 16-year-old in 1811 worked in his oldest brother's clothing store in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
His father's death that year (May 13, 1811) left the family in debt, their Danvers home mortgaged, with the mother and five younger siblings forced to live with relatives. The Great Fire in Newburyport (May 31, 1811) occurred eleven days after his father's death. The fire, coming as it did during an economic depression in New England, led many to leave that town and migrate to the South.
An improvident paternal uncle whose Newburyport store had burned in the fire encouraged his 16-year-old nephew, George Peabody, to open with him a drygoods store in Georgetown, District of Columbia. Needing credit, backed by Newburyport merchant Prescott Spaulding's (1781-1864) recommendation, Peabody secured a $2,000 consignment of goods, basis of his first commercial venture in the Georgetown drygoods store (1812).
His uncle soon left for other enterprises. Young Peabody operated the store and was also a pack peddler selling goods to homes and stores in the D. C. area. With Washington, D. C., under siege by the British he volunteered and served briefly in the War of 1812.
Fellow soldier and older experienced merchant Elisha Riggs, Sr. (1779-1853), took the 19-year-old Peabody as traveling junior partner in Riggs, Peabody & Co. (1814-29), Georgetown, D.C. The firm, which imported clothing and other merchandise for sale to U. S. wholesalers, moved in 1815 to Baltimore and by 1822 had Philadelphia and New York City warehouses.
Peabody early took on the support of his family. He sent clothes and money to his mother and siblings, and by 1816, at age 21, he paid off the family debts and restored his mother and siblings to their Danvers home. Handling the Peabody home deed, Newburyport, Massachusetts, lawyer Ebon Mosely wrote George Peabody (December 16, 1816): "I cannot but be pleased with the filial affection which seems to evince you to preserve the estate for a Parent."
Peabody paid for the education at Bradford Academy (now Bradford College), Bradford, Massachusetts, of five younger relatives. He bought a house in West Bradford for his relatives studying at the academy, where his mother also lived for several years.
He later paid for the complete education of nephew Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99), first U. S. paleontologist at Yale University; nephew George Peabody Russell (1835-1909), Harvard-trained lawyer, niece Julia Adelaide (née Peabody) Chandler (b. 1835), and others.
Deprived, as I was...
Peabody's May 18, 1831, letter to a nephew named after him, George Peabody (1815-32), son of his oldest brother David Peabody (1790-1841), hinted at his motive for educating his relatives and for his later philanthropies. Particularly fond of this nephew, Peabody paid for his schooling at Bradford Academy and received regular reports of his nephew's progress. When this nephew asked his uncle for financial help to attend Yale College, Peabody replied in a poignant letter.
Peabody wrote his nephew: (his underlining): "Deprived, as I was, of the opportunity of obtaining anything more than the most common education, I am well qualified to estimate its value by the disadvantages I labour under in the society [in] which my business and situation in life frequently throws me, and willingly would I now give twenty times the expense attending a good education could I now possess it, but it is now too late for me to learn and I can only do to those who come under my care, as I could have wished circumstances had permitted others to have done by me." Sadly, this favorite nephew died at age 17 on September 24, 1832, in Boston of scarlet fever, his potential unfulfilled.
Selling Maryland's Bonds Abroad
As purchasing partner in the United States and abroad for Riggs, Peabody & Co. (renamed Peabody, Riggs & Co., 1829-48), Peabody made four buying trips to Europe during 1827-37.
In the mid-1830s several states began internal improvement of roads, canals, and railroads requiring European investment capital through state bonds sold abroad. In 1836 the Maryland legislature voted to finance the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. On his fifth trip abroad, February 1837, Peabody represented both his firm and was also appointed one of three agents to sell abroad Maryland's $8 million bond issue.
In the financial Panic of 1837 the two other agents returned home without success. Peabody remained in London the rest of his life (1837-69), 32 years, except for three visits to the United States. Nine U. S. states in financial difficulty, including Maryland, stopped interest payments on their bonds sold abroad. Peabody faced a depressed market, with British and European investors angry at nonpayment of interest on their U. S. state bonds.
Peabody bombarded Maryland officials with letters urging that interest payments on Maryland bonds be resumed, and retroactively. His letters were published in U. S. newspapers. Abroad, he also publicly assured foreign investors that interest nonpayment was temporary and that repayment would be retroactive. He finally sold his part of the Maryland bonds to London's Baring Brothers. The Panic of 1837 eased. The nine defaulting states resumed their bond interest payments. Peabody's faith that they would do so was justified and appreciated. His integrity became known to an ever-wider circle.
Some minor fame came to Peabody when the Maryland Legislature (1847-48), realizing what he had done, voted him unanimous thanks for upholding its credit abroad and for declining the $60,000 commission due him.
He had not wanted to burden the state treasury during its financial difficulty. In transmitting these resolutions of thanks, Maryland Governor Philip Francis Thomas (1810-90) wrote Peabody, "To you, sir...the thanks of the State were eminently due."
London-Based Banker
In London, Peabody gradually reduced his trade in drygoods and commodities. Under the firm name of George Peabody & Co. (1838-64) he made the transition from merchant to international banker. He sold U. S. state bonds to finance roads, canals, and railroads; helped sell the second Mexican War bonds; bought, sold, and shipped European iron and later steel rails for U. S. western railroads; and helped finance the Atlantic Cable Co.
Asked in an interview, August 22, 1869, how and when he made most of his money, the London-based securities broker and international banker said, "I made pretty much of it in 20 years from 1844 to 1864. Everything I touched within that time seemed to turn to gold. I bought largely of United States securities when their value was low and they advanced greatly."
Morgan Partnership
Often ill and urged by business friends to take a partner, Peabody on October 1, 1854, at age 59, took as partner Boston merchant Junius Spencer Morgan (1813-90), whose 19-year-old son John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) began his banking career as New York City agent for George Peabody & Co., London On retirement, October 1, 1864, unmarried, without a son, and knowing he would no longer control his firm, Peabody asked that his name be withdrawn.
George Peabody & Co. (1838-64) continued in London as J. S. Morgan & Co. (1864-1909), Morgan Grenfell & Co. (1910-18), Morgan Grenfell & Co., Ltd. (1918-89), and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell (since 1989), a German-owned international banking firm.
Peabody was thus the root of the J. P. Morgan international banking firm. He spent the last five years of his life (1864-69) looking after his philanthropic institutions, begun in 1852 with the motto: "Education: a debt due from present to future generations."
Philanthropist
Peabody early told intimates and said publicly in 1850 that he would found a useful educational institution in every town and city where he had lived and worked. His 1827 will left $4,000 for charity. His 1832 will left $27,000 for educational philanthropy out of a $135,000 estate.
Founded Seven Libraries
Ultimately his philanthropic gifts of some $10 million included seven Peabody institute libraries, with lecture halls and lecture funds. These were, like the lyceums and the later chautauquas, the adult education centers of their time.
Later, Andrew Carnegie's (1835-1919) libraries and other funds, John D. Rockefeller's (1839-1937) funds and foundations, Henry Ford's (1863-1947) funds, and those of others far surpassed Peabody's philanthropy. But it was Peabody's gifts which first initiated, set policies, patterns, and inspired the later vast educational foundation movement.
The seven Peabody Institute Libraries are in: Peabody, Danvers, Newburyport, and Georgetown (all in Massachusetts); and in Baltimore, where the Peabody Institute of Baltimore (from 1857, total gift $1.4 million) consisted of a unique reference library whose books from European estates Peabody, through agents, bought and shipped to Baltimore. The Library of Congress early borrowed from its rare book collection.
The Peabody Institute of Baltimore also had an art gallery, lecture hall and lecture fund, a Conservatory of Music, and gave annual prizes to Baltimore's best public school students. In 1982 the Baltimore Reference Library and the Peabody Conservatory of Music became part of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Other Peabody libraries are in 6-Thetford, Vermont, where he visited his maternal grandparents at age 15, and in 7-Georgetown, D.C.
Three Museums of Science
He endowed the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University (anthropology); the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University (paleontology), both 1866; and what is now the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (1867), containing maritime history and Essex County historical documents, including most of George Peabody's letters and papers.
Other Gifts
He gave the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of Mechanic Arts (Baltimore) $1,000 for a chemistry laboratory and school (1851); Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, $25,000 for a mathematics professorship (1866); Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, $25,000, for a mathematics and civil engineering professorship (November 1866); and former general, then President Robert E. Lee's Washington College (renamed Washington and Lee University, 1871), Lexington, Virginia, $60,000 for a mathematics professorship (September 1869).
He gave $20,000 publication funds each to the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore (November 5, 1866), and the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston (January 1, 1867). He gave to the United States Sanitary Commission to aid Civil War orphans, widows, and disabled veterans $10,000 (1864). To the Vatican charitable San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy, he gave $19,300 (April 5, 1867). He built a Memorial Congregational Church in his mother's memory in her hometown, Georgetown, Massachusetts, $70,000 (1866).
For patriotic causes he gave to the Lexington Monument in what is now Peabody, Massachusetts, $300 (1835); the Bunker Hill Memorial, Boston, Massachusetts, $500 (June 3, 1845); and the Washington Monument, Washington, D. C., $1,000 (July 4, 1854).
Peabody Education Fund
His most influential U. .S. gift was the $2 million Peabody Education Fund (PEF, 1867-1914) to promote public schools in the eleven former Confederate states plus West Virginia, added because of its poverty. For 47 years the PEF helped promote public schools in the devastated post-Civil War South, focusing on public elementary and secondary schools, then on teacher training institutes and normal colleges, and finally on rural public schools.
Without precedent, the PEF was the first multimillion dollar U.S. educational foundation. Historians have cited its example and policies as the model forerunner of all subsequent significant United States educational funds and foundations.
Famous in his time, largely forgotten since, even underrated by most historians, George Peabody was in fact the founder of modern American philanthropy.
Many of the over 50 distinguished PEF trustees (during 1867-1914) who held high offices in the U. S. were also trustees of other later, larger, and richer funds and foundations. They thus helped spread the PEF's influence far and wide.
The common goal of these late nineteenth century, early twentieth century funds and foundations was to use private foundation wealth as levers to help solve education, health, and economic welfare problems in the U. S. South, elsewhere in the U. S., and worldwide.
High Offices Held by PEF Trustees
Twelve of the over 50 PEF trustees were state legislators, two were U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justices, six were U.S. ambassadors, seven U.S. House of Representatives members, two U. S. generals, one U. S. Navy admiral, one U. S. Surgeon-General, three Confederate generals, seven U.S. Senators, three Confederate Congressmen, two church bishops, six U. S. cabinet officers, three U.S. presidents (U.S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Grover Cleveland), or eight U.S. presidents if Peabody Normal College and its predecessor institutions are included, and three financiers.
The three financiers who were PEF trustees included J. P. Morgan, himself an art collector and philanthropist of note; Anthony Joseph Drexel (1826-93), inspired as PEF trustee to found Drexel University, Philadelphia; and Paul Tulane (1801-87), inspired as PEF trustee to found Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Permitted to disband when their mission was accomplished, the PEF trustees gave (1914): $474,000 to fourteen state university colleges of education in the South; $90,000 to Winthrop Normal College, South Carolina; and funds to the Southern Education Fund, Atlanta, still aiding African-American education. The bulk of the PEF, $1.5 million (required matching funds made it $3 million), went to George Peabody College for Teachers (1914-79), Nashville, sited next to Vanderbilt University, which still thrives as Peabody College of Vanderbilt University (hereafter PCofVU, since 1979).
Peabody College of Vanderbilt University
Traced genealogically in Nashville for some 220 years, Davidson Academy (1785-1806) was chartered by North Carolina eleven years before Tennessee's statehood; rechartered as Cumberland College (1806-26); rechartered as the University of Nashville (1826-75); rechartered as Peabody Normal College (1875-1909, created and supported by the PEF); rechartered as George Peabody College for Teachers (1914-79), which continues as PCofVU (from 1979).
Faced with greater class and race divisions and with greater financial difficulties than counterpart colleges in other U.S. sections, what is now Peabody College of Vanderbilt University rose phoenix-like again and again to produce educational leaders for the South, the nation, and the world.
Peabody Homes of London
Wanting to do something for the working poor of London, Peabody followed social reformer Lord Shaftesbury's (1801-85) suggestion--that low-cost housing was the London poor's greatest need. Peabody gave a total of $2.5 million (from 1862) to subsidize low rent model housing in London.
Some 34,500 low income Londoners (March 31, 1999) lived in 14,000 Peabody apartments on 83 estates in 26 of London's boroughs. The Peabody Trust, which built and administers the Peabody Homes of London, valued at some $1.53 billion, is Peabody's most successful philanthropy (and least known by Americans).
Last U.S. Visit
Long ill, sensing his end was near, George Peabody made his last four-month U. S. visit, June 8 to September 29, 1869, to see family and friends and to add gifts to his U. S. institutes. Greatly weakened, he was met in New York City by intimates who also sensed this as his last U.S. visit.
The New York Times, June 9, 1869, reported his arrival "in advanced age and declining health...." "Wherever he goes," the article read, "he is worried by begging letters from individuals expecting him to get them out of some scrape... Now that he is in America he should be left to the quiet and repose he so greatly needs."
He went to Boston (June 10, 1869), then rested in Salem, Massachusetts, at nephew George Peabody Russell's (1835-1909) home.
On July 6, 1869, his nephew wrote to his uncle's intimate business friend William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888), who was at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia: "...Mr. Peabody...is weaker than when he arrived.... He has...decided to go to the White Sulphur Springs...[and asks you to] arrange accommodations for himself, and servant, for Mrs. Russell and myself."
In mid-June 1869 Peabody quietly visited the Boston Peace Jubilee and Music Festival and listened to the chorus. At intermission, Boston Mayor Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff (1810-74) announced Peabody's presence, which brought "a perfect storm of applause."
In a Sunday, June 20, sermon closing the Boston Peace Jubilee, the Reverend William Rounseville Alger (1822-1905) mentioned that George Peabody had done more to keep the peace between Britain and America than a hundred demagogues to destroy it.
On June 29, 1869, in more than doubling his fund for southern education, he wrote his trustees: "I now give you additional bonds [worth] $1,384,000..... I do this [hoping] that with God's blessing...it may...prove a permanent and lasting boon, not only to the Southern States, but to the whole of our dear country...." He added $50,000 to his first Peabody Institute Library (Peabody, Massachusetts, total gift $217,600). At the July 14, 1869, dedication of the Peabody Institute Library, Danvers, Massachusetts (to which he gave a total of $100,000), he said: "I can never expect to address you again collectively.... I hope that this institution will be...a source of pleasure and profit."
At a July 16, 1869, reception, Peabody Institute Library, Peabody, Massachusetts, his 30 guests who arrived by special train from Boston included former Massachusetts Governor Clifford Claflin (1818-1905), Boston Mayor Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff, U.S. Senator Charles Sumner (1811-74), and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94). Poet Holmes read aloud a poem titled "George Peabody" written specially for the occasion.
Two days later (July 18, 1869) Holmes described Peabody in a letter to U.S. Minister to Britain John Lothrop Motley (1814-77) as "the Dives who is going to Abraham's bosom and I fear before a great while...." On July 22, 1869, longtime friend Ohio Episcopal Bishop Charles Pettit McIlvaine (1799-1873) wrote to Peabody's philanthropic advisor Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-94): "The White Sulphur Springs will, I hope, be beneficial to our excellent friend; but it can be only a very superficial good. [His] cough is terrible, and I have no expectation of his living a year...."
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, July 23-Aug. 30, 1869
This was the background when Peabody arrived by special train at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, July 23, 1869. Present was Tennessee Superintendent of Public Instruction and later U.S. Commissioner of Education John Eaton, Jr. (1829-1906).
John Easton wrote in his annual report: "Mr. Peabody shares with ex-Governor Wise the uppermost cottage in Baltimore Row, and sits at the same table with General Lee, Mr. Corcoran, Mr. Taggart, and others.... Being quite infirm, he has been seldom able to come to parlor or dining room, though he has received many ladies and gentlemen at the cottage.... His manners are singularly affable and pleasing, and his countenance one of the most benevolent we have ever seen."
Peabody's confinement to his cottage prompted a meeting on July 27, 1869, at which former Virginia Governor Henry Alexander Wise (1806-76) drew up resolutions of praise read in Peabody's presence the next day (July 28, 1869) in the "Old White" hotel parlor. The resolutions read in part: "On behalf of the southern people we tender thanks to Mr. Peabody for his aid to the cause of education...and hail him 'benefactor.'"
Peabody, seated, replied, "If I had strength, I would speak more on the heroism of the Southern people. Your kind remarks about the Education Fund sound sweet to my ears. My heart is interwoven with its success."
Peabody Ball
Merrymakers at the "Old White" held a Peabody Ball on August 11, 1869. Too ill to attend, Peabody heard the gaiety from his cottage.
Historian Perceval Reniers wrote of this Peabody Ball: "The affair that did most to revive [the Southerners'] esteem was the Peabody Ball...given to honor...Mr. George Peabody.... Everything was right for the Peabody Ball. Everybody was ready for just such a climax, the background was a perfect build-up. Mr. Peabody appeared at just the right time and lived just long enough. A few months later it would not have been possible, for Mr. Peabody would be dead."
The PEF's first administrator Barnas Sears (1802-80), present at White Sulphur Springs that July 23-Aug. 30, 1869, recorded why Peabody's presence there was important to the PEF's work in promoting public education in the South. Sears wrote: "...both on account of his unparalleled goodness and of his illness among a loving and hospitable people [he received] tokens of love and respect from all, such as I have never before seen shown to any one. This visit...will, in my judgment, do more for us than a long tour in a state of good health...."
Famous Photos of George Peabody and Robert E. Lee
Peabody, Lee, and others were central figures in several remarkable photos taken at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, on August 12, 1869. In the main photograph the five individuals seated on cane-bottomed chairs were, left to right: Turkey's Minister to the U.S. Edouard Blacque Bey (1824-95); General Robert E. Lee, Peabody, William Wilson Corcoran, and Richmond, Virginia, judge and public education advocate James Lyons (1801-82).
Standing behind the five seated figures were seven former Civil War generals, their names in dispute until correctly identified in 1935 by Leonard T. Mackall of Savannah, Georgia (from left to right): James Conner (1829-83) of South Carolina, Martin W. Gary (1831-81) of South Carolina, Robert Doak Lilley (1836-86) of Virginia, P.G.T. Beauregard (1818-93) of Louisiana, Alexander Robert Lawton (1818-96) of Georgia, Henry Alexander Wise (1806-76) of Virginia, and Joseph L. Brent (b.1826) of Maryland.
There is also a photo of Peabody sitting alone and a photo of Lee, Peabody, and William Wilson Corcoran sitting together.
Peabody's Gifts to Lee
That August 1869 Peabody gave Lee a small private gift of $100 for Lee's Episcopal church in Lexington, Virginia, in need of repairs (William Wilson Corcoran also gave $100). Peabody also gave to Lee's Washington College Virginia state bonds he owned worth $35,000 when they were lost on the ship Arctic, a Collins Line steamer, sunk with the loss of 322 passengers on September 27, 1854, 20 miles off Cape Race, Newfoundland.
Peabody 's petition to the Virginia legislature to reimburse him for the lost bonds had been unsuccessful when he gave Lee's college the value of the bonds for a mathematics professorship. Eventually the value of the lost bonds and the accrued interest, $60,000 total, were paid by the State of Virginia to Washington and Lee University With wry humor Lee's biographer C.B. Flood described George Peabody's gift: "It was generosity with a touch of Yankee shrewdness: you Southerners go fight it out among yourselves. If General Lee can't get [this lost bond money] out of the Virginia legislature, nobody can."
Peabody left White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, August 30, 1869, in a special railroad car provided by longtime friend, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad President John Work Garrett (1820-84). Lee rode a short distance in the same car with Peabody. They parted, never to meet again.
Peabody recorded his last will (September 9, 1869) in New York City, had his tomb built at Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts (September 10, 1869), ordered a granite sarcophagus to mark his grave, and boarded the Scotia in New York City September 29, 1869. He landed at Queenstown, Ireland, October 8, 1869, and was rushed to rest at the London home of longtime business friend Sir Curtis Miranda Lampson (1806-85), where he died November 4, 1869.
Lee Sent His Photograph
On Sept. 25, 1869, at the request of Peabody Institute Librarian Fitch Poole (1803-73, Peabody, Massachusetts), Lee sent Poole a photograph of himself, adding that he would "feel honoured in its being placed among the 'friends' of Mr. Peabody, who can be numbered by the millions, yet all can appreciate the man who has [illumined] his age by his munificent charities during his life, and by his wise provisions for promoting the happiness of his fellow creatures."
Lee on Peabody's Death
Reading of Peabody's death in London (November 4, 1869), Robert E. Lee wrote (November 10, 1869) to Peabody's nephew George Peabody Russell, who had been with his uncle in White Sulphur Springs and there had met Lee: "The announcement of the death of your uncle, Mr. George Peabody, has been received with the deepest regret wherever his name and benevolence are known; and nowhere have his generous deeds--restricted to no country, section or sect--elicited more heartfelt admiration than at the South. He stands alone in history for the benevolent and judicious distribution of his great wealth, and his memory has become entwined in the affections of millions of his fellow-citizens in both hemispheres."
"I beg, in my own behalf," Lee continued, "and in behalf of the Trustees and Faculty of Washington College, Virginia, which was not forgotten by him in his act of generosity, to tender the tribute of our unfeigned sorrow at his death. ¶With great respect, Your obedient servant R.E. Lee."
Concern Over Lee's Attending Peabody's Funeral
Lee had been invited to attend Peabody's final funeral service and eulogy, South Congregational Church, Peabody, Massachusetts, followed by burial in Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts, February 8, 1870. But Peabody's intimates feared that Lee's attendance might evoke an ugly incident. After President Lincoln's assassination, Congressional radical Republicans, bent on revenge, crushed the defeated South with military rule. This anger was also strong among New England abolitionists.
Robert Charles Winthrop, Peabody's philanthropic advisor and president of the PEF trustees, who was to deliver Peabody's funeral eulogy February 8, 1870, feared that Lee's attendance might bring on a demonstration. On February 2, 1870, Winthrop wrote two private and confidential letters, the first to Baltimorean John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870): "There is apprehension here, that if Lee should come to the funeral, something unpleasant might occur, which would be as painful to us as to him. Would you contact friends to impart this to the General? Please do not mention that the suggestion came from me."
Winthrop also wrote to Corcoran: "I write to you in absolute confidence. Some friends of ours, whose motives cannot be mistaken, are very anxious that Genl. Lee should not come to the funeral next week. They have also asked me to suggest that. Still there is always apprehension that from an irresponsible crowd there might come some remarks which would be offensive to him and painful to us all. I am sure he would be the last person to involve himself or us, needlessly, in a doubtful position on such an occasion."
Winthrop continued to Corcoran: "The newspapers at first said that he was not coming. Now, there is an intimation that he is. I know of no one who could [more] effectively give the right direction to his views than yourself. Your relation to Mr. Peabody & to Mr. Lee would enable you to ascertain his purposes & shape his course wisely.... I know of no one else to rely on."
One of the two Washington College trustees who planned to attend Peabody's funeral had earlier written to Corcoran (January 26, 1870): "I first thought that General Lee should not go, but have now changed my mind. Some of us believe that if you advise the General to attend he would do so. Use your own discretion in this matter."
Lee Too Ill to Attend
Lee explained in a January 26, 1870, letter to William Wilson Corcoran: "I am sorry I cannot attend the funeral obsequies of Mr. Peabody. It would be some relief to witness the respect paid to his remains, and to participate in commemorating his virtues; but I am unable to undertake the journey. I have been sick all the winter, and am still under medical treatment. I particularly regret that I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you. Two trustees of Washington College will attend the funeral. I hope you can join them."
On the same day Winthrop wrote his letters (February 2, 1870), Lee wrote his daughter Mildred Childe Lee (1846-1904) that he was too ill to attend: "I am sorry that I could not attend Mr. Peabody's funeral, but I did not feel able to undertake the journey, especially at this season."
Corcoran too replied to Winthrop that Lee had no intention of coming. Corcoran could not imagine, he wrote, that so good and great a man as Lee would receive anything but a kind reception. Himself ill, Corcoran wrote to Lee his regret that he could not attend to pay his respects to "my valued old friend." Peabody's intimates were relieved at confirmation that Lee's illness would definitely keep him from the funeral.
Trans-Atlantic Funeral Overview
Lee, Corcoran, and much of the English-speaking reading public, awed by Peabody's unusual 96-day transatlantic funeral, awaited its final scene: Robert Charles Winthrop's eulogy and Peabody's final burial (both February 8, 1870). Peabody's funeral was unprecedented in length, pomp, and ceremony; was marked by cold stormy weather; involved the highest officials of England and the United States; was vastly publicized in the press of both countries; and was observed in person by many thousands of Britons and Americans.
The Peabody funeral included: 1-Westminster Abbey service (November 12, 1869) and temporary burial there for 30 days (November 12-December 11, 1869). When Peabody's will became known requiring burial in Salem, Massachusetts, 2-the British cabinet decided (November 10, 1869), at Queen Victoria's suggestion, to return his remains for burial in the U. S. on Her Majesty's Ship HMS Monarch, Britain's newest and largest warship, repainted for this grim occasion slate gray above the water line, with a specially built mortuary chapel.
Next came a 3-U. S. government decision (made between November 12-15, 1869) to send the United States corvette USS Plymouth from Marseilles, France, to accompany HMS Monarch to the United States. Then followed 4-transfer (December 11, 1869) of Peabody's remains from Westminster Abbey, London, on a special funeral train to Portsmouth, England, impressive ceremonies at the transfer of remains from Portsmouth dock to HMS Monarch, specially outfitted as a funeral vessel.
Next came the 5-transatlantic crossing of HMS Monarch and the USS Plymouth (December 21, 1869 to January 25, 1870) from Spithead near Portsmouth, past Ushant, France, to Madeira Island off Portugal, to Bermuda, and north to Portland, Maine, chosen by the British Admiralty because of its deeper harbor.
A covert rivalry had early erupted between 6-Bostonians and New Yorkers about which city could provide the more solemn ceremony as receiving port. Thinking themselves the center of northeast society and fashion, each was disappointed when the British Admiralty chose Portland, Maine, whose deeper harbor more safely accommodated HMS Monarch's large size.
A contemporary news account described the petty jealousy: "When the mighty men of Boston knew that England's..."Monarch" was bringing the body of the great philanthropist to his last resting place, they called a meeting and decided with what fitting honors and glories it would be received.... but, when the telegraph flashed the astounding news that little Portland was to be the port...all was changed....[Bostonians were sure] that the Portlanders...would blunder...."
On January 14, 1870, on President U. S Grant's approval, 7-U. S. Navy Secretary George Maxwell Robeson (1829-97) ordered Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1801-70), a PEF trustee, to command a U.S. naval flotilla to meet HMS Monarch and USS Plymouth in Portland harbor, Maine (January 25, 1870). HMS Monarch's captain then requested, on behalf of Queen Victoria, 8-that the coffin remain aboard the Monarch in Portland harbor for two days (January 27-28, 1870).as a final mark of respect. Thousands of visitors, drawn to the spectacle, viewed the coffin in the somberly decorated Monarch's mortuary chapel. Peabody's remains then 9-lay in state in Portland City Hall (January 29-February 1, 1870), viewed by thousands. 10-A special funeral train from Portland, Maine, bore the remains to Peabody, Massachusetts (February 1, 1870). 11-Lying in state of Peabody's remains took place at the Peabody Institute Library (February 1-8, 1870).
The final ceremony, the press announced to an awed public, was to be 12-Robert Charles Winthrop's funeral eulogy at the South Congregational Church, Peabody, Massachusetts, attended by New England governors, mayors, Queen Victoria's son Prince Arthur, and other notables (February 8, 1870). Final burial would then follow at 13-Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts.
Why Such Unprecedented Funeral Honors?
Daily reports on Peabody's sinking condition in London had appeared in the British press. After his death the London Daily News recorded (November 8, 1869): "We have received a large number of letters, urging that the honours of a public funeral are due to the late Mr. Peabody's memory." The Dean of Westminster Abbey, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-81), was in Naples, Italy, November 5, 1869, when he read of Peabody's death. Years later he recorded: "I was in Naples, and saw in the public papers that George Peabody had died. Being absent, considering that he was a foreigner, and at the same time, by reason of his benefactions to the City of London, entitled to a burial in Westminster Abbey, I telegraphed to express my wishes that his interment there should take place."
The Alabama Claims
Peabody died during tense, near warlike U. S.-British angers over two U. S. Civil War incidents, the Alabama Claims (1864-72) and the Trent Affair (September 8, 1861). CSS Alabama was a notorious British-built Confederate raider which sank 64 northern cargo ships during 1862-64.
Without a navy, with its southern ports blockaded by the North, Confederate agents slipped secretly to England, bought British-built ships, armed them as Confederate raiders, renamed them Alabama, Florida, Shenandoah, and others, which sank northern ships and cost northern lives and treasure.
Officially neutral in the U. S. Civil War, British officials were continually reminded of their breach of neutrality by U. S. Minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams (1807-86). Official U. S. demands for reparations for damages from British-built raiders (from1862) were resolved at a Geneva international tribunal (1871-72), requiring Britain to pay the United States $15.5 million indemnity.
At Peabody's death, November 4, 1869, this Alabama Claims controversy was unresolved and tense. Americans were angry; Britons were resentful. A desire to defuse angers over the Alabama Claims was one reason British officials first, and then United States officials to surpass them, outdid each other in unusual homage to Peabody's remains during his transatlantic funeral.
Trent Affair
There was also lingering resentment over the still rankling November 8, 1861 Trent Affair. On the stormy night of October 11, 1861, four Confederate emissaries, seeking aid and arms from Britain and France, evaded the Union blockade at Charleston, South Carolina, went by ship to Havana, Cuba, and there boarded the British mail ship Trent, bound for Southampton, England.
The Trent was illegally stopped in the Bahama Channel, West Indies (November 8, 1861) by USS San Jacinto's Captain Charles Wilkes (1798-1877). Confederates James Murray Mason (1798-1871, from Virginia), John Slidell (1793-1871, from Louisiana), and their male secretaries were forcibly removed and imprisoned in Boston harbor's Fort Warren Prison.
Anticipating war with the U. S., Britain sent 8,000 troops to Canada. But United States jingoism subsided. President Abraham Lincoln reportedly told his cabinet, "one war at a time," gentlemen, got the cabinet on December 26, 1861, to disavow the illegal seizure, and released the Confederate prisoners on January 1, 1862. But resentments lingered.
Besides softening near war U .S.-British tensions, another reason behind the Peabody funeral honors was British leaders' sincere appreciation for Peabody's gift of homes for London's working poor. Many marveled that an American would give that kind of gift in that large amount to a city and country not his own. Britons also valued Peabody's two decades of efforts to improve United States-British relations.
Prime Minister Gladstone
On November 9, 1869, in a major speech at the Lord Mayor's Day banquet, Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (1808-98) referred to British-U.S. difficulties and then mentioned Peabody's death: "You will know that I refer to the death of Mr. Peabody, a man whose splendid benefactions...taught us in this commercial age...the most noble and needful of all lessons--...how a man can be the master of his wealth instead of its slave [cheers]."
"And, my Lord Mayor," Gladstone continued, "most touching it is to know, as I have learnt, that while, perhaps, some might think he had been unhappy in dying in a foreign land, yet so were his affections divided between the land of his birth and the home of his early ancestors, that...his [wish] has been realized--that he might be buried in America, [and] that it might please God to ordain that he should die in England [cheers]. My Lord Mayor, with the country of Mr. Peabody we are not likely to quarrel [loud cheers]."
Prime Minister Gladstone's cabinet met at 2:00 P.M., November 10, 1869, and confirmed Queen Victoria's suggestion of a Royal Navy ship to return Peabody's remains. Peabody funeral researcher Allen Howard Welch wrote: "The Queen, in fact, was personally grieved, and it was her own request that a man-of-war be employed to return Peabody to his homeland."
In the handing over ceremony of Peabody's remains from U .S. Minister to Britain John Lothrop Motley to HMS Monarch's Captain John Edmund Commerell (1829-1901), December 11, 1869, Portsmouth, England, U. S. Minister Motley explained: "The President of the United States, when informed of the death of George Peabody, the great philanthropist, at once ordered an American ship to convey his remains to America. Simultaneously, the Queen appointed one of Her Majesty's ships to perform that office. This double honor from the heads of two great nations to a simple American citizen is, like his gift to the poor, unprecedented. The President yields cordially to the wish of the Queen."
Praise for the Peabody Homes of London, 1862
Peabody's housing gift for London's working poor was announced March 12, 1862, while the U. S. and Britain still raged over the September 1861 Trent Affair. Peabody's gift evoked surprise and admiration in the British press, a sampling of which follows.
London Times, March 26, 1862: "Mr. George Peabody has placed £150,000 in the hands of a committee to relieve the condition of the poor of London. It is seldom that good works are done on such a scale as this one by an American in a city where he is only a sojourner.... [He] gives while he lives to those who can make no return.... He does this in a country not his own, in a city he may leave any day for his native land. Such an act is rare...."
London Daily Telegraph, March 27, 1862: "The noble gift of Mr. Peabody actually takes away the public breath...and sends a thrill through the public heart.... A man gives his fortune during his lifetime for an object going back to a resolution he had held more than a quarter of a century...to elevate the poor. Party strife and national bickering have not changed this good American; wars and rumours of wars have not turned him...from his...purpose."
London Morning Herald, March 27, 1862: "One of the merchant princes of the world has just presented [London] with a gift for which thousands will bless his name.... Whilst his countrymen are warring...with each other, this generous American is working out...good-will among his adopted people." London Sun, March 27, 1862: " How can England ever go to war with a nation whose leading man among us thus sympathizes with and blesses her poor? Who of us will not set the deed of Mr. Peabody...against that of Captain Wilkes....?"
London Review, March 29, 1862: "From America of late has come war, desolation, and animosity. The close ties of...friendships that linked Englishmen and Americans...seemed dissolved.... In the midst of this comes Mr. Peabody's gift to discard prejudices on both sides of the Atlantic. We have had a desperate family quarrel, and almost come to blows; Mr. Peabody...by a well-timed act...awakens...better sentiments." Leeds Mercury, March 27, 1862: "An American citizen has now come forward to excite the wonder and admiration of the world."
When friend and sometime agent Horatio Gates Somerby (1805-72), a Vermont-born London resident genealogist, sent Peabody these London newspaper clippings, Peabody replied: "I had not the least conception that it would cause so much excitement over the country."
British Honors
British honors evoked by Peabody's gift to London included membership in the ancient guild of the Clothworkers' Company of London (July 2, 1862). He was granted the Freedom of the City of London (July 10, 1862), the first of only five American so honored; others being President U. S. Grant, June 15, 1877; President Theodore Roosevelt, May 3, 1910; General John J. Pershing, July 18, 1919; and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, June 1, 1945.
Peabody had been denied membership in London's Reform Club (1844) when Americans were disdained because nine U. S. states had stopped interest payments on their bonds sold abroad. When payment was resumed retroactively Peabody, who had publicly urged this course, was admitted to the Parthenon Club (1848), the City of London Club (1850), and the most prestigious Athenaeum Club (March 12, 1862). The Fishmongers' Company of London made Peabody an honorary member (April 18, 1866). When Oxford University granted him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree (June 26, 1867), undergraduates cheered, waved their caps, and beat the arms of their chairs with the flat of their hands. Jackson's Oxford Journal (June 29, 1867) recorded: "The lion of the day was beyond a doubt, Mr. Peabody."
Peabody's seated statue, sculptured and cast by Salem, Massachusetts-born William Wetmore Story (1819-95), paid for by public subscription, was unveiled July 23, 1869, on London's Threadneedle Street, near the Royal Exchange, by Queen Victoria's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. The only four statues of Americans in London include George Peabody (1869), Abraham Lincoln (1920), George Washington (1921), and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1948).
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria's advisors had informed Her Majesty that, when asked privately, Peabody had declined either a baronetcy or the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. To accept would be to lose his U. S. citizenship, which he felt he could not do.
Her Majesty's Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell (1792-1878) suggested instead a letter from the Queen and the gift of a miniature portrait of the Queen, such as was given to foreign ambassadors who signed a treaty with Britain.
The Queen's letter to Peabody, March 28, 1866, expressed thanks for his "noble act of more than princely munificence...to relieve the wants of her poor subjects residing in London. It is an act...wholly without parallel.... "The Queen...understands Mr. Peabody to feel himself debarred from accepting [other] distinctions." [She asks him instead] "to accept a miniature portrait of herself, which she will have painted for him, and which...can...be sent to him in America."
Peabody thanked the Queen by letter on April 3, 1866. He received Her Majesty's miniature portrait from British Ambassador Sir Frederick Bruce (1814-67) in Washington, D.C., March 1867. It was 14" long by 10" wide, had been especially painted for him by British artist F. A. C. Tilt, baked on enamel, and set in a sold gold frame, said to have cost $70,000. It was deposited in a specially built vault, with Peabody's other honors, in the Peabody Institute Library, Peabody, Massachusetts.
John Bright to the Queen on George Peabody
British statesman and Member of Parliament John Bright (1811-89), who had befriended Peabody from 1867 and had gone fishing with him on the Shannon River, Limerick, Ireland, dined with the Queen, December 30, 1868. Bright recorded in his diary the conversation: "Some remarks were made about Mr. Peabody: it arose from something about Ireland, and my having been there on a visit to him. [The Queen] remarked what a very rich man he must be, and how great his gifts."
[Bright recorded that Peabody] "told me how he valued the portrait [the Queen] had given him, that he made a sort of shrine for it, and that it was a thing of great interest in America. Peabody then "said to me, 'The Americans are as fond of your Queen as the English are.' To which she replied, 'Yes, the American people have also been kind to me.'."
Queen Victoria's Second Letter to Peabody
Leaving London suddenly on what he knew would be his last U. S. visit, Peabody was in Salem, Massachusetts, when he received Queen Victoria's second letter. She wrote (June 20, 1869): "The Queen is very sorry that Mr. Peabody's sudden departure has made it impossible for her to see him before he left England, and she is concerned to hear that he is gone in bad health."
The Queen continued: "She now writes him a line to express her hope that he may return to this country quite recovered, and that she may then have the opportunity, of which she has now been deprived, of seeing him and offering him her personal thanks for all he has done for the people."
Publishing the Queen's letter, the New York Times added: "Queen Victoria has paid our great countryman a delicate and graceful compliment. Mr. Peabody left England unexpectedly, his departure known only to a few friends. His feeble health became known to the Queen through London newspapers. With her goodness of heart which Americans never fail to appreciate she sent him a personal letter." On July 19, 1869, Peabody replied, assuring the Queen of his "heartfelt gratitude."
Queen Victoria's Last Contact
Learning of Peabody's hasty return to London (October 8, 1869), before she knew of his precarious condition, she asked her privy councilor Arthur Helps (1813-75) to invite Peabody to visit her at Windsor Castle. Helps wrote to Sir Curtis Lampson in whose London home Peabody rested (Oct. 30, 1869): "'Regarding Mr. Peabody, the Queen thinks the best way would be for her to ask him down to Windsor for one or two nights, where he could rest--and need not come to dinner, or any meals if he feels unequal to it; but where she could see him quietly at any time of the day most convenient to him." But it was too late. Largely unconscious his last days, Peabody died November 4, 1869.
U. S. Honors
Chief among Peabody's U. S. honors was the U. S. Congressional Resolution of Thanks and Gold Medal for his PEF, passed in the U.S. Senate (March 8, 1867), in the U. S. House (March 9, 1867), and signed by President Andrew Johnson (March 16, 1867), who welcomed Peabody at the White House (April 25, 1867). These, his Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard University (July 17, 1867), and his other honors received in the U. S. and England, are displayed in the Peabody Institute Library, Peabody, Massachusetts.
Winthrop's Eulogy, February 8, 1870
All was ready for the final act: Winthrop's eulogy of George Peabody, February 8, 1870, a bitterly cold day. Thousands poured into tiny Peabody, Massachusetts, by special morning trains which ran full from Boston. Large crowds were quiet and respectful. The 50 state troopers had little to do but give directions.
South Congregational Church filled quickly. Queen Victoria's son, Prince Arthur (1850-1942), in the seventh pew from the pulpit, held all eyes. His retinue, including British Minister to the U. S. Sir Edward Thornton, sat nearby.
Behind Prince Arthur sat HMS Monarch Captain John E. Commerell, USS Plymouth's Captain William H. Macomb, Admiral Farragut's staff, Massachusetts Governor William Claflin, Maine Governor Joshua L. Chamberlain, the mayors of eight New England cities, Harvard University President Charles William Eliot (1834-1926), and others.
On the first six rows sat Peabody's relatives, elderly citizens who knew him in youth, and the trustees of his institutes and funds. Anthems were sung. Scripture was read. Robert Charles Winthrop rose to give the eulogy.
Robert Charles Winthrop was the descendant of an early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a Harvard University graduate, trained in Daniel Webster's law office, member and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Peabody's philanthropic advisor, and the PEF board of trustees president.
Winthrop began: "What a career this has been whose final scene lies before us! Who can contemplate his rise from lowly beginnings to these final royal honors without admiration? His death, painless and peaceful, came after he completed his great dream and saw his old friends and loved ones."
Winthrop continued: "He had ambition and wanted to do grand things in a grand way. His public charity is too well known to bear repetition and I believe he also did much private good which remains unknown. The trusts he established, the institutes he founded, the buildings he raised stand before all eyes."
"I have authority for saying," Winthrop continued, "that he planned these for many years, for in private talks he told me all he planned and when I expressed my amazement at the magnitude of his purpose, he said to me with guileless simplicity: 'Why Mr. Winthrop, this is no new idea to me. From the earliest of my manhood, I have contemplated some such disposition of my property; and I have prayed my heavenly Father, day by day, that I might be enabled, before I died, to show my gratitude for the blessings which He has bestowed upon me by doing some great good to my fellow-men.'"
The words underlined above are engraved on Peabody's marker in Westminster Abbey, London, where his remains rested for 30 days, November 12-December 11, 1869. That marker and the above words on it were refurbished for the February 12, 1995, bicentennial ceremony of Peabody's birth held in London's Westminster Abbey.
Winthrop further said: "To measure his gifts in dollars and pounds or in the number of people served is inadequate. He did something more. The successful way he arranged the machinery of world-wide philanthropy compels attention. It is a lesson that cannot be lost to history. It has inspired and will continue to inspire others to do likewise. This was the greatness of his life."
"Now, all that is mortal of him," Winthrop said, "comes back, borne with honors that mark a conquering hero. The battle he fought was the greed within him. His conquest was the victory he achieved over the gaining, hoarding, saving instinct. Such is the conqueror we make ready to bury in the earth this day.
Winthrop continued: "And so was fulfilled for him a prophecy he heard once as the subject of a sermon, on which by some force of reflection lingered in his mind and which he more than once mentioned to me: 'And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear nor dark; but it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, or night: but it shall come to pass that at evening time it shall be light.'" Winthrop said that Peabody first heard this text, Zechariah 14: 6-7, in a sermon by the Reverend Dr. John Lothrop (1772-1820) of Brattle Street, Boston, date not known.
Winthrop concluded: "And so we bid thee farewell, noble friend. The village of thy birth weeps. The flower of Essex County stands at thy grave. Massachusetts mourns her son. Maine does honor to thee. New England and Old England join hands because of thee. The children of the South praise thy works. Chiefs of the Republic stand with royalty at thy bier. And so we bid thee farewell, friend of mankind."
Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Mass.
The New York Times described the final burial scene at Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts, on February 8, 1870: "There were about two hundred sleigh coaches in the procession. The route was shortened somewhat in consequence of the prevalence of the storm. On arriving at the Peabody tomb, there was no special service, the coffin being placed reverently therein, after which the procession returned to the Institute, and the great pageantry attending the obsequies of the great philanthropist was ended."
Harmony Grove Cemetery's 65 acres of avenues and walks, first laid out in 1840, had been a thick walnut grove when Peabody was a boy. He could see it from the attic of the house where he was born. On a knoll where he had once played he had chosen the family burial plot on Anemone Ave., lot number 51. There, where he had brought together the remains of his mother, father, sisters, and brothers, he was laid to rest. Ninety-six days of unprecedented funeral honors had ended. His works remain. Public memory of him has since grown dim, except at his institutes and among those who care to search the records.
Memory has also dimmed of those few days that summer of 1869 at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, when two old men, one from Massachusetts, the other from Virginia, turned from Civil War strife to the healing power of education. One, a lifelong soldier, had become president of a struggling college; the other, a volunteer for 14 days in the War of 1812, merchant, London-based banker, and creator of philanthropic institutions.
The two old men walked arm in arm, enjoyed each other, spoke of educating new generations, of reconciliation, of healing, and of better days to ahead.
END OF MANUSCRIPT. Corrections, errors, suggestions appreciated: bfparker@frontiernet.net
About the Parkers: 24 of their book titles are listed in:
http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P
For writings by the Parkers in blogs, enter bfparker in google.com or in any other search engine.
James Albert Michener (1907-97): Educator, Textbook Editor, Journalist, Writer-Novelist, and Educational Philanthropist. An Imaginary Conversation.
"James Albert Michener (1907-97): Educator, Textbook Editor, Journalist, Writer-Novelist, and Educational Philanthropist. An Imaginary Conversation," by Franklin Parker and Betty Parker.
Note: The following imagined conversation with the late James Albert Michener was given by the authors at Uplands Retirement Community, June 17, 2002. 63 Heritage Lane, Crossville, Tenn. 38571-8270, e-mail bfparker@frontiernet.net
This paper explores the circumstances that made Michener a world renowned writer and best selling novelist. Was his success due to talent, luck, or sheer pluck?
QUESTIONER: Mr. Michener, you grew up an orphan in Doylestown, Pa., north of Philadelphia, and were raised by a foster mother. True?
MICHENER: What I knew growing up was that my widowed mother, Mrs. Mabel Michener, took in orphans. My father Edwin Michener died before I was born. We were Quakers. My older brother was Robert. We were a poor but happy family.
QUESTIONER: You were 19, a freshman at Swarthmore College, when you were first told you were an illegitimate child. Who told you?
MICHENER: An uncle, Edwin Michener's brother, told me that Edwin Michener died five years before I was born.
QUESTIONER: What did Mabel Michener say?
MICHENER: That she took me in when I was a few weeks old without a name or birth certificate. She raised me as her son. Others later told me different versions of my birth. I never investigated them. Mabel Michener was the only mother I knew and loved.
QUESTIONER: She received little charitable help for her foster home; took in washing; sewed for people; cleaned houses for a realtor in order to live rent-free. What about when she was sick and couldn't feed you?
MICHENER: She left us temporarily with her sister whose husband worked at the Doylestown poorhouse, a dismal place.
QUESTIONER: Any bad memories of the poorhouse?
MICHENER: One old man committed suicide. I vowed to do anything to keep from ending up in such an ash heap.
QUESTIONER: At night Mabel Michener read aloud Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist; Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn; The Iliad, and other poems. Her brother, your uncle, brought home an old Victrola and classical records.
MICHENER: She never earned enough to buy herself new clothes. But she shared with us great books, beautiful music, and love.
QUESTIONER: You early wandered far from home. Was it because you were curious about people and places?
MICHENER: I hitched barge rides on the Delaware River. I hitchhiked out of state with a friend or alone. I sent postcards home saying that I was o.k. I had hitchhiked to 45 states by age 18.
QUESTIONER: Here's an anonymous letter you received when a newspaper article appeared about you and your first book: "Dear Mr. 'Michener'???? You don't know who I am but I sure know who you are. You aren't a Michener and never were. You're a fraud to go around using that good name…. [Y]ou ought to be ashamed of yourself…. I'll be watching you, [signed] A real Michener."
MICHENER: I never bothered to find out who sent that letter and later hate mail.
QUESTIONER: Your male guidance included the two men who told you that the local poolroom was no place for you. And George C. Murray, a roofer, who started a boys' club where you played basketball. And high school coach Allen Gardy encouraged your basketball skill.
MICHENER: These men kept me and other boys out of trouble. Sports, school, and after school jobs kept me busy.
QUESTIONER: Margaret Mead the anthropologist also grew up in Doylestown?
MICHENER: She and I had the first library cards at the new public library. Since we'd read all the children's books the librarian let us take out adult books.
QUESTIONER: Your classmate Lester Trauch described you thus: "[Jim Michener] was the poorest boy in school, but the brightest boy. He wore sneakers so worn his toes stuck out. He was not one of the gang, liked to be by himself, was obsessed with basketball, and never wasted a minute. He walked to school reading his lessons; read in the halls between classes. When the history teacher asked a question, Michener was the only one [who knew] the answer. He had done all this extra research. The teacher was fascinated, but we [kids] just laughed."
MICHENER: Mabel Michener kept me and my second hand clothes clean. Ridicule sometimes hurt but I put it behind me. Basketball and my sports articles helped. Our high school yearbook, The Torch, listed me as "the most talkative…most prompt…most original student."
QUESTIONER: Besides many after school jobs you were also a plumber's apprentice. Your uncle said: "Jim, you are going to be something better than a plumber." How did you get to Swarthmore College?
MICHENER: My Latin teacher recommended me, and maybe helped me win a four year scholarship, 1925-29. I focused on study, books, and reading. For me, seeking independence, Swarthmore was ideal.
QUESTIONER: What pleased you most at Swarthmore?
MICHENER: Its Honors Program. I pursued my own last two-year self-directed program. I read English and American literary classics and wrote weekly papers.
QUESTIONER: You worked in the Swarthmore Chautauqua traveling adult program which offered lectures, operas, and plays?
MICHENER: Yes, the summer of 1928. I did various jobs and acted in plays. I worked nights at Swarthmore's Strath Haven Inn as watchman and switchboard operator. I worked summers at a Philadelphia amusement park, observed people, and saw carnival chicanery of all kinds.
QUESTIONER: You graduated from Swarthmore in June 1929, just before the Great Depression?
MICHENER: I taught English at a Quaker prep school, the Hill School, Pottstown, Pa. I taught there two years, 1929-31, read a lot and dreamed of being a writer.
QUESTIONER: Why did you leave the Hill School?
MICHENER: Swarthmore awarded me its Lippincott Fellowship for study abroad.
QUESTIONER: You crossed the Atlantic and enrolled at St. Andrews University, Scotland.
MICHENER: I saw much poverty and many people on the dole in London, Glasgow, and Dundee. I traveled alone or with student groups in Europe.
QUESTIONER: You toured Italy to study art, learned about Mussolini's fascist regime, and toured Spain, France, Belgium, and other European countries.
MICHENER: I observed early fascism, nazism, communism, and heard third world students complain about their colonial masters. I wasn't surprised when colonialism collapsed after World War II.
QUESTIONER: You went to a remote Scottish island, Barra, in the Hebrides to collect old Celtic folk songs and legends. You traveled in Spain with bullfighters who performed in various towns.
MICHENER: A St. Andrews classmate told me that Dutch freighters sometimes hired students in exchange for a berth. I worked on a cargo ship in the Mediterranean and earned British merchant marine status.
QUESTIONER: The two years abroad heightened your wanderlust. What did you find on your return to the U.S., in the summer of 1933?
MICHENER: I saw apple sellers and soup lines in New York City (NYC). At 26, I taught English at the George School, a Quaker secondary school, Newtown, Pa, not far from Doylestown.
QUESTIONER: You married Patti Koon while at the George School?
MICHENER: I met her while taking summer courses at the University of Virginia. We married July 27, 1935. We went together to the George School.
QUESTIONER: Why did you and Patti Koon leave the George School, June 1936, for the Colorado State College of Education at Greeley?
MICHENER: To teach social studies in the College High School and to study for a master's degree, which I received in June 1937. Colorado State was a progressive education college. It emphasized democratic values and the school's responsibility to help improve society. I also taught four college courses.
QUESTIONER: One Greeley colleague wrote: "[Michener] was one of the most dynamic educators I have known…. He stimulated youth to comprehend interrelationship[s] among all fields of knowledge."
MICHENER: The social studies looked at societal problems from historical, geographical, anthropological, and other viewpoints. I used this all-around approach in my 1959 novel Hawaii. At Greeley I learned of the opening of the American West, which I told in my 1974 novel, Centennial.
QUESTIONER: During the 1936-41 Greeley years you wrote 15 journal articles, edited one social studies book, co-authored another, and wrote an essay, "The Beginning Teacher," for a third book. Pretty good for a young educator. Did you write any fiction?
MICHENER: One short story, "Who is Virgil T. Fry?," in Clearing House, October 1941, a journal for high school teachers. It was about a teacher shunned by colleagues, fired by the school board, but beloved by students because he inspired them to learn.
QUESTIONER: Why did you leave Greeley? First for Harvard and then for Macmillan Publishing Co.?
MICHENER: I took a leave of absence to lecture on the social studies at Harvard Graduate School of Education and to pursue a Ph.D. degree in Education, which I did not complete. I returned to Greeley in 1941. Macmillan's high school textbook editor, visiting Greeley, wanted me to work for him. Editing and publishing, I thought, would get me closer to writing.
QUESTIONER: You were at Macmillan while Europe was plunged into World War II. Pearl Harbor was attacked. Patti Koon Michener joined the WACs. You entered the U.S. Navy.
MICHENER: I enlisted as an ordinary seaman in October 1942. In early 1943, at age 36, I was commissioned a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, received training at Dartmouth College, had assignments in the U.S., but kept asking to go to a combat zone.
QUESTIONER: Your small military group was transported to the South Pacific on a merchant marine ship. You never saw the captain, who was rumored to be drunk and in hiding. The unionized merchant marines ran the ship, ate the best food, and used most of the water. What happened?
MICHENER: One of our no-nonsense army captains at gun point forced our access to edible food and sufficient water. Before landing we ransacked the missing captain's quarters. My irascible bunkmate said: Michener, you talk about wanting to travel. I am typing out orders authorizing your official travel anywhere in the South Pacific, signed and stamped with an official seal.
QUESTIONER: Did the forged papers work?
MICHENER: Until I got other bona fide U.S. Navy orders.
QUESTIONER: One of your Navy assignment was to thank with gifts the native men who rescued downed American pilots. Getting to the appropriate island, you explained to a group of Melanesian people that you were looking for these native men. They laughed and pushed forward an older girl who had seen the downed plane, dragged the Americans out, and had hidden and fed them. Describe your mission to Bora Bora?
MICHENER: Military personnel are routinely returned to the U.S. after stipulated months in combat areas. On Bora Bora some enlisted men refused to go home. Others threatened mutiny if they were forced to leave. I had to investigate this unusual situation.
QUESTIONER: You described Bora Bora as the most beautiful island in the world and as close to paradise as men in this world ever get, that it was inhabited by beautiful Polynesian girls, that there was a party every night. There was dancing till dawn. There was good island food and a regular supply ship from the States once a month.
MICHENER: The base was efficiently run during the day. At night a skeleton crew took over. Men left the base by truck or jeep, dropping off one by one at the palm huts of their lovely Polynesian lady friends. Relationships had formed, children were born, all hush hush. I had to report on this sensitive situation.
QUESTIONER: You traveled by Navy planes or ships to 49 South Pacific islands, covered about 150,000 miles, landed on hastily built air strips a few days after heavy fighting subsided. What made you finally draft your first book of fiction, Tales of the South Pacific?
MICHENER: Returning in the dark from a routine mission my pilot kept missing the poorly lit New Caledonia air strip. We braced for a crash landing, just made it, and were badly shaken. If I had died, I would have left nothing behind. I was approaching 40, mind you. That near crash prompted me to draft South Pacific stories running through my mind.
QUESTIONER: Your first draft was written on the island of Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, south of Guadalcanal, in a Quonset hut, by pecking at a typewriter with your two index fingers. What was the story line?
MICHENER: Tales of the South Pacific consisted of 18 loosely connected stories about the comedy, boredom, shenanigans of Navy life on a Pacific island between military battles. The stories showed the interplay of Navy men, Navy nurses, and conniving natives; the funny aspects of military planes, jeeps, bulldozers, canned goods imposed on simple people living on beautiful islands.
QUESTIONER: You sent your draft to Macmillan, whose chief awaited your return. You delayed your return for a last tour of duty as Naval historian in the South Pacific. Did Macmillan accept your manuscript?
MICHENER: Yes, I was discharged from the U.S. Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander and returned to work at Macmillan in December 1945.
QUESTIONER: What happened to your wife, Patti Koon Michener?
MICHENER: We did not live together after the war. She returned to her South Carolina hometown. I lived in a Greenwich Village apartment, in Manhattan, near Macmillan, where I edited textbooks and in spare time revised my Tales of the South Pacific.
QUESTIONER: Tales was to be published in 1946 but was delayed until February 1947, three years after you started it. Why the delay?
MICHENER: So that two of the 18 connected short stories could be published in the Saturday Evening Post, December 1946; January 1947. Had publication not been delayed to 1947, Tales would never have won the Pulitzer Prize.
QUESTIONER: Tales was little reviewed except by New York Times book reviewer Orville Prescott, who praised it. He wrote: "This long book of 18…linked short stories is, I am convinced, a substantial achievement which will make Mr. Michener famous…. " Did Mabel Michener know of your success?
MICHENER: Sadly, when I came home from the war she was senile, did not know me, did not know I wrote a book. She died in March 1946.
QUESTIONER: You worked at Macmillan and in your spare time wrote your second book, an autobiographical novel, The Fires of Spring. Why were you slow to leave Macmillan for full time writing?
MICHENER: A survey showed the odds against freelance writing: one in 400 novels is published; one of every 2,000+ magazine articles submitted is accepted and paid for; the average full time novelist earned $1,800 a year. And so many people are trying to write the great American novel.
QUESTIONER: Then, on May 3, 1948, the Pulitzer Prize miracle happened.
MICHENER: I was at Macmillan editing a geography textbook with my senior colleague. The phone rang. He answered, listened, hung up, and said, "That was the Associated Press. Tales of the South Pacific just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction."
QUESTIONER: You had no idea Tales was being considered, thought the phone call was a mistake. Why do you think it won?
MICHENER: I later heard that the Pulitzer selection chairman, New York Times correspondent Arthur Krock, received a phone call from Alice Roosevelt Longworth. She was Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, wife of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the matron of Washington, D.C. society. She asked Arthur Krock which 1947 novel was being considered. When told, she said: it does not compare to Michener's Tales of the South Pacific. Krock immediately put copies of Tales into the hands of his committee members.
QUESTIONER: Arthur Krock later wrote: "I gave my reasons [for nominating Tales] and the Board accepted them…. That prize initiated the public and critical awareness of Michener that assured his subsequent literary prominence and success."
MICHENER I met Alice Roosevelt Longworth at a swank dinner. She said: You certainly did well with that prize we gave you. You didn't let us down. It was daring of Krock to give you that award. Awards should be given to people at the start of their careers, not at the end. How can we be sure who will be a producer and who not? Thank you for making our gamble succeed.
QUESTIONER: In 1946 Tales would have lost to Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. In 1948 it would have lost to James Gould Cozzens' Guard of Honor. It could only win in 1947 and then only because Alice Roosevelt Longworth intervened. oHow was Tales chosen as the source for the Broadway musical, South Pacific?
MICHENER: MGM studio heads saw no story line in Tales. The reader who had recommended it to MGM told stage designer Jo Mielziner that Tales had stage possibilities. Jo Mielziner got composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to read the book. They liked it and turned for help to stage director Joshua Logan and producer Leland Hayward, who got Enzio Pinza and Mary Martin in the cast.
QUESTIONER: South Pacific was a spirited musical and a compelling drama of U.S. sailors and Seabees awaiting a major battle against the Japanese on a South Sea island. There was the love affair of French planter Enzio Pinza with Navy nurse Mary Martin, and a Navy lieutenant with a Tonkenese girl. The action was rowdy, romantic, and tragic.
MICHENER: The music was uplifting; the songs magnificent: Imagine Enzio Pinza's, "Some Enchanted Evening." And Mary Martin's, "I'm Going to Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair." And "Bali Ha'i. Come back, Come back, to Bali Ha'i," that haunting melody that evoked the sun-setting beauty of the Pacific Islands. South Pacific had everything, even, "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught," pleading with adults not to pass their prejudices on to their children.
QUESTIONER: Rodgers and Hammerstein urged you to invest in the show as an angel. You had little money, had married again, and were building a home. So they lent you money to buy 6% interest in the show. South Pacific ran 1,925 performances, almost five years, and earned you about $10,000 annually. Now what about your second wife, Vange Nord?
MICHENER: We met at a NYC party. She worked in NYC as a researcher and wanted to write. We married September 2, 1948. I worked at Macmillan three days a week and wrote the rest of the time. Vange Nord supervised the building of our new home in Pipersville, Pa., near Doylestown.
QUESTIONER: For what other reason was South Pacific so successful?
MICHENER: Americans like war-inspired dramas: There was Floradora after the Spanish American War; What Price Glory?, All Quiet on the Western Front after World War I; Mister Roberts, South Pacific after World War II.
QUESTIONER: Your literary agent Helen Strauss wrote this about you: "…[Michener] is a man of many moods and a loner, and his interests are varied. One might be put off by his reticence, but his modesty and humility are genuine."
MICHENER: Helen Strauss, great literary agent, got Holiday magazine editors to finance my 8-month 1949 return to the South Pacific for an article series on Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand. Random House published it as Return to Paradise, made into two motion pictures, one with Gary Cooper, the other with Paul Newman. She got me another late summer 1950 trip to write about Asia for Life magazine.
QUESTIONER: Your Voice of Asia, published in late 1951, was selected by the Literary Guild in 1952 and translated into 53 languages. Why this public interest in Asia?
MICHENER: The U.S. and USSR competed to win Asian loyalties. I wanted to write fiction but Strauss got me Cold War reportorial assignments. I went to Asia again the second half of 1952.
QUESTIONER: Strauss also put you in touch with Reader's Digest founder DeWitt Wallace?
MICHENER: I lunched with the DeWitt Wallaces summer 1952. We talked about the Korean War. I analyzed it for them. We hit it off.
QUESTIONER: The Reader's Digest, one of the world's most popular magazines, had 12 million circulation in the U.S. plus 37 foreign language editions. Its formula was: faith in God, family unity, patriotism, and the work ethic. Your biographer Hayes wrote: "If ever a magazine was designed for a writer, the Reader's Digest was designed for James A. Michener: teacher, patriot, student of the world, and optimist. The combination of magazine and writer was a perfect fit; one that has been rarely repeated in the history of publishing."
MICHENER: DeWitt Wallace wanted me to write exclusively for the Reader's Digest. Helen Strauss said that a freelance writer had to be completely free.
Continued as James Albert Michener (1907-97): Novelist, Part 2 of 2 Parts."
. Send comments, corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net
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QUESTIONER: DeWitt Wallace then made you one of the most generous offers in publishing history. What was that offer?
MICHENER: He said: You can go anywhere in the world you want to go. You can write anything you want to write. We'll pay all your expenses, no matter where you go or what you do. You let us have first shot at what you've written. If we cannot use it, you can sell it elsewhere and you won't owe us a penny.
QUESTIONER: Besides factual writing about the Korean War for Reader's Digest you wrote a novel, The Bridges of Toko'ri, based on a real incident. It was published in Life magazine, then as a Random House book, and filmed with William Holden. What was the story line?
MICHENER: A World War II U.S. Navy Reserve pilot, happy with his family and civilian job, is brought back to fly a jet fighter in Korea. His mission: to bomb four vital Communist bridges in a narrow ravine at Toko-ri. He knows he is a sitting duck for enemy guns but executes the mission to defend American freedom.
QUESTIONER: You narrated "Appointment in Asia," a weekly half hour TV program for the State Department, were advisor to the Asia Foundation, and were asked to write about Asian problems for various agencies. Did Vange Nord Michener travel with you?
MICHENER: Less and less and then not at all. She wanted a writing career and a husband to help her. I was an absent husband constantly writing his next book. She asked for a divorce, which came in January 1955.
QUESTIONER: Your 1955 novel Sayonara was timely, about interracial marriage, GIs and Japanese girls, written just before you married your Japanese-American third wife. How did you meet Mari Yoriko Sabusawa?
MICHENER: At a Chicago luncheon, 1954. For Life magazine I interviewed a GI and his Tokyo-born war bride living in Chicago. At the luncheon Mari defended American-Japanese marriages, saying that most do succeed.
QUESTIONER: Mari was born in Colorado, 1920, of Japanese immigrants. The family moved to California. After Pearl Harbor, the family was interned. A relocation plan for Japanese American students placed Mari in Antioch College, Ohio, where she received her degree. She then translated Japanese propaganda into English for a U. S. intelligence service.
MICHENER: She was editor of the American Library Association's Bulletin in Chicago when we met in 1954. We were married October 23, 1955 and had 39 glorious years together.
QUESTIONER: Your biographer Hayes thus described her: Mari regarded marriage as her career. She cared about his peace of mind. To see Jim Michener you first had to penetrate her protective wall…. She was his housekeeper, cook, secretary, travel agent, librarian, valet, hostess, chauffeur, and accountant. She freed him to work uninterrupted. He cherished her. oMr. Michener, how were you and Mari involved in the October 1956 Hungarian revolt against the USSR? Why did you write The Bridge at Andau, 1957?
MICHENER: I was in Europe in 1956 with Mari. The Reader's Digest editor cabled me to cover the Hungarian revolt. I saw it as a harbinger of things to come. Soviet economics did not work. The USSR controlled Eastern Europe by force. On October 23, 1956, young Budapest dissidents, armed with sticks, stones, and Molotov cocktails, challenged Soviet tanks. Soviet reinforcements crushed the revolt, killed 80,000 Hungarians, forced 20,000 to flee, most of them over a bridge at Andau on the Austrian border. Mari, in Vienna, 50 miles away, made our home a way station for escaping Hungarians. I interviewed hundreds of them and helped some find residence in the U.S. and elsewhere.
QUESTIONER: Your biographer Hayes wrote this of your Hungarian experience: …"Michener patrolled the border alongside ministers, rabbis, fellow journalists, and the interpreters who helped him interview refugees as they crossed the rickety wooden footpath…near Andau. Hundreds…who crossed the bridge received a card bearing Michener's address…and the promise of a hot meal…in exchange for their stories…. Many…wept for…their parents, children, countrymen…[left behind]…. Michener…had never witnessed an event more brutal…."
MICHENER: World editions of Reader's Digest, March 1957, published a condensed version of The Bridge at Andau. Random House gave its profits to Hungarian relief. My royalties went to the Academy of Arts in Honolulu.
QUESTIONER: How did you feel about The Bridge at Andau?
MICHENER: It was a satisfying blow against Communism. I then determined to write epic novels, the first about Hawaii. In 1958 Mari and I moved to Waikiki.
QUESTIONER: The initial outline of your novel Hawaii shows its large scope, 1050 A.D. to 1954. You described minutely each incoming group: Polynesians, Japanese, and Filipinos through family stories, by generations, each a short novel in itself. Through successive characters you show the full range of Hawaiian history. oMr. Michener, why was your novel about Hawaii timely?
MICHENER: Hawaii, like America, was a melting pot settled by immigrants. It was a bridge to Asia. It was ripe for statehood. It had little crime and good schools. It paid more in federal taxes than ten states. Hawaii was published just before statehood, rode a crest of publicity, and was number three best seller of 1959 novels.
QUESTIONER: A Saturday Review writer recorded this: "Hawaii is…a masterful job of research, an absorbing performance of story telling, and a monumental account of the islands from geologic birth to sociological emergence as the newest, and perhaps the most interesting of the United States." Your biographer Hayes quoted you as saying: "With Hawaii I finally found great faith in myself as a writer…." Mr. Michener, why did you enter politics in the 1960s?
MICHENER: I was chairman of the Bucks County, Pa., committee to elect John F. Kennedy in 1960. My mistake was to run in 1962 as a Democrat candidate for Congress. Wise Mari kept saying, "Don't do it, don't do it." I lost and went back to writing books.
QUESTIONER: What inspired your novel, The Source, published in 1965?
MICHENER: I was in the Mediterranean in April 1963 when I ran into the future mayor of Jerusalem. He asked me to write a book about Israel similar to my book on Hawaii.
QUESTIONER: You said it should be written by a Jew but you then and there outlined such a novel for him. He couldn't find a Jewish writer and urged you to do it. You said you'd do it if you received bibliographic help.
MICHENER: Mari and I moved to Israel in May 1963, read hundreds of book, and pondered how to capture the Holy Land's long, tempestuous history. I did it through one archaeological dig, or Tell, at Makor, which means "source," sifting 15 layers of civilization through fictional families, showing the socio-economic-religious interaction of Jews, Christians, and Arabs, through peace and war from Biblical times to modern Israel.
QUESTIONER: Mr. Michener, our time is almost gone. We've traced you to age 60. You lived 30 more years, wrote more books, had quadruple bypass heart surgery, a hip replacement, and 4 years of dialysis, as listed in the Chronology below. oMr. Michener, you gave millions of readers pleasure, information, and hope. oYour tax advisor estimated that the U. S. spent $11,000 to educate you. You repaid society with over $68 million in income taxes. You and Mari (she died in 1994) donated over $100 million to educational institutions. Not bad for an orphan. Sleep well in your Austin, Texas grave. Sleep well.
Selected Works about James Albert Michener:
Becker, George J. James A. Michener. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1983.
Groseclose, Karen, and David A. Groseclose. James A. Michener: A Bibliography. Austin, Texas: State House Press, 1996.
Hayes, John P. James A. Michener. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1984.
Michener, James A. The World is My Home: A Memoir. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1992.
Severson, Marilyn S. James A Michener. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Internet
A computer internet search under James Albert Michener (1907-79) using any major search engine (http://www.google.com or others) will uncover a wealth of pertinent material.
James Albert Michener (1907-97) Chronology of Career, Published Books, Honors
1907, allegedly born February 3, 1907, an orphan, raised in foster home run by Mabel (Haddon) Michener (d. 1946), Doylestown, Pa. (Bucks County).
1921-25, Doylestown High School, Associate Editor of Torch, 2 years; Ed. In chief, 1 year. Basketball. Class President.
1925-29, Swarthmore College, 4-year scholarship, Contributions to "Portfolio." Graduated with B.A., English & history, With Highest Honors. 1928, summer, traveled with Swarthmore Chautauqua group.
1929-31, teacher, The Hill School, Pottstown, Pa. (Quaker prep school).
1931-33, awarded Swarthmore's Joshua Lippincott Fellowship for study/travel abroad. Studied at St. Andrews University, Scotland. Traveled widely in Europe.
1935, Married Patti Koon (divorced 1948).
1933-36, teacher, The George School, Newtown, Pa. (Quaker prep school).
1936-39, Associate Professor, Colorado State College of Education, Greeley. M.A. in 1937. 1938-40, Co-founded Angells Club, a discussion group with Colorado State College of Education, Greeley faculty, and community members.
1939-40, Visiting lecturer, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University.
1939, Edited The Future of the Social Studies (National Council for the Social Studies).
1940, co-authored The Unit in the Social Studies: Proposals for an Experimental Social Studies Curriculum (Harvard University Press). Introductory essay, "The Beginning Teacher," 10th Yearbook of the NCSS (Harvard University Press). 15 journal articles published, 1936-41.1940-41, 1946-49, Social Studies editor, Macmillan Publishing Co.
1942-46, U.S. Navy; sent to South Pacific, spring 1944. 1944-46, Naval historian, South Pacific; discharged with rank of Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy.
1947, Tales of the South Pacific, fiction, 18 connected short stories. Pulitzer Prize.
1948, divorced by Patti Koon, married Vange Nord.
1949, The Fires of Spring, autobiographical novel (New York: Random House). South Pacific, Broadway stage musical.
1951, Return to Paradise, non fiction, on Asian countries. The Voice of Asia.
1952-70, Roving editor, Readers Digest.
1953, President of the Asia Institute; The Bridges at Toko-Ri, novel about Korea War.
1954, Sayonara, novel about U.S. military-Japanese marriage. The Floating World.
1955, Divorced by Vange Nord, married Mari Yoriko Sabusawa (1920-94).
1956, Aided Hungarian refugees.
1957, Appointed to Federal Advisory Arts Commission. The Bridge at Andau, non fiction, about 1956 Hungarian revolt against USSR rule. Rascals in Paradise. Selected Writings of James A. Michener.
1958, Overseas Press Club Award for Readers Digest article on Andau (The Bridge at Andau). The Hokusai Sketchbooks.
1959, gave collection of Japanese prints to Honolulu Academy of Arts. Hawaii. Japanese Prints: From the Early Masters to the Modern.
1960, Chairman, Bucks County Citizens for Kennedy. 1961, Report of the County Chairman (Bucks County chairman to elect J.F. Kennedy). Appointed by Pres. Kennedy to manage U.S. Food for Peace. Program failed.
1962, Modern Japanese Prints. Ran and lost as Democratic candidate for Congress from 8th District, Pa.
1963, Caravans, novel. Helped establish Bucks County Arts Festival. Joined Americans for Permanent Peace in the Middle East. Received Einstein Award, Einstein Medical College.
1964, severe heart attack.
1965, The Source, novel about the Holy Land.
1967-68, President, Pennsylvania electoral College.
1968, Iberia, story about Spain. Gave collection of contemporary American art to the University of Texas, Austin.
1969, Presidential Lottery. The Reckless Gamble in Our Electoral System. The Quality of Life, essays.
1970, Facing East; the Quality of Life. Gave $100,000 to Swarthmore College programs for black studies and race relations. American-Hungarian Studies Award from George Washington University.
1970-74, Member, U.S. Advisory Commission on Information. Gave $100,000 to Kent State University for arts program.
1971, Kent State: What Happened and Why, factual account. The Drifters, novel.
1972, Accompanied Pres. Richard Nixon to China.
1973, A Michener Miscellany, 1950-1970. Editor, Firstfruits.
1974, Centennial, novel on Colorado and the U.S. West. About Centennial.
1975, Represented Pres. Gerald Ford at Okinawa World Exposition. Appointed to the Bicentennial Advisory Committee and to Citizens Advisory [U.S.] Stamp Committee.
1976, Sports in America.
1977, Medal of Freedom Award presented by Pres. Gerald Ford (highest award granted U.S. citizen). TV series programs, "The World of James A. Michener."
1978, Chesapeake, novel on colonial settlement of Maryland. Recipient of Pennsylvania Society Gold Medal.
1979, The Watermen. Member of NASA Advisory Council.
1980, The Covenant, novel on South Africa. The Quality of Life. Received the Franklin Award and the Spanish Institute Gold Medal. Gave $500,000 for the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.
1982, Space, novel, story of the U.S. space program.
1983, Collector, Forgers—and a Writer. Poland, novel. Testimony. Member of board for Radio Free Europe. Honored by the White House Arts Program for his financial assistance to artists.
1984, gave $2 million to Swarthmore College.
1985, Dedication of James A. Michener Arts Center, Bucks County, Pa. Received Exemplar Award from Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce. Texas, novel (commissioned to celebrate the state's 75th birthday), covers 450 years of the region's history.
1987, Legacy, novel on the U.S. Constitution on its bicentennial.
1988, Alaska, novel.
1989, Journey, novel, an excised chapter from Alaska published separately, describing the 2,043-mile trek of 4 explorers across the Canadian Yukon. Caribbean, novel. Six Days in Havana.
1990, The Eagle and the Raven. Pilgrimage.
1991, James A. Michener on the Social Studies; The Novel, a novel Gave $1 million to the University of Texas Graduate Writing program at the University of Houston. Gave $5 million to Swarthmore College. Named to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum Advisory Committee.
1992, The World is My Home, autobiography. James A. Michener's Writer's Handbook on the South Pacific, as told by James A. Michener [adaptation of the musical South Pacific], novel. Mexico, novel. My Lost Mexico, nonfiction. Gave $600,000 to the University of Northern Colorado Library. James A. Michener's Writer's Handbook: Explorations in Writing and Publishing, nonfiction.
1993, Creatures of the Kingdom, novel. Literary Reflections: Michener on Michener, Hemingway, Capote, and Others, (criticism) 1993.
1994, Mari Michener died. Recessional, novel about aging. William Penn. Pledged $5 million each to art museums in Doylestown, Pa. and Texas.
1995, Miracle in Seville. Ventures in Editing.
1996, The Genius Belt: The Story of the Arts in Bucks County, nonfiction. This Noble Land: My Vision for America, nonfiction. Named Outstanding Philanthropist by the National Society of Fund Raising Executives.
1997, October 16, Michener died; buried in Austin, Texas.
(Michener received more than 30 honorary doctorates in Humane Letters, Law, Theology, and Science).
END OF MANUSCRIPT.
Send comments, corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net
Addendum: 24 of Franklin and Betty J. Parker’s book titles are listed in: http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P
For their writings in blog form, enter bfparker in google.com or in any other search engine.
Note: The following imagined conversation with the late James Albert Michener was given by the authors at Uplands Retirement Community, June 17, 2002. 63 Heritage Lane, Crossville, Tenn. 38571-8270, e-mail bfparker@frontiernet.net
This paper explores the circumstances that made Michener a world renowned writer and best selling novelist. Was his success due to talent, luck, or sheer pluck?
QUESTIONER: Mr. Michener, you grew up an orphan in Doylestown, Pa., north of Philadelphia, and were raised by a foster mother. True?
MICHENER: What I knew growing up was that my widowed mother, Mrs. Mabel Michener, took in orphans. My father Edwin Michener died before I was born. We were Quakers. My older brother was Robert. We were a poor but happy family.
QUESTIONER: You were 19, a freshman at Swarthmore College, when you were first told you were an illegitimate child. Who told you?
MICHENER: An uncle, Edwin Michener's brother, told me that Edwin Michener died five years before I was born.
QUESTIONER: What did Mabel Michener say?
MICHENER: That she took me in when I was a few weeks old without a name or birth certificate. She raised me as her son. Others later told me different versions of my birth. I never investigated them. Mabel Michener was the only mother I knew and loved.
QUESTIONER: She received little charitable help for her foster home; took in washing; sewed for people; cleaned houses for a realtor in order to live rent-free. What about when she was sick and couldn't feed you?
MICHENER: She left us temporarily with her sister whose husband worked at the Doylestown poorhouse, a dismal place.
QUESTIONER: Any bad memories of the poorhouse?
MICHENER: One old man committed suicide. I vowed to do anything to keep from ending up in such an ash heap.
QUESTIONER: At night Mabel Michener read aloud Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist; Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn; The Iliad, and other poems. Her brother, your uncle, brought home an old Victrola and classical records.
MICHENER: She never earned enough to buy herself new clothes. But she shared with us great books, beautiful music, and love.
QUESTIONER: You early wandered far from home. Was it because you were curious about people and places?
MICHENER: I hitched barge rides on the Delaware River. I hitchhiked out of state with a friend or alone. I sent postcards home saying that I was o.k. I had hitchhiked to 45 states by age 18.
QUESTIONER: Here's an anonymous letter you received when a newspaper article appeared about you and your first book: "Dear Mr. 'Michener'???? You don't know who I am but I sure know who you are. You aren't a Michener and never were. You're a fraud to go around using that good name…. [Y]ou ought to be ashamed of yourself…. I'll be watching you, [signed] A real Michener."
MICHENER: I never bothered to find out who sent that letter and later hate mail.
QUESTIONER: Your male guidance included the two men who told you that the local poolroom was no place for you. And George C. Murray, a roofer, who started a boys' club where you played basketball. And high school coach Allen Gardy encouraged your basketball skill.
MICHENER: These men kept me and other boys out of trouble. Sports, school, and after school jobs kept me busy.
QUESTIONER: Margaret Mead the anthropologist also grew up in Doylestown?
MICHENER: She and I had the first library cards at the new public library. Since we'd read all the children's books the librarian let us take out adult books.
QUESTIONER: Your classmate Lester Trauch described you thus: "[Jim Michener] was the poorest boy in school, but the brightest boy. He wore sneakers so worn his toes stuck out. He was not one of the gang, liked to be by himself, was obsessed with basketball, and never wasted a minute. He walked to school reading his lessons; read in the halls between classes. When the history teacher asked a question, Michener was the only one [who knew] the answer. He had done all this extra research. The teacher was fascinated, but we [kids] just laughed."
MICHENER: Mabel Michener kept me and my second hand clothes clean. Ridicule sometimes hurt but I put it behind me. Basketball and my sports articles helped. Our high school yearbook, The Torch, listed me as "the most talkative…most prompt…most original student."
QUESTIONER: Besides many after school jobs you were also a plumber's apprentice. Your uncle said: "Jim, you are going to be something better than a plumber." How did you get to Swarthmore College?
MICHENER: My Latin teacher recommended me, and maybe helped me win a four year scholarship, 1925-29. I focused on study, books, and reading. For me, seeking independence, Swarthmore was ideal.
QUESTIONER: What pleased you most at Swarthmore?
MICHENER: Its Honors Program. I pursued my own last two-year self-directed program. I read English and American literary classics and wrote weekly papers.
QUESTIONER: You worked in the Swarthmore Chautauqua traveling adult program which offered lectures, operas, and plays?
MICHENER: Yes, the summer of 1928. I did various jobs and acted in plays. I worked nights at Swarthmore's Strath Haven Inn as watchman and switchboard operator. I worked summers at a Philadelphia amusement park, observed people, and saw carnival chicanery of all kinds.
QUESTIONER: You graduated from Swarthmore in June 1929, just before the Great Depression?
MICHENER: I taught English at a Quaker prep school, the Hill School, Pottstown, Pa. I taught there two years, 1929-31, read a lot and dreamed of being a writer.
QUESTIONER: Why did you leave the Hill School?
MICHENER: Swarthmore awarded me its Lippincott Fellowship for study abroad.
QUESTIONER: You crossed the Atlantic and enrolled at St. Andrews University, Scotland.
MICHENER: I saw much poverty and many people on the dole in London, Glasgow, and Dundee. I traveled alone or with student groups in Europe.
QUESTIONER: You toured Italy to study art, learned about Mussolini's fascist regime, and toured Spain, France, Belgium, and other European countries.
MICHENER: I observed early fascism, nazism, communism, and heard third world students complain about their colonial masters. I wasn't surprised when colonialism collapsed after World War II.
QUESTIONER: You went to a remote Scottish island, Barra, in the Hebrides to collect old Celtic folk songs and legends. You traveled in Spain with bullfighters who performed in various towns.
MICHENER: A St. Andrews classmate told me that Dutch freighters sometimes hired students in exchange for a berth. I worked on a cargo ship in the Mediterranean and earned British merchant marine status.
QUESTIONER: The two years abroad heightened your wanderlust. What did you find on your return to the U.S., in the summer of 1933?
MICHENER: I saw apple sellers and soup lines in New York City (NYC). At 26, I taught English at the George School, a Quaker secondary school, Newtown, Pa, not far from Doylestown.
QUESTIONER: You married Patti Koon while at the George School?
MICHENER: I met her while taking summer courses at the University of Virginia. We married July 27, 1935. We went together to the George School.
QUESTIONER: Why did you and Patti Koon leave the George School, June 1936, for the Colorado State College of Education at Greeley?
MICHENER: To teach social studies in the College High School and to study for a master's degree, which I received in June 1937. Colorado State was a progressive education college. It emphasized democratic values and the school's responsibility to help improve society. I also taught four college courses.
QUESTIONER: One Greeley colleague wrote: "[Michener] was one of the most dynamic educators I have known…. He stimulated youth to comprehend interrelationship[s] among all fields of knowledge."
MICHENER: The social studies looked at societal problems from historical, geographical, anthropological, and other viewpoints. I used this all-around approach in my 1959 novel Hawaii. At Greeley I learned of the opening of the American West, which I told in my 1974 novel, Centennial.
QUESTIONER: During the 1936-41 Greeley years you wrote 15 journal articles, edited one social studies book, co-authored another, and wrote an essay, "The Beginning Teacher," for a third book. Pretty good for a young educator. Did you write any fiction?
MICHENER: One short story, "Who is Virgil T. Fry?," in Clearing House, October 1941, a journal for high school teachers. It was about a teacher shunned by colleagues, fired by the school board, but beloved by students because he inspired them to learn.
QUESTIONER: Why did you leave Greeley? First for Harvard and then for Macmillan Publishing Co.?
MICHENER: I took a leave of absence to lecture on the social studies at Harvard Graduate School of Education and to pursue a Ph.D. degree in Education, which I did not complete. I returned to Greeley in 1941. Macmillan's high school textbook editor, visiting Greeley, wanted me to work for him. Editing and publishing, I thought, would get me closer to writing.
QUESTIONER: You were at Macmillan while Europe was plunged into World War II. Pearl Harbor was attacked. Patti Koon Michener joined the WACs. You entered the U.S. Navy.
MICHENER: I enlisted as an ordinary seaman in October 1942. In early 1943, at age 36, I was commissioned a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, received training at Dartmouth College, had assignments in the U.S., but kept asking to go to a combat zone.
QUESTIONER: Your small military group was transported to the South Pacific on a merchant marine ship. You never saw the captain, who was rumored to be drunk and in hiding. The unionized merchant marines ran the ship, ate the best food, and used most of the water. What happened?
MICHENER: One of our no-nonsense army captains at gun point forced our access to edible food and sufficient water. Before landing we ransacked the missing captain's quarters. My irascible bunkmate said: Michener, you talk about wanting to travel. I am typing out orders authorizing your official travel anywhere in the South Pacific, signed and stamped with an official seal.
QUESTIONER: Did the forged papers work?
MICHENER: Until I got other bona fide U.S. Navy orders.
QUESTIONER: One of your Navy assignment was to thank with gifts the native men who rescued downed American pilots. Getting to the appropriate island, you explained to a group of Melanesian people that you were looking for these native men. They laughed and pushed forward an older girl who had seen the downed plane, dragged the Americans out, and had hidden and fed them. Describe your mission to Bora Bora?
MICHENER: Military personnel are routinely returned to the U.S. after stipulated months in combat areas. On Bora Bora some enlisted men refused to go home. Others threatened mutiny if they were forced to leave. I had to investigate this unusual situation.
QUESTIONER: You described Bora Bora as the most beautiful island in the world and as close to paradise as men in this world ever get, that it was inhabited by beautiful Polynesian girls, that there was a party every night. There was dancing till dawn. There was good island food and a regular supply ship from the States once a month.
MICHENER: The base was efficiently run during the day. At night a skeleton crew took over. Men left the base by truck or jeep, dropping off one by one at the palm huts of their lovely Polynesian lady friends. Relationships had formed, children were born, all hush hush. I had to report on this sensitive situation.
QUESTIONER: You traveled by Navy planes or ships to 49 South Pacific islands, covered about 150,000 miles, landed on hastily built air strips a few days after heavy fighting subsided. What made you finally draft your first book of fiction, Tales of the South Pacific?
MICHENER: Returning in the dark from a routine mission my pilot kept missing the poorly lit New Caledonia air strip. We braced for a crash landing, just made it, and were badly shaken. If I had died, I would have left nothing behind. I was approaching 40, mind you. That near crash prompted me to draft South Pacific stories running through my mind.
QUESTIONER: Your first draft was written on the island of Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, south of Guadalcanal, in a Quonset hut, by pecking at a typewriter with your two index fingers. What was the story line?
MICHENER: Tales of the South Pacific consisted of 18 loosely connected stories about the comedy, boredom, shenanigans of Navy life on a Pacific island between military battles. The stories showed the interplay of Navy men, Navy nurses, and conniving natives; the funny aspects of military planes, jeeps, bulldozers, canned goods imposed on simple people living on beautiful islands.
QUESTIONER: You sent your draft to Macmillan, whose chief awaited your return. You delayed your return for a last tour of duty as Naval historian in the South Pacific. Did Macmillan accept your manuscript?
MICHENER: Yes, I was discharged from the U.S. Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander and returned to work at Macmillan in December 1945.
QUESTIONER: What happened to your wife, Patti Koon Michener?
MICHENER: We did not live together after the war. She returned to her South Carolina hometown. I lived in a Greenwich Village apartment, in Manhattan, near Macmillan, where I edited textbooks and in spare time revised my Tales of the South Pacific.
QUESTIONER: Tales was to be published in 1946 but was delayed until February 1947, three years after you started it. Why the delay?
MICHENER: So that two of the 18 connected short stories could be published in the Saturday Evening Post, December 1946; January 1947. Had publication not been delayed to 1947, Tales would never have won the Pulitzer Prize.
QUESTIONER: Tales was little reviewed except by New York Times book reviewer Orville Prescott, who praised it. He wrote: "This long book of 18…linked short stories is, I am convinced, a substantial achievement which will make Mr. Michener famous…. " Did Mabel Michener know of your success?
MICHENER: Sadly, when I came home from the war she was senile, did not know me, did not know I wrote a book. She died in March 1946.
QUESTIONER: You worked at Macmillan and in your spare time wrote your second book, an autobiographical novel, The Fires of Spring. Why were you slow to leave Macmillan for full time writing?
MICHENER: A survey showed the odds against freelance writing: one in 400 novels is published; one of every 2,000+ magazine articles submitted is accepted and paid for; the average full time novelist earned $1,800 a year. And so many people are trying to write the great American novel.
QUESTIONER: Then, on May 3, 1948, the Pulitzer Prize miracle happened.
MICHENER: I was at Macmillan editing a geography textbook with my senior colleague. The phone rang. He answered, listened, hung up, and said, "That was the Associated Press. Tales of the South Pacific just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction."
QUESTIONER: You had no idea Tales was being considered, thought the phone call was a mistake. Why do you think it won?
MICHENER: I later heard that the Pulitzer selection chairman, New York Times correspondent Arthur Krock, received a phone call from Alice Roosevelt Longworth. She was Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, wife of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the matron of Washington, D.C. society. She asked Arthur Krock which 1947 novel was being considered. When told, she said: it does not compare to Michener's Tales of the South Pacific. Krock immediately put copies of Tales into the hands of his committee members.
QUESTIONER: Arthur Krock later wrote: "I gave my reasons [for nominating Tales] and the Board accepted them…. That prize initiated the public and critical awareness of Michener that assured his subsequent literary prominence and success."
MICHENER I met Alice Roosevelt Longworth at a swank dinner. She said: You certainly did well with that prize we gave you. You didn't let us down. It was daring of Krock to give you that award. Awards should be given to people at the start of their careers, not at the end. How can we be sure who will be a producer and who not? Thank you for making our gamble succeed.
QUESTIONER: In 1946 Tales would have lost to Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. In 1948 it would have lost to James Gould Cozzens' Guard of Honor. It could only win in 1947 and then only because Alice Roosevelt Longworth intervened. oHow was Tales chosen as the source for the Broadway musical, South Pacific?
MICHENER: MGM studio heads saw no story line in Tales. The reader who had recommended it to MGM told stage designer Jo Mielziner that Tales had stage possibilities. Jo Mielziner got composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to read the book. They liked it and turned for help to stage director Joshua Logan and producer Leland Hayward, who got Enzio Pinza and Mary Martin in the cast.
QUESTIONER: South Pacific was a spirited musical and a compelling drama of U.S. sailors and Seabees awaiting a major battle against the Japanese on a South Sea island. There was the love affair of French planter Enzio Pinza with Navy nurse Mary Martin, and a Navy lieutenant with a Tonkenese girl. The action was rowdy, romantic, and tragic.
MICHENER: The music was uplifting; the songs magnificent: Imagine Enzio Pinza's, "Some Enchanted Evening." And Mary Martin's, "I'm Going to Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair." And "Bali Ha'i. Come back, Come back, to Bali Ha'i," that haunting melody that evoked the sun-setting beauty of the Pacific Islands. South Pacific had everything, even, "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught," pleading with adults not to pass their prejudices on to their children.
QUESTIONER: Rodgers and Hammerstein urged you to invest in the show as an angel. You had little money, had married again, and were building a home. So they lent you money to buy 6% interest in the show. South Pacific ran 1,925 performances, almost five years, and earned you about $10,000 annually. Now what about your second wife, Vange Nord?
MICHENER: We met at a NYC party. She worked in NYC as a researcher and wanted to write. We married September 2, 1948. I worked at Macmillan three days a week and wrote the rest of the time. Vange Nord supervised the building of our new home in Pipersville, Pa., near Doylestown.
QUESTIONER: For what other reason was South Pacific so successful?
MICHENER: Americans like war-inspired dramas: There was Floradora after the Spanish American War; What Price Glory?, All Quiet on the Western Front after World War I; Mister Roberts, South Pacific after World War II.
QUESTIONER: Your literary agent Helen Strauss wrote this about you: "…[Michener] is a man of many moods and a loner, and his interests are varied. One might be put off by his reticence, but his modesty and humility are genuine."
MICHENER: Helen Strauss, great literary agent, got Holiday magazine editors to finance my 8-month 1949 return to the South Pacific for an article series on Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand. Random House published it as Return to Paradise, made into two motion pictures, one with Gary Cooper, the other with Paul Newman. She got me another late summer 1950 trip to write about Asia for Life magazine.
QUESTIONER: Your Voice of Asia, published in late 1951, was selected by the Literary Guild in 1952 and translated into 53 languages. Why this public interest in Asia?
MICHENER: The U.S. and USSR competed to win Asian loyalties. I wanted to write fiction but Strauss got me Cold War reportorial assignments. I went to Asia again the second half of 1952.
QUESTIONER: Strauss also put you in touch with Reader's Digest founder DeWitt Wallace?
MICHENER: I lunched with the DeWitt Wallaces summer 1952. We talked about the Korean War. I analyzed it for them. We hit it off.
QUESTIONER: The Reader's Digest, one of the world's most popular magazines, had 12 million circulation in the U.S. plus 37 foreign language editions. Its formula was: faith in God, family unity, patriotism, and the work ethic. Your biographer Hayes wrote: "If ever a magazine was designed for a writer, the Reader's Digest was designed for James A. Michener: teacher, patriot, student of the world, and optimist. The combination of magazine and writer was a perfect fit; one that has been rarely repeated in the history of publishing."
MICHENER: DeWitt Wallace wanted me to write exclusively for the Reader's Digest. Helen Strauss said that a freelance writer had to be completely free.
Continued as James Albert Michener (1907-97): Novelist, Part 2 of 2 Parts."
. Send comments, corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net
Addendum: 24 of Franklin and Betty J. Parker’s book titles are listed in: http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P
For their writings in blog form, enter bfparker in google.com or in any other search engine.
QUESTIONER: DeWitt Wallace then made you one of the most generous offers in publishing history. What was that offer?
MICHENER: He said: You can go anywhere in the world you want to go. You can write anything you want to write. We'll pay all your expenses, no matter where you go or what you do. You let us have first shot at what you've written. If we cannot use it, you can sell it elsewhere and you won't owe us a penny.
QUESTIONER: Besides factual writing about the Korean War for Reader's Digest you wrote a novel, The Bridges of Toko'ri, based on a real incident. It was published in Life magazine, then as a Random House book, and filmed with William Holden. What was the story line?
MICHENER: A World War II U.S. Navy Reserve pilot, happy with his family and civilian job, is brought back to fly a jet fighter in Korea. His mission: to bomb four vital Communist bridges in a narrow ravine at Toko-ri. He knows he is a sitting duck for enemy guns but executes the mission to defend American freedom.
QUESTIONER: You narrated "Appointment in Asia," a weekly half hour TV program for the State Department, were advisor to the Asia Foundation, and were asked to write about Asian problems for various agencies. Did Vange Nord Michener travel with you?
MICHENER: Less and less and then not at all. She wanted a writing career and a husband to help her. I was an absent husband constantly writing his next book. She asked for a divorce, which came in January 1955.
QUESTIONER: Your 1955 novel Sayonara was timely, about interracial marriage, GIs and Japanese girls, written just before you married your Japanese-American third wife. How did you meet Mari Yoriko Sabusawa?
MICHENER: At a Chicago luncheon, 1954. For Life magazine I interviewed a GI and his Tokyo-born war bride living in Chicago. At the luncheon Mari defended American-Japanese marriages, saying that most do succeed.
QUESTIONER: Mari was born in Colorado, 1920, of Japanese immigrants. The family moved to California. After Pearl Harbor, the family was interned. A relocation plan for Japanese American students placed Mari in Antioch College, Ohio, where she received her degree. She then translated Japanese propaganda into English for a U. S. intelligence service.
MICHENER: She was editor of the American Library Association's Bulletin in Chicago when we met in 1954. We were married October 23, 1955 and had 39 glorious years together.
QUESTIONER: Your biographer Hayes thus described her: Mari regarded marriage as her career. She cared about his peace of mind. To see Jim Michener you first had to penetrate her protective wall…. She was his housekeeper, cook, secretary, travel agent, librarian, valet, hostess, chauffeur, and accountant. She freed him to work uninterrupted. He cherished her. oMr. Michener, how were you and Mari involved in the October 1956 Hungarian revolt against the USSR? Why did you write The Bridge at Andau, 1957?
MICHENER: I was in Europe in 1956 with Mari. The Reader's Digest editor cabled me to cover the Hungarian revolt. I saw it as a harbinger of things to come. Soviet economics did not work. The USSR controlled Eastern Europe by force. On October 23, 1956, young Budapest dissidents, armed with sticks, stones, and Molotov cocktails, challenged Soviet tanks. Soviet reinforcements crushed the revolt, killed 80,000 Hungarians, forced 20,000 to flee, most of them over a bridge at Andau on the Austrian border. Mari, in Vienna, 50 miles away, made our home a way station for escaping Hungarians. I interviewed hundreds of them and helped some find residence in the U.S. and elsewhere.
QUESTIONER: Your biographer Hayes wrote this of your Hungarian experience: …"Michener patrolled the border alongside ministers, rabbis, fellow journalists, and the interpreters who helped him interview refugees as they crossed the rickety wooden footpath…near Andau. Hundreds…who crossed the bridge received a card bearing Michener's address…and the promise of a hot meal…in exchange for their stories…. Many…wept for…their parents, children, countrymen…[left behind]…. Michener…had never witnessed an event more brutal…."
MICHENER: World editions of Reader's Digest, March 1957, published a condensed version of The Bridge at Andau. Random House gave its profits to Hungarian relief. My royalties went to the Academy of Arts in Honolulu.
QUESTIONER: How did you feel about The Bridge at Andau?
MICHENER: It was a satisfying blow against Communism. I then determined to write epic novels, the first about Hawaii. In 1958 Mari and I moved to Waikiki.
QUESTIONER: The initial outline of your novel Hawaii shows its large scope, 1050 A.D. to 1954. You described minutely each incoming group: Polynesians, Japanese, and Filipinos through family stories, by generations, each a short novel in itself. Through successive characters you show the full range of Hawaiian history. oMr. Michener, why was your novel about Hawaii timely?
MICHENER: Hawaii, like America, was a melting pot settled by immigrants. It was a bridge to Asia. It was ripe for statehood. It had little crime and good schools. It paid more in federal taxes than ten states. Hawaii was published just before statehood, rode a crest of publicity, and was number three best seller of 1959 novels.
QUESTIONER: A Saturday Review writer recorded this: "Hawaii is…a masterful job of research, an absorbing performance of story telling, and a monumental account of the islands from geologic birth to sociological emergence as the newest, and perhaps the most interesting of the United States." Your biographer Hayes quoted you as saying: "With Hawaii I finally found great faith in myself as a writer…." Mr. Michener, why did you enter politics in the 1960s?
MICHENER: I was chairman of the Bucks County, Pa., committee to elect John F. Kennedy in 1960. My mistake was to run in 1962 as a Democrat candidate for Congress. Wise Mari kept saying, "Don't do it, don't do it." I lost and went back to writing books.
QUESTIONER: What inspired your novel, The Source, published in 1965?
MICHENER: I was in the Mediterranean in April 1963 when I ran into the future mayor of Jerusalem. He asked me to write a book about Israel similar to my book on Hawaii.
QUESTIONER: You said it should be written by a Jew but you then and there outlined such a novel for him. He couldn't find a Jewish writer and urged you to do it. You said you'd do it if you received bibliographic help.
MICHENER: Mari and I moved to Israel in May 1963, read hundreds of book, and pondered how to capture the Holy Land's long, tempestuous history. I did it through one archaeological dig, or Tell, at Makor, which means "source," sifting 15 layers of civilization through fictional families, showing the socio-economic-religious interaction of Jews, Christians, and Arabs, through peace and war from Biblical times to modern Israel.
QUESTIONER: Mr. Michener, our time is almost gone. We've traced you to age 60. You lived 30 more years, wrote more books, had quadruple bypass heart surgery, a hip replacement, and 4 years of dialysis, as listed in the Chronology below. oMr. Michener, you gave millions of readers pleasure, information, and hope. oYour tax advisor estimated that the U. S. spent $11,000 to educate you. You repaid society with over $68 million in income taxes. You and Mari (she died in 1994) donated over $100 million to educational institutions. Not bad for an orphan. Sleep well in your Austin, Texas grave. Sleep well.
Selected Works about James Albert Michener:
Becker, George J. James A. Michener. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1983.
Groseclose, Karen, and David A. Groseclose. James A. Michener: A Bibliography. Austin, Texas: State House Press, 1996.
Hayes, John P. James A. Michener. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1984.
Michener, James A. The World is My Home: A Memoir. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1992.
Severson, Marilyn S. James A Michener. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Internet
A computer internet search under James Albert Michener (1907-79) using any major search engine (http://www.google.com or others) will uncover a wealth of pertinent material.
James Albert Michener (1907-97) Chronology of Career, Published Books, Honors
1907, allegedly born February 3, 1907, an orphan, raised in foster home run by Mabel (Haddon) Michener (d. 1946), Doylestown, Pa. (Bucks County).
1921-25, Doylestown High School, Associate Editor of Torch, 2 years; Ed. In chief, 1 year. Basketball. Class President.
1925-29, Swarthmore College, 4-year scholarship, Contributions to "Portfolio." Graduated with B.A., English & history, With Highest Honors. 1928, summer, traveled with Swarthmore Chautauqua group.
1929-31, teacher, The Hill School, Pottstown, Pa. (Quaker prep school).
1931-33, awarded Swarthmore's Joshua Lippincott Fellowship for study/travel abroad. Studied at St. Andrews University, Scotland. Traveled widely in Europe.
1935, Married Patti Koon (divorced 1948).
1933-36, teacher, The George School, Newtown, Pa. (Quaker prep school).
1936-39, Associate Professor, Colorado State College of Education, Greeley. M.A. in 1937. 1938-40, Co-founded Angells Club, a discussion group with Colorado State College of Education, Greeley faculty, and community members.
1939-40, Visiting lecturer, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University.
1939, Edited The Future of the Social Studies (National Council for the Social Studies).
1940, co-authored The Unit in the Social Studies: Proposals for an Experimental Social Studies Curriculum (Harvard University Press). Introductory essay, "The Beginning Teacher," 10th Yearbook of the NCSS (Harvard University Press). 15 journal articles published, 1936-41.1940-41, 1946-49, Social Studies editor, Macmillan Publishing Co.
1942-46, U.S. Navy; sent to South Pacific, spring 1944. 1944-46, Naval historian, South Pacific; discharged with rank of Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy.
1947, Tales of the South Pacific, fiction, 18 connected short stories. Pulitzer Prize.
1948, divorced by Patti Koon, married Vange Nord.
1949, The Fires of Spring, autobiographical novel (New York: Random House). South Pacific, Broadway stage musical.
1951, Return to Paradise, non fiction, on Asian countries. The Voice of Asia.
1952-70, Roving editor, Readers Digest.
1953, President of the Asia Institute; The Bridges at Toko-Ri, novel about Korea War.
1954, Sayonara, novel about U.S. military-Japanese marriage. The Floating World.
1955, Divorced by Vange Nord, married Mari Yoriko Sabusawa (1920-94).
1956, Aided Hungarian refugees.
1957, Appointed to Federal Advisory Arts Commission. The Bridge at Andau, non fiction, about 1956 Hungarian revolt against USSR rule. Rascals in Paradise. Selected Writings of James A. Michener.
1958, Overseas Press Club Award for Readers Digest article on Andau (The Bridge at Andau). The Hokusai Sketchbooks.
1959, gave collection of Japanese prints to Honolulu Academy of Arts. Hawaii. Japanese Prints: From the Early Masters to the Modern.
1960, Chairman, Bucks County Citizens for Kennedy. 1961, Report of the County Chairman (Bucks County chairman to elect J.F. Kennedy). Appointed by Pres. Kennedy to manage U.S. Food for Peace. Program failed.
1962, Modern Japanese Prints. Ran and lost as Democratic candidate for Congress from 8th District, Pa.
1963, Caravans, novel. Helped establish Bucks County Arts Festival. Joined Americans for Permanent Peace in the Middle East. Received Einstein Award, Einstein Medical College.
1964, severe heart attack.
1965, The Source, novel about the Holy Land.
1967-68, President, Pennsylvania electoral College.
1968, Iberia, story about Spain. Gave collection of contemporary American art to the University of Texas, Austin.
1969, Presidential Lottery. The Reckless Gamble in Our Electoral System. The Quality of Life, essays.
1970, Facing East; the Quality of Life. Gave $100,000 to Swarthmore College programs for black studies and race relations. American-Hungarian Studies Award from George Washington University.
1970-74, Member, U.S. Advisory Commission on Information. Gave $100,000 to Kent State University for arts program.
1971, Kent State: What Happened and Why, factual account. The Drifters, novel.
1972, Accompanied Pres. Richard Nixon to China.
1973, A Michener Miscellany, 1950-1970. Editor, Firstfruits.
1974, Centennial, novel on Colorado and the U.S. West. About Centennial.
1975, Represented Pres. Gerald Ford at Okinawa World Exposition. Appointed to the Bicentennial Advisory Committee and to Citizens Advisory [U.S.] Stamp Committee.
1976, Sports in America.
1977, Medal of Freedom Award presented by Pres. Gerald Ford (highest award granted U.S. citizen). TV series programs, "The World of James A. Michener."
1978, Chesapeake, novel on colonial settlement of Maryland. Recipient of Pennsylvania Society Gold Medal.
1979, The Watermen. Member of NASA Advisory Council.
1980, The Covenant, novel on South Africa. The Quality of Life. Received the Franklin Award and the Spanish Institute Gold Medal. Gave $500,000 for the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.
1982, Space, novel, story of the U.S. space program.
1983, Collector, Forgers—and a Writer. Poland, novel. Testimony. Member of board for Radio Free Europe. Honored by the White House Arts Program for his financial assistance to artists.
1984, gave $2 million to Swarthmore College.
1985, Dedication of James A. Michener Arts Center, Bucks County, Pa. Received Exemplar Award from Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce. Texas, novel (commissioned to celebrate the state's 75th birthday), covers 450 years of the region's history.
1987, Legacy, novel on the U.S. Constitution on its bicentennial.
1988, Alaska, novel.
1989, Journey, novel, an excised chapter from Alaska published separately, describing the 2,043-mile trek of 4 explorers across the Canadian Yukon. Caribbean, novel. Six Days in Havana.
1990, The Eagle and the Raven. Pilgrimage.
1991, James A. Michener on the Social Studies; The Novel, a novel Gave $1 million to the University of Texas Graduate Writing program at the University of Houston. Gave $5 million to Swarthmore College. Named to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum Advisory Committee.
1992, The World is My Home, autobiography. James A. Michener's Writer's Handbook on the South Pacific, as told by James A. Michener [adaptation of the musical South Pacific], novel. Mexico, novel. My Lost Mexico, nonfiction. Gave $600,000 to the University of Northern Colorado Library. James A. Michener's Writer's Handbook: Explorations in Writing and Publishing, nonfiction.
1993, Creatures of the Kingdom, novel. Literary Reflections: Michener on Michener, Hemingway, Capote, and Others, (criticism) 1993.
1994, Mari Michener died. Recessional, novel about aging. William Penn. Pledged $5 million each to art museums in Doylestown, Pa. and Texas.
1995, Miracle in Seville. Ventures in Editing.
1996, The Genius Belt: The Story of the Arts in Bucks County, nonfiction. This Noble Land: My Vision for America, nonfiction. Named Outstanding Philanthropist by the National Society of Fund Raising Executives.
1997, October 16, Michener died; buried in Austin, Texas.
(Michener received more than 30 honorary doctorates in Humane Letters, Law, Theology, and Science).
END OF MANUSCRIPT.
Send comments, corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net
Addendum: 24 of Franklin and Betty J. Parker’s book titles are listed in: http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P
For their writings in blog form, enter bfparker in google.com or in any other search engine.
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