Geo. Peabody @ MindSay 
10 of 14: George Peabody (1795-1869): A-Z Handbook....
10 of 14: George Peabody (1795-1869): A-Z Handbook...., by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net
Following Background "Preface" below 10 of 14 blogs covers alphabetically: Salem Village, Mass. to U.S. Ministers. 3.
Background: "Preface" 1 of 14 tells the why-when-where-how-findings-and-motives of the authors’ research on Franklin Parker’s doctoral dissertation, “George Peabody, Founder of Modern Philanthropy,” completed 1956 at George Peabody College for Teachers, adjoining Vanderbilt University, which on July 1, 1979, became Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville.
George Peabody, so well known in the 1850s-60s but since sadly neglected, was a significant 19th century figure as: 1-a Massachusetts-born merchant in the U.S. South: Riggs & Peabody, later Peabody & Riggs (1814-38), who imported dry goods and other commodities (worldwide) for sale to U.S. wholesalers. George Peabody then became: 2-a London-based merchant-banker, George Peabody & Co. (1838-64), who financed in part the B&O RR, the 2nd Mexican War Loan, the Atlantic Cable, and with J.S. Morgan as partner, was the root of the JP Morgan international banking firm. Finally, this merchant-turned-banker became: 3-the best known philanthropist of his time (1850s-60s), who founded the Peabody Homes of London for the working poor; in the U.S. 7 Peabody Libraries and Lecture Halls; the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Baltimore; three Peabody Museums at Harvard (Anthropology), Yale (Paleontology), and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (maritime history); and founder of the Peabody Education Fund for the South (1867-1914), basis for all later larger U.S. funds and foundations. End of Background.
Salem Village, Mass., first called Brooksby (1626), became known as Salem Village, and then Danvers (1752-1855), then South Danvers (1855-68), and since April 13, 1868, Peabody, Mass. See: Peabody, Mass.
London Times Editor
Sampson, Marmaduke Blake (d.1876). 1-London Times Editor. Marmaduke Blake Sampson was an accomplished classical scholar, had been secretary of the treasury committee of the Bank of England, was city editor of the London Times for 30 years, and wrote its financial columns (1854-74). He was present at GP's July 4, 1854, dinner at the Star and Garter at Richmond near London, at which super patriot U.S. London Legation Secty. Daniel Edgar Sickles (1819-1914) walked out in anger because GP toasted Queen Victoria before toasting the U.S. President. GP consulted with M.B. Sampson during the subsequent charge and countercharge in letters to newspapers over the incident. Ref.:(Blake mentioned): Wallace and Gillespie, eds., II, pp. 896 (footnote 8), 1110-1111, ff. See: Dinners, GP's, London. Peabody Homes of London. Sickles, Daniel Edgar.
Sampson, M.B. 2-Attended July 9, 1858, Dinner. M.B. Sampson was also the only Englishman who attended GP's July 9, 1858, banquet at the Crystal Palace, London, for 50 Americans, including U.S. Minister to Britain George Mifflin Dallas (1792-1864) and family and John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870). M.B. Sampson is also mentioned in connection with the public announcement of GP's March 12, 1862, Peabody Donation Fund letter founding the Peabody Homes of London. Ref.: Ibid.
Trent Affair
San Jacinto (ship). 1-British Trent Illegally Stopped. On Nov. 8, 1861, Union warship San Jacinto under Capt. Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) fired shots that stopped the British mail packet Trent in the West Indies Bahama Channel. Four Confederate emissaries were illegally and forcibly removed from the Trent and taken to Boston Harbor's Fort Warren prison. They were James Murray Mason (1798-1871) of Va. and his male secretary, seeking recognition, aid, and arms from England; and John Slidell (1793-1871) of La. and his male secretary (George Eustice, 1828-72, from La.), seeking aid and arms from France. See: Trent Affair.
San Jacinto. 2-Affected News of Peabody Homes of London Gift. Their seizure created exultation in the U.S. North but anger and near-war preparations by Britain. Bad feelings lasted well into 1862, affecting GP in London who, with his advisors and trustees, delayed until March 12, 1862, announcement of the Peabody Donation Fund, a $2.5 million (total, 1862-69) gift for apartments for London's working poor. Ref.: Ibid.
San Jacinto. 3-Mrs. Louise Morris (née Corcoran) Eustice. Another GP-Trent connection was with Slidell's secretary George Eustice, married to Louise Morris Corcoran (1838-67), only daughter of GP's longtime business associate William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888) of Washington, D.C. She was a favorite of GP, who had entertained Corcoran and his daughter, sometimes the daughter alone, on European trips. She was on the Trent when her husband was illegally removed. When she reached England, GP's partner in George Peabody & Co., Junius Spencer Morgan (1813-90), called on her to see after her welfare. U.S. jingoism calmed. Pres. Lincoln's cabinet met Dec. 26, 1861, disavowed Capt. Wilkes's action, and the four Confederates were released Jan. 1, 1862. Ref.: Ibid. See: persons named.
GP In Rome
San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy. 1-In Rome. GP gave a $19,300 gift to San Spirito Hospital, a Vatican charitable hospital, Rome, Italy, during Feb. 24-28, 1868. He was in Rome, Italy, with philanthropic advisor Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-94), Feb. 19-28, 1868, for sittings in U.S. sculptor William Wetmore Story's (1819-95) studio for the GP seated statue Story was preparing for placement on Threadneedle St., near the Royal Exchange (unveiled July 23, 1869, by the Prince of Wales).
San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy. 2-Visit with the Pope. About Feb. 24-25, 1868, GP and Winthrop, accompanied by former Secty. of the U.S. Legation in Rome Mr. Hooker (who arranged the visit), had an audience with Pope Pius IX (Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, 1792-1878, Pope during 1846-78). It was GP's only audience with the Pope and Winthrop's second audience (Winthrop's first audience with the Pope, 1860). Cornell Univ. Pres. Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918) heard from sculptor W.W. Story that Winthrop introduced GP to the Pope "as a gentleman who though unmarried, had hundreds of children; whereupon the Pope, taking him literally, held up his hands and answered, 'Fi donc! Fi donc!" (French expression of disapproval). Ref.: Ibid.
San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy. 3-Charitable Hospital Gift. Leaving the Pope, Mr. Hooker introduced GP and Winthrop to Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli (1806-76). The conversation turned to the hospital of San Spirito among other charitable institutions in Rome. When GP reached his room that night (about Feb. 24-25, 1868), he sent the cardinal a contribution. GP left Rome Feb. 27, 1868, for Genoa, then went by boat to Nice, France, arriving March 3, 1868, where Baltimore friend John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870) briefly visited him (Kennedy was on his way to Rome). Ref.: Ibid.
San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy. 4-To Cannes & Paris. GP then went to Cannes, France, March 16, 1868, to visit George Eustis (1828-72), William Wilson Corcoran's son-in-law (Corcoran's only daughter Louise Morris née Corcoran Eustis died Dec. 4, 1867, leaving him and their three children). GP, accompanied by Winthrop, then went to Paris about March 16, where they were received by Napoleon III (1808-73) and Empress Eugénie (1826-1920). Ref.: Ibid. See: persons named.
San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy. 5-False Report of GP Statue in Rome. GP's visit to Rome, audience with the Pope, and gift to the San Spirito Hospital may have been the basis for a short item from Rome in the vast publicity on GP's death (Nov. 4, 1869) and transatlantic funeral: "A statue of Mr. Peabody is to be erected at Rome by order of the Pope." No GP statue in Rome ever materialized. Ref.: Ibid.
Carl Sandburg
Sandburg, Carl (1878-1967). 1-"poor boys who have become rich." Carl Sandburg was a U.S. poet (The People, Yes, 1936) and biographer of Abraham Lincoln, six volumes, 1926-39. His autobiographical Always the Young Strangers, 1953, tells of his first reading about GP in a small vest pocket booklet series titled "Packed in Duke's Cigarettes." As a schoolboy growing up in Galesburg, Ill. (about 1890), walking to school he picked up a smudged booklet (2" & 3/4 " long by l" & 1'/2 " wide), brushed off the dirt, and saw its title, A Short History of General P.T. Beauregard, part of a "Series of Small Books." Ref.: Sandburg-b, pp. 260, 262-263, 269.
Sandburg, Carl. 2-"poor boys who have become rich" Cont'd. Fascinated with it, he found adults who smoked that brand. One adult agreed to give him the booklet inserts. He collected this series, read and swapped them with other boy collectors. Sandburg was charmed by the Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of a series of 50 on the lives of "poor boys who have become rich." Proud of his vest pocket library, the future poet and biographer reflected on his remembrance on reading the booklet on GP. Ref.: Ibid.
Sandburg, Carl. 3-On First Reading About GP. Sandburg remembered that: "On the back of another book was a bare-shouldered woman worth looking at, one breast bare, and she held a shining green wreath and a banner that read above her 'Charity' and below 'George Peabody, a Philanthropist.' It was what we called a 'jawbreaker,' the word 'Philanthropist,' but the book made it clear. 'During his long life he not only gave away millions of dollars but he placed his great wealth where it would do the most good.'" Ref.: Ibid.
Sandburg, Carl. 4-On First Reading About GP Cont'd. "After making one fortune in America in the grocery and dry-goods business he went to London as a banker and made a bigger fortune. For all of his money he didn't marry and the book said: 'The story is told that a young American girl who had refused him in the day when money was scarce married one of his friends, whereupon Peabody resolved to remain single --a resolve which he faithfully kept." Ref.: Ibid.
Sandburg, Carl. 5-On First Reading About GP Cont'd. "I wanted to know more about that girl and how her husband did by her and what they talked about when George Peabody threw a million dollars to Baltimore for a free library, lecture hall, academy of music, and an art gallery--and later when he put three millions into tearing away tumbledown shanties in the London slums and building brick houses with a little grass around for children to play on--and later when he put another three million dollars into better schools for Negro children of the South." Ref.: Ibid.
Sandburg, Carl. 6-On First Reading About GP Cont'd. "The Queen of England wanted to give Peabody a title. He thanked her, said he could get along without it, and went home to Baltimore, where twenty thousand children met him and waved their hands and their handkerchiefs and he said, 'Never have I seen a more beautiful sight.' I wondered if the girl who had refused him was anywhere among the thousands of grownups looking on. On the front cover Mr. Peabody's white hair fell over his ears, and with his white side whiskers he reminded me of one of our Lutheran deacons." Ref.: Ibid.
Sandburg, Carl. 7-Criticism of GP. Not withstanding his boyhood admiration of GP, in his Pulitzer prize Abraham Lincoln, The War Years (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1939), III, pp. 124-125, Carl Sandburg repeated unsubstantiated charges against GP as a Confederate sympathizer in the Civil War. Such charges had first been made in 1862, without substantial evidence by John Bigelow (1817-1911), U.S. Consul General in Paris; repeated by Samuel Bowles (1826-78), editor of the Springfield Daily Republican (Springfield, Mass.), Oct. 27, 1866; by Gustavus Myers (1872-1942) in History of the Great American Fortunes, 1910, rev. 1936; by Matthew Josephson (1899-1978) in The Robber Barons (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1934 and 1962), p. 60; and by Leland DeWitt Baldwin in The Stream of American History (New York: American Book Co., 1952), II, p. 121. See: Civil War and GP. See: Felt, Charles Wilson. For defense of GP as Union supporter, see McIlvaine, Charles Pettit. "S.P.Q." Weed, Thurlow.
Sandburg, Carl. 8-Criticism of GP Cont'd. (Sandburg wrote): "Of the international bankers Peabody & Morgan, sturdy Samuel Bowles said in the Springfield [Mass.] Republican that their agencies in New York and London had induced during the war a flight of capital from America." Sandburg then quoted Bowles: '"They gave us no faith and no help in our struggle for national existence.... No individuals contributed so much to flooding the money markets with evidence of our debts to Europe, and breaking down their prices and weakening financial confidence in our nationality, and none made more money by the operation.'" Ref.: Ibid.
Great Exhibition of 1851, London (first world's fair)
Sands, Joshua Ratoon (1795-1884). 1-GP's Timely Loan. Joshua R. Sands was the U.S. Navy officer commanding the frigate St. Lawrence authorized by the U.S. Congress to transport U.S. exhibitors and their exhibits to the Great Exhibition of 1851, London, the first world's fair. The St. Lawrence left NYC Feb. 8, 1851, arrived in Southampton, March 1851, when a lack of funds led to a crisis. Congress had neglected to appropriate funds to transfer the exhibits and adorn the Crystal Palace exhibition area. The British press ridiculed American pretensions. A New York Times writer later recorded: "The whole affair looked like a disgraceful failure. At this juncture Mr. Geo. Peabody, of whom not one exhibitor in twenty had ever heard, and who was personally unknown to every member of the Commission, offered through a polite note addressed to Mr. [Abbott] Lawrence [1792-1855, U.S. Minister to Britain] to advance £3,000 [$15,000] on the personal responsibility of [U.S. Commissioner] Mr. [Edward W.] Riddle and his secretary, Mr. [Nathaniel Shattwell] Dodge [1810-74]. This loan, afterward [three years later re]paid by Congress, relieved the Commission of its difficulties, and enabled our countrymen to achieve their first success in industrial competition with the artisans and manufacturers of Europe." See: Great Exhibition of 1851, London (first world's fair).
Sands, J.R.. 2-Career. U.S. Navy officer Sands was born in Brooklyn, NY, May 13, 1795. He was appointed midshipman in the U.S. Navy (June 18, 1812), served in the War of 1812 on Lake Ontario, saw action against the Royal George; served on the Madison (April 1813), took part in the capture of Toronto and the capture of Fort George. He was attached to the Pike, and served on shore (1814), on the frigate Superior, was attached to the Washington in the Mediterranean (1815–18), was promoted lieutenant (April 1, 1818), served on the Hornet off the coast of Africa, in the West Indies (1819), on the Franklin on the Pacific coast (1821–24), on the Vandalia near Brazil (1828–30), was on recruiting duty (1830–40), was promoted Commander (Feb. 23, 1841), served at the NYC navy yard (1841–43), commanded the Falmouth in the Gulf and West Indies (1843–45), the Vixen during the Mexican War, took part in the capture of Alverado, Tabasco and Laguna, and was made governor of Laguna. He participated in the attack on Vera Cruz; assisted in the capture of Tampico and Tuspan (1847) and served in other actions. Ref.: Internet, "Sands, Joshua Ratoon [1795-1884], http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~dav4is/people/SAND320.htm
Sands, J.R.. 3-Career (Cont'd.). After taking the frigate St. Lawrence to the Great Exhibition of London, 1851, he took it to Portugal that year, was promoted Captain (Feb. 25, 1854), commanded the Susquehanna in Central America, in the Mediterranean, and in England (1856), was engaged in laying the Atlantic Cable (1857), served in Central America, commanded the Brazilian squadron on the flagship Congress (1859–61), retired (Dec. 21, 1861), was promoted commodore on the retired list (July 16, 1862), and made rear admiral (July 25, 1866). He served as light-house inspector on Lakes Erie and Ontario and the St. Lawrence River (1862–66), and was port-admiral, Norfolk, Va. (1869–72). He died in Baltimore, Md. (Oct. 2, 1883). Ref.: Ibid.
Satterlee, Herbert Livingston (1863-1947), was John Pierpont Morgan Sr.'s (1837-1913) son-in-law and author of Life of J. Pierpont Morgan (New York; privately printed, 1937). For Satterlee's connection with GPCFT Pres. Bruce Ryburn Payne (1874-1937), See: Payne, Bruce Ryburn. PCofVU. Conkin, Peabody College, index.
Scarritt College for Christian Workers, Nashville. See: Jean and Alexander Heard Library of Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville. PCofVU, history of. Conkin, Peabody College, index.
Naval Reception for GP's Remains
Schenck, Robert Cumming (1809-90). 1-Opposed U.S. Navy Reception for GP's Remains, Portland, Me. U.S. Rep. Robert Cumming Schenck (Republican-Ohio) on Dec. 21, 1869, objected to U.S. House Resolution No. 96 which asked Pres. U.S. Grant (1822-85) to order a U.S. Navy reception for GP's remains, then aboard HMS Monarch, escorted by USS Plymouth, from Portsmouth, England, to Portland, Me. Rep. Schenck led the opposition to the resolution by moving that the House adjourn to allow time to consider if it should go to this expense. Rep. Daniel Wolsey Voorhees (1827-97, Democrat-Ind.) regretted that a move to adjourn was made, in view of GP's vast gifts to U.S. education and science. Rep. Schenck defended his move to adjourn and challenged GP's patriotism during the Civil War, while some Republican members applauded. See: Death and funeral, GP's.
Schenck, R.C. 2-Resolution Passed. U.S. Rep. Thomas Laurens Jones (1819-87, D-Ky.), who originally introduced U.S. House Resolution No. 96 on Dec. 15, 1869, expressed shame that his proposal to honor GP was being so debated. He mentioned withdrawing the resolution. The House refused to adjourn and, with Rep. Schenck still objecting, passed the resolution that day. It was passed by the U.S. Senate on Dec. 23, 1869, and was signed into law by Pres. Grant on Jan. 10, 1870. Ref.: Ibid.
Schenck, R.C. 3-Career. Rep. R.C. Schenck was born in Franklin, Ohio; graduated from Miami Univ. (1827); taught French and Latin; practiced law in Dayton, Ohio; served in the Ohio legislature (1840); in the U.S. House (1843-51); was U.S. Minister to Brazil (1851-53); was a Union general (1861-63); and a radical Republican in the U.S. House (1863-70). There was a touch of irony when in 1870 U.S. Pres. Grant appointed R.C. Schenck (who opposed a U.S. Naval reception for GP's remains on the Monarch at Portland, Me.) to replace John Lothrop Motley (1814-77) as U.S. Minister to Britain during 1871-76. In that capacity, Schenk was a member of the Joint Commission that arbitrated the Alabama Claims and signed the Treaty of Washington in May 1871 by which Britain paid the U.S. $15.5 million in reparations. Ref.: Ibid. Ref.:(Schenck as Union general): Boatner, p. 725. Ref.:(Schenck as U.S. Minister to Britain): Welch, p. 137.
Elopement that Shocked Queen Victoria
Schenley, Edward W.H. (1798-1878). 1-GP in Pittsburgh, April 14-16, 1857. During GP's Sept. 15, 1856, to Aug. 19, 1857, U.S. visit, his first return from London in nearly 20 years, he stayed in Pittsburgh, Penn., with Capt. and Mrs. Edward W.H. Schenley during April 14-16, 1857, where a reception was held in his honor. GP's connection with the Schenleys, not precisely known, may have had to do with her father's initial displeasure at their scandalous elopement from the U.S. to England in 1842, and the possible use by the later reconciled father of George Peabody & Co.'s service in transferring funds to support the Schenleys in London. Ref. Pittsburgh, Penn., Evening Chronicle, April 14, 1857, p. 1, c. 1-3. See: Visits to the U.S. by GP, 1856-57.
Schenley, E.W.H. 2-Scandalous Elopement. Pittsburgh, Penn., heiress Mary Elizabeth Croghan (1827-1903, pronounced "Crawn") attended Mrs. McLeod's boarding school in Staten Island, N.Y. Miss Croghan was aged 15 when in 1842 British military officer Capt. Edward W.H. Schenley (said to have fought in the Battle of Waterloo, 1815) visited that school to see Mrs. McLeod, his sister-in-law. He at age 43 and Miss Croghan at age 15 met, fell in love, and created a sensation by eloping to England. Ref. Shine, Bernice. "Schenley Park Donated by Girl Whose Romance Shocked a Queen." Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, September 15, 1941, seen July 10, 2002, at http://einpgh.org/exhibit/neighborhoods/oakland/oak_108.html
Schenley, E.W.H. 3-Descendant of Pittsburgh Founders. Mary Elizabeth Croghan, her father's only child and heir to a large fortune, was the maternal granddaughter of Pittsburgh founder and landowner Revolutionary War Quartermaster General James O'Hara (1754-1819). She was also related to Pittsburgh's first mayor (1816) Ebenezer Denny (1761-1822). Her father, William Croghan, Jr. (d. 1850), had a stroke on hearing of the elopement. He recovered and, convinced that Capt. Schenley was a fortune hunter, legally blocked Schenley's access to his daughter's fortune. Other parents with daughters in Mrs. McLeod's school, believing her involved in the elopement, withdrew their daughters, causing its closure. Ref. Ibid.
Schenley, E.W.H. 4-Reconciliation. The Schenleys lived in modest circumstances in London. They were excluded from court functions because Queen Victoria disapproved of the elopement. In time the birth of Schenley children and the family's apparent happiness led her father to relent. He visited them in London, restored her inheritance, and wanted them to return to Pittsburgh. The Schenleys made some prolonged visits to the Croghan mansion in Pittsburgh (including GP's April 14-16, 1857, stay with them) but lived permanently in London. Ref. See under Schenley, Capt. Edward W. H., in Ref.: g. Internet: http://www.wqed.org/tv/pghist/oakland.lhtml (seen July 12, 2002).
Schenley, E.W.H. 5-Schenley Park and other Philanthropies. Mrs. Schenley's philanthropic gifts came from land inherited from her maternal grandfather Gen. James O'Hara. She gave land for Pittsburgh's 456-acre Schenley Park; gave adjacent land for the Pittsburgh Carnegie Public Library and the Western Pennsylvania Institute for the Blind; and a lot for a Newsboys' Home. The proximity to Schenley Park of the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning building and the Carnegie Mellon University make it a significant cultural center. Ref.: Ibid.
Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, Penn. See: Schenley, Edward W.H. (1798-1878) above.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Sr. (1888-1965), was the Harvard Univ. history professor who suggested GP's contributions to educational philanthropy as a doctoral research topic to Felix Compton Robb (1914-97) when Robb attended Harvard Graduate School of Education. Robb, then a GPCFT administrator (assistant to the president, dean of instruction, president during 1961-66), pursued another topic in education administration. In 1953 when he was Dean of Instruction at GPCFT he suggested the topic to co-author Franklin Parker. See: Robb, Felix Compton.
GP’s Nephew, O.C. Marsh
Schuchert, Charles, and Clara Mae LeVene. 1-Biographers of O.C. Marsh. Charles Schuchert and Clara Mae LeVene were the authors of O. C. Marsh, Pioneer in Paleontology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), biography of Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99), based on his papers at Yale Univ. GP paid for the education of his nephew Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99) education at Phillips Academy, Mass., Yale College (B.A., 1860), Yale's Sheffield Scientific School (M.A., 1863), and study abroad at the German universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Breslau (1863-65). See: Marsh, Othniel Charles.
Schuchert, Charles, and Clara Mae LeVene. 2-Marsh, First U.S. Paleontology Prof. GP also paid for O.C. Marsh's science library (paleontology) and paid to ship these and fossil specimens (2.5 tons) to New Haven, Conn., where Marsh was the first U.S. professor of paleontology at Yale Univ. and the second such professor in the world. O.C. Marsh influenced GP's founding of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard (Oct. 8, 1866, $150,000), the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale (Oct. 22, 1866, $150,000), and less directly what is now the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass. (Feb. 26, 1867, $140,000). See: Science: GP's Contributions to Science and Science Education (below). Institutions named.
Schuchert, Charles, and Clara Mae LeVene. 3-Authors Worked with O.C. Marsh. Charles Schuchert (1858-1942), O.C. Marsh's biographer, helped Charles Emerson Beecher (1856-1904) prepare fossils at Yale during 1892-93, served on the U.S. Geological Survey (1893-94), was Yale's third paleontology professor (1904-23), taught the history of geology at Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, and was geological curator at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. Schuchert and co-author Clara M. LeVene, Peabody Museum of Yale librarian, both worked with O.C. Marsh and had full access to his papers. Reviewers praised the Schuchert and LeVene biography as "a labor of love." Ref.: Book Review Digest 1941, pp. 815-816. See: persons named.
Schuler, Hans (1874-1951), was the U.S. sculptor, born in Alsace Lorraine, then part of Germany, who was commissioned to create a bust of GP which was unveiled May 12, 1926, at the University Heights site of the Hall of Fame of New York Univ. See: Hall of Fame of New York Univ.
GP's Gifts to Science
Science: GP's Gifts to Science and Science Education. 1-Seven Gifts. GP's seven gifts to science, totaling $551,000, included: 1-The Md. Institute for the Promotion of Mechanic Arts, Baltimore, Oct. 31, 1851, $1,000 for a chemistry laboratory and school. 2-The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 8, 1866, $150,000 for a museum and professorship of anthropology. 3-The Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale Univ., New Haven, Conn., Oct. 22, 1866, $150,000 for a museum and professorship of paleontology. See: institutions named.
Science: GP's Gifts. 2-Seven Gifts Cont'd. 4-Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., Oct. 30, 1866, $25,000 for a professorship of mathematics and natural science. 5-Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, Nov. 6, 1866, $25,000 for a professorship of mathematics and civil engineering. 6-The Peabody Academy of Science (Feb. 26, 1867 to 1915), $140,000 to promote science in Essex County, Mass., renamed Peabody Museum of Salem (1915-92), and renamed Peabody Essex Museum (since 1992), Salem, Mass. 7-Washington College, renamed Washington and Lee Univ., Lexington, Va., 1871, $60,000 for a professorship of mathematics. Ref.: Ibid.
GP’s Nephew, O.C. Marsh, First U.S. Paleontologist, Yale
Science (O.C. Marsh). 3-Nephew O.C. Marsh. GP's nephew, Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99), influenced his uncle's gifts to science and science education, particularly the founding of the Peabody Museums of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard (Oct. 8, 1866) and of Natural History at Yale (Oct. 22, 1866), and to a lesser extent the Peabody Academy of Science (Feb. 26, 1867), now the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 4-Family Background. O.C. Marsh was the son of GP's younger sister Mary Gaines (née Peabody) Marsh (1807-34). Mary Gaines was the seventh child born to Thomas Peabody (1761-1811) and Judith (née Dodge) Peabody (1770-1830), who had eight children. GP, third-born and second son, was the enterprising family member who, a few years after his father's death (May 13, 1811), became the family supporter. See: Marsh, Othniel Charles.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 5-Mary Gaines Peabody Married Caleb Marsh. GP paid for his siblings' schooling and their children's schooling. He paid for Mary Gaines to attend Bradford Academy, Bradford, Mass. In 1826 at age 19 she fell in love with 26-year-old Caleb Marsh (b. c1800), who taught school near Bradford, Mass. The Peabody and Marsh families had been neighbors in Danvers, Mass., with the Marshes more affluent. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 6-Caleb Marsh, Farmer, Lockport, N.Y. About to marry Mary Gaines Peabody, Caleb Marsh expected financial or other help from GP. Caleb Marsh wrote to GP, busy traveling for his firm (Riggs, Peabody & Co.), asking help in getting starting in the dry goods business. Aware of pitfalls for beginners, GP discouraged Caleb Marsh. Caleb Marsh then wrote GP asking for a dowry and under what conditions it would be given. GP provided a monetary settlement, with safeguards. Inept in several enterprises and said later "not to be the best of husbands," Caleb Marsh turned to farming in Lockport, N.Y. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 7-Mary Gaines (Peabody) Marsh died Age 27. Mary Gaines (née Peabody) Marsh died of cholera before her 27th birthday after giving birth to her third child, George Marsh, who also died in his first year of life. She left Caleb Marsh a widower with two children: Mary, age five, and Othniel Charles, approaching age three. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 8-Early Years. Caleb lost heart, returned to Mass., remarried, started a shoe factory which failed, and returned with his second wife to his farm near Lockport, N.Y. There, he fathered six more children. Still inept, he squandered some dowry funds GP had given his sister. Ref.: Ibid. Wallace, D.R., pp. 24-25.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 9-Early Interest in Fossils. O.C. Marsh, called "Othy" as a boy, lived sometimes with aunts and uncles, and also with his father and stepmother on the Marsh farm about a mile from Lockport, N.Y., near the recently excavated Erie Canal. The oldest son in a growing family whose stepmother had little time for him, O.C. Marsh, expected by his father to help with farm work, resisted. He preferring to roam, hunt, and search for fossil-rich rocks in nearby Erie Canal excavations. These fossil-rich rocks attracted fossil collectors from far and wide, both professional and amateurs, including Col. Ezekiel Jewett (1791-1877) who, about 1845 when Marsh was about age 14, first turned the boy's interest toward science and paleontology. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 10-Geologist Ezekiel Jewett. Born in Rindge, N.H., Ezekiel Jewett was an ensign in the 11th U.S. Army infantry, War of 1812, under Gen. Winfield Scott (1786-1866). Jewett was later promoted to second lieutenant and was a colonel about 1816 after serving heroically in Chile and other South American insurrections. The crusty soldier of fortune was also an enthusiastic and indefatigable collector of fossil rocks. A fellow geologist described him as: "Invincible in his search and accordingly successful; intelligent, quick of apprehension and understand; [and] exquisitely and effectively profane…." Col. Jewett conducted a summer school in geology in Lockport for several years when he came to young Marsh's attention. Ref.: Ibid., p. 18. Clarke, p. 242.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 11-Ezekiel Jewett Cont'd. Young Marsh first admired Ezekiel Jewett's skill as a rifleman. Marsh later wrote: Col. Jewett was "the best shot in Western New York…. All envied him but I resolved to beat him…. One day I saw him collecting fossils near the locks…. I joined him occasionally…[and] helped him collect, imbibing wisdom with every hour…. Take him all in all he was one [of the] grandest men I have ever met." Ref. O.C. Marsh, "Col. E. Jewett & what he did for me as boy & man," U.S. National Archives, Record Group No. 57, from Archivist Barbara Narendra, Yale Univ.'s Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 12-Ezekiel Jewett Cont'd. Col. Jewett became curator of the N.Y. State Cabinet of Natural History. Young Marsh went on to an erratic schooling at the Collegiate Institute, Wilson, N.Y. (1847-49) and the Lockport Union School (1850) before attending (at uncle GP's expense) Phillips Academy, Andover Mass., where he blossomed as a scholar. Ref. Schuchert and LeVene, pp. 17-18, and Plate III (medallion portrait of Ezekiel Jewett). Clarke, pp. 241-243. Wells, John W., p. 34-39. See: Jewett, Ezekiel. Marsh, Othniel Charles.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 13-Marsh at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. The death of his sister Mary when she was 22 is said to have shocked O.C. Marsh into buckling down to hard private study. At age 21, inheriting $1,200 of his deceased mother's dowry from GP, Marsh enrolled at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. His fellow students, who were in their teens, called Marsh, who was in his early 20s, "Daddy," and "Captain" (he captained the football team), more in respect than ridicule. He soon became an academic achiever and did some summer fossil hunting. A classmate later recalled that O.C. Marsh made “a clean sweep of all" Phillips Academy honors. He also showed a shrewdness in being elected president of a school society in a strategy planned a year ahead. Ref.: Ibid. Wallace, D.R., p. 26.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 14-Marsh at Yale. GP, in London, pleased by good reports of his nephew Marsh's progress from his sister Judith Dodge (née Peabody) Russell Daniels (1799-1879), helped pay his expenses at Phillips Academy. Learning that young Marsh wanted to attend Yale College, GP agreed to pay for his schooling there. Marsh studied geology under Prof. James Dwight Dana (1813-95) and chemistry under Benjamin Silliman, Jr. (1816-85). Marsh was eighth in his graduating class of 109 students at Yale in 1860 (B.A. degree). With GP's approval and support, O.C. Marsh attended Yale's newly opened (1861) graduate Sheffield Scientific School. In two years he earned the M.A. degree in science (1862), at a cost to GP, according to science historian Bernard Jaffe, of $2,200. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 15-Budding Scholar. In 1861 Marsh wrote a scientific paper read at a Geological Society of London meeting, published in its Transactions, and reprinted in the U.S. and Europe. His summer vacation field work on fossils in Nova Scotia, Canada, brought praise from Harvard zoology Prof. Louis Agassiz (1807-73), world authority on fossil fishes. Agassiz wrote to Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr.: "A student from your Scientific School, Mr. Marsh, has shown me today two vertebrae...which has excited my interest in the highest degree." Marsh wrote proudly from Georgetown, Mass., to GP, London, June 9, 1862: "I was so fortunate during one of my vacations as to make a discovery which has already attracted considerable attention among scientific men." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 16-Marsh Plans German Univ. Study. Weak eyesight kept Marsh from serving in the Civil War. In that same June 9, 1862, letter to GP he added: "If the plan for completing my studies in Germany, which you once so kindly approved, still meets with your approbation, I should like to go in September next [1862]." GP approved and sent Marsh £200 ($1,000). Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 17-Marsh: Ambitious, Eager. Always eager to please his uncle, Marsh was upset by an article his father sent him from the Lockport Journal and Courier, reprinted from a Danvers, Mass., newspaper. He wrote his father that he was "sorry that someone had no more discretion than to preface the notice with some statements which are calculated to do me more injury than...good. The published statement that I am expecting a Professorship at Yale would do not a little towards preventing my getting it. So also that my expenses at College were paid by Uncle George and that he intended to make me his heir, were certainly very injudicious remarks." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Gift). 18-Marsh on GP's Intended Harvard Gift. Marsh sailed for Europe in Oct. 1862. GP talked to his nephew in London about his [GP's] intended gift to Harvard Univ. Marsh described these talks in a letter to his mentor, Yale Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr. "I had a long talk with Mr. P. in regard to his future plans and donations.... I will tell you confidentially that Harvard will have her usual good fortune. So many of our family have been educated at Harvard that he naturally felt a greater interest in that institution than in Yale, of which I am the only representative." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Gift). 19-Marsh on GP's Intended Harvard Gift. Cont'd. "I can assure you, however, that I did [not] allow the claims of my Alma Mater to be forgotten...and I have strong hopes that she may yet be favored although nothing is as yet definitely arranged. The donation to H. [Harvard] is a large one and for a School of Design.... I did not recommend an endowment for a similar object at Yale, partly because I did not feel so much interest in Art as in Science and partly because Mr. P. manifested so much interest in my scientific studies that I thought it not unlikely that he would be more inclined to that department. I did not propose any definite plan..., as I had then none to propose, but shall hope to do so before long as I do not intend to let the matter rest until something definite is decided upon...." Ref.: Ibid.
Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Science (Harvard Gift). 20-What Gift to Harvard? GP's first gift idea for Harvard in 1861 was an astronomical observatory. He discussed this idea in letters to Francis Peabody (1801-68) of Salem and William Henry Appleton (1814-84) of Boston. The Harvard gift idea was also discussed with former Harvard Pres. Edward Everett (1794-1865). Everett thought Harvard needed a "School of Design" [i.e., art], more than an observatory. GP's Harvard gift idea thus changed from observatory to a School of Design (art) when he spoke to his nephew O.C. Marsh in London in mid-Oct. 1862. Marsh's enthusiasm about science influenced GP, turning his Harvard gift idea toward science, and resulting in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard (Oct. 8, 1866). Ref.: Ibid. See: persons named.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 21-Science at Yale. O.C. Marsh's letters from Germany evoked special interest among Yale's small band of scientists. By one account, Prof. Silliman, Sr., had years before sounded out GP about aiding science at Yale, but nothing came of it. Now, with O.C. Marsh as a budding Yale scholar, his Yale teachers had renewed hope of GP's aiding science at Yale. Learning that Prof. Silliman, Jr., had worked out with Prof. James Dwight Dana a plan for a possible Peabody Museum at Yale, Marsh wrote on Feb. 16, 1863: "I shall see Mr. P. in the spring or early in the summer, and shall then try to bring the subject before him in a way best suited to ensure its success." See: Marsh, Othniel Charles.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 22-Plan Peabody Museum, Yale. At the Univ. of Berlin, on advice from his Yale mentors, Marsh specialized in vertebrate paleontology. When he met GP in mid-May 1863 in Hamburg, Germany, Marsh was better able to explain to his uncle the need for an endowed museum which would send out expeditions to find ancient animal and human remains and so reconstruct the antecedents and cultural history of man. Marsh told his uncle that Yale's Sheffield Scientific School (founded 1861) had made such a beginning. He laid out Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr.'s, plan for a scientific Peabody museum at Yale. Satisfied that it was a sound idea, GP named five trustees: O.C. Marsh, Benjamin Silliman, Sr. and Jr., James Dixon, and James Dwight Dana. Ref.: Ibid.
Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History
Science (Yale Hopeful). 23-Plan Peabody Museum, Yale Cont'd. GP told Marsh that he would soon add a codicil to his will endowing the Yale museum. Marsh wrote jubilantly from Hamburg to Prof. Silliman, Sr., May 25, 1863: "I take great pleasure in announcing to you that Mr. George Peabody has decided to extend his generosity to Yale College, and will leave a legacy of one hundred thousand dollars to promote the interests of Natural Science in that Institution." Marsh added: "Mr. Peabody suggests that the Trustees...decide upon a plan...best adapted to promote the object proposed, and to embody the main features of this plan in a clause to be inserted in his will." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 24-Plan Peabody Museum, Yale Cont'd. GP also told Marsh in their May 1863 meeting in Hamburg that although he set the amount to Yale at $100,000, he might raise it and that Yale would receive the gift on his death. As it turned out, GP gave the museum gift to Harvard on Oct. 8 and to Yale on Oct. 22, during his May 1, 1866, to May 1, 1867, U.S. visit, raising the amounts to $150,000 each. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 25-Plan Peabody Museum, Yale Cont'd. Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr., urged Marsh to collect fossils, books, and scientific papers on paleontology. He explained that doing this would prepare Marsh for a Yale professorship in paleontology and would also make the need for a museum more evident to all. Prof. James Dwight Dana echoed Prof. Silliman, Jr.'s suggestion for Marsh to study further in Germany. Unlike the strong U.S. liberal arts tradition, teaching science was new and suspect after Christian fundamentalists denounced the theory of evolution described in Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). Fundamentalists feared that belief in evolution might supplant belief in divine Biblical revelation. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 26-Yale Professorship for Marsh. Amidst this conflict between science and religion, Yale's small band of scientists saw hope for their science disciplines in GP's intended museum gifts to Harvard and Yale, and particularly in the Morrill Act of 1862. That act provided federal land grants to states' higher education for science and mechanic arts (engineering). The Conn. legislature in 1863 voted to allocate Morrill Act funds to Yale's Sheffield Scientific School. Prof. Dana remarked, "The fact is Yale is going to be largely rebuilt, and all at once! The time of her renaissance has come!!" Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 27-Plan Peabody Museum, Yale Cont'd. July 1863 Marsh, studying at Heidelberg, wrote to GP: "One...result of your [projected] donation to Yale has been to...realize my highest hopes of a position [there].... The faculty propose to create a new Professorship of Geology and Paleontology.... This Professorship...corresponds to that held by the great Agassiz at Harvard." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 28-Marsh Needed Science Library and Fossil Collection. Marsh explained to his uncle that he needed a library and fossil collection: "Such a library and cabinet...can only be obtained in Europe.... The amount necessary...would be 3 or 4 thousand dollars.... I have felt some hesitation in asking you for this assistance in view of all you have already done for me, but I have thought it much the best way to state the whole case frankly and leave the matter with you." GP wrote Marsh from Scotland in Aug. 1863 that he would give him $3,500 to buy a library and specimens. Ref.: Ibid.
Science. 29-GP Retired. Ill and wanting to retire, GP cut his ties with George Peabody & Co. on Oct. 1, 1864. Without a son and knowing he would have no control after death, he asked that his name be withdrawn from the firm. Partner Junius Spencer Morgan (1813-90) urged GP to postpone retirement. GP wrote J.S. Morgan politely but firmly: "...I can now make no change, for although the continuance of the firm for three or six months, which you suggest, may appear short to you, to me--feeling as I deeply do, the uncertainty of life at the age of seventy--months would appear as years, for I am most anxious before I die to place my worldly affairs in a much more satisfactory state than they are at present." Ref.: Ibid.
Science. 30-Successor Firms. Thus was George Peabody & Co. (1838-64) succeeded by J.S. Morgan & Co. (1864-1909), by Morgan Grenfell & Co. (1910-1918), Morgan Grenfell & Co. Ltd. (1918-90), and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell (since June 29, 1990, German owned). O.C. Marsh wrote GP from the Univ. of Breslau Oct. 21, 1864: "I saw in the papers the announcement of your retirement.... Before I retire I should like to do for Science as much as you have done for your fellowmen; and if my health continues I shall try hard to do so." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 31-Marsh at Univ. of Breslau. Marsh expected his Yale professorship in June 1864, but was disappointed when it was postponed until June 1865. Being already in Germany, he wrote his uncle that he thought it best to study at the Univ. of Breslau (he was the first U.S. student to attend there). GP approved and paid his expenses. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 32-Marsh's Books and Fossils. Marsh selected a library of books on geology and paleontology, for which his uncle paid $5,000. GP arranged with his agent-friend, Horatio Gates Somerby (1805-72), born in Newburyport, Mass., a London-based genealogist, to ship Marsh's effects to the U.S. The books and fossils went through customs two years later weighing 2.5 tons. Marsh's fossils were the basis of the collection of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale. His books formed the basis of its library collection in geology and paleontology. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 33-Marsh and Leading Scientists. In Berlin Marsh met and spoke with Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875). In Paris he met and spoke with French geologist Philippe-Èdouard Poulletier de Verneuil (1805-73). In London, when he was not with his uncle, he spent his time at the British Museum with the Keeper of Geology, Henry Woodward (1832-1921). Marsh also met such British scientists as Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) and Charles Darwin (1809-82). Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 34-GP's U.S. Visit, 1866-67. Back at Yale in March 1866, teaching Prof. Dana's classes in geology, Marsh wrote to his cousin-in-law Charles W. Chandler (d. 1882), husband of cousin Julia Adelaide (née Peabody) Chandler (b. April 25, 1835) and a lawyer in Zanesville, Ohio, that GP was about to visit the U.S. (May 1, 1866 to May 1, 1867). Ref.: Ibid.
Science. 35-Philanthropic Advisor R.C. Winthrop. GP arrived in NYC on the Scotia, May 3, 1866, for his year-long U.S. visit. He conferred on May 9 and frequently thereafter with his philanthropic advisor, Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-94). Winthrop had been highly recommended to GP in 1862 in London by Thurlow Weed (1797-1882), politically powerful N.Y. State editor. Weed was in London in 1862 as Pres. Lincoln's emissary to keep Britain from siding with the Confederacy in the Civil War. Weed pointed out that Winthrop was uniquely qualified to advise and guide GP's philanthropy. Ref.: Ibid.
GP’s Philanthropic Advisor, Robert Charles Winthrop
Science. 36-R.C. Winthrop's Career. Winthrop was the distinguished descendant of early Mass. Bay Colony Gov. John Winthrop (1588-1649). He was a Harvard graduate (1828), trained in Daniel Webster's law office, member of the Mass. legislature (1834-39, and its Speaker), member of the U.S. House of Representative (1842-50, its Speaker during 1847-50). He was appointed to fill Daniel Webster's U.S. Senate seat (1851). He gave the main addresses at the Washington Monument cornerstone laying (1848) and at its completion (1885). Known and respected by the U.S. political and academic power structure, Winthrop agreed in 1866 to help plan GP's philanthropy. In 1867 Winthrop helped name the PEF trustees, was president of that board, and guided its work to his death in 1894. Ref.: Ibid.
Science. 37-GP Laid His Philanthropic Plans before Winthrop. When GP first laid before Winthrop his philanthropic plans (most likely on May 9, 1866), Winthrop expressed amazement at their size and scope. Winthrop remembered GP's reply and quoted it in his Feb. 8, 1870, eulogy at GP's funeral service. GP's words, underlined below, were later cut into the stone marker placed at the temporary grave site in Westminster Abbey where GP's remains lay in state 30 days (Nov. 11-Dec. 12, 1869). GP had replied: "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 for my fellow-men." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 38-Meetings on Peabody Museum, Harvard. Winthrop had a series of meetings on the Peabody Museum of Harvard: with GP on June 1, 1866, at the Tremont House, Boston; on June 4 with GP's nephews, Yale Prof. O.C. Marsh and George Peabody Russell (1835-1909, Harvard graduate, class of 1856) at the Massachusetts Historical Society; and on June 17 again with GP, who gave Winthrop permission to consult confidentially with Harvard friends. Winthrop especially sought the advice and approval of Louis Agassiz (1807-73), leading U.S. scientist and Harvard zoologist. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 39-James Walker on Peabody Museum, Harvard. Winthrop also talked to Harvard's former Pres. James Walker (1794-1874, Harvard president during 1853-60). Agassiz, Winthrop, and Walker knew that Harvard officials preferred new gifts of money to go to its library and to its Museum of Comparative Zoology rather than for GP's proposed museum. Pres. Walker said to Winthrop: "...When a generous man like Mr. Peabody proposes a great gift, we...had better take what he offers and take it on his terms, and for the object which he evidently has at heart.... There...will be, as you say, disappointments in some quarters. But the branch of Science, to which this endowment is devoted, is one to which many minds in Europe are now eagerly turning.... This Museum...will be the first of its kind in our country." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 40-Peabody Museum, Harvard, Founding Letter. Winthrop communicated his conversation with Pres. Walker to GP on July 6, 1866. On Sept. 24 Winthrop again met with GP and his nephews, Prof. O.C. Marsh and G.P. Russell. On Sept. 28, 1866, Winthrop called the first meeting of the trustees of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard. The trustees accepted GP's gift of $150,000. His founding letter, dated Oct. 8, 1866, ended with these suggestions that: "...In view of the gradual obliteration or destruction of the works and remains of the ancient races of this continent,[that] the labor of exploration and collection be commenced...as early...as practicable; and also, that, in the event of the discovery in America of human remains or implements of an earlier geological period than the present, especial attention be given to their study, and their comparison with those found in other countries." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 41-Anthropology at Harvard. Thus, O.C. Marsh, a Yale man, influenced the founding at Harvard of the first U.S. museum of anthropology in the U.S. It was endowed by GP nine years after the discovery in 1857 in Prussia of the Neanderthal skull, which renewed interest in man's origins. Ethnological items, long collected but unexamined, were soon donated to the new Peabody Museum at Harvard by New England societies, including the Mass. Historical Society. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 42-Walker on Science at Harvard. When the Mass. Historical Society's ethnological items were transferred to the Peabody Museum at Harvard, former Harvard Pres. James Walker said, "For a long time Harvard has exhausted her resources on the traditional liberal arts. The time has come for her to advance scientific knowledge. Mr. Peabody shows great wisdom in facilitating cooperation between the Massachusetts Historical Society and his Museum at Harvard through trustees of the latter who are prominent members of the former." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 43-Harvard Began Study of Anthropology. Anthropologists-historians Charles Franklin Thwing (1853-1937) and Ernest Ingersoll (1852-1946) each wrote that the Peabody Museum at Harvard began the systematic study of anthropology in U. S. higher education. Pre-Columbian life in North America was largely unexplored; existing collections were slight and fragmentary. Ref.: Ibid.
Frederic Ward Putnam, "Father of American Anthropology”
Science (Harvard Museum). 44-Putnam at Harvard. Many early prominent scientists were officers of the Peabody Museum of Harvard, including Frederic Ward Putnam (1839-1915). He was its curator during 1874-1909 and enhanced its reputation as well as his own. He was called by his peers the "Father of American Anthropology." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 45-Putnam at Harvard Cont'd. While at the Peabody Museum of Harvard, he yet found time to help found the 1-Anthropology Dept. of the American Museum of Natural History, NYC, during 1894-1903; 2-the Dept. and Museum of Anthropology, Univ. of California, during 1903-09; and 3-he was secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, during 1873-98. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 46-Putnam at Harvard Cont'd. Famed anthropologist Prof. Franz Boas (1858-1942) wrote that F.W. Putnam pursued the subject of early man in North America with "unconquerable tenacity." Putnam wrote over 400 anthropological reports, many of them on the culture of the "mound builders," ancient ancestors of the American Indians. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 47-Putnam at Harvard Cont'd. At its centennial in 1967, Peabody Museum Director John O. Brew (1906-88) stated that its personnel had pioneered in studying the unique Mayan culture in Central America and had led a total of 688 expeditions worldwide to study early human life. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 48-Praised by Charles Darwin. O.C. Marsh was a convinced evolutionist when in the early 1860s he visited Charles Darwin at his country home in England. Twenty years later Charles Darwin wrote to Marsh, crediting him with findings fossils that provided the best evidence to prove the theory of evolution. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 49-Praised by T.H. Huxley. Marsh also published fossil proof of the North American origin of the horse. The previous belief was that the horse originated in Europe and was brought to America with Christopher Columbus and the conquistadors. Darwin's strongest defender, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95), visiting Marsh at Yale in 1876, became so convinced by Marsh's horse fossil findings that he changed the content of his U. S. lectures, citing Marsh's proof of the pre-Columbian origin of the horse in North America. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 50-Astute Organizer. As Yale Prof. of Paleontology and Director of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, Marsh did not teach or receive a salary until his last years, when his private income (left to him by GP) was almost gone. He was an astute organizer of Yale assistants, directing their field work by telegraph and letter, overseeing their collecting and shipping of railroad carloads of fossils. At Yale he assembled entire dinosaurs, toothed birds, and other extinct mammals. His enormous collection at Yale was still being catalogued in the 1990s. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 51-Dinosaur Fossil Finder. He made his major dinosaur fossil finds in the mid 1870s-80s in the Rocky Mountain region; at Como Bluff in eastern Wyoming; Canyon City, Colorado; and elsewhere in the rugged U.S. West. He used Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History resources, student assistants, and federal funds in his capacity as U.S. Geological Survey paleontologist (1882-92) and honorary curator of vertebrate paleontology at the U.S. National Museum (1887) to find over 1,000 new fossil vertebrates, many of which he classified and described. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 52-Prominent Scientist. Marsh lived like a Victorian gentleman in his 18-room New Haven, Conn., house, courting U.S. and foreign scientists and politicians. On frequent trips to NYC Marsh was often seen in fashionable clubs. For 12 years he was president of the National Academy of Sciences, the most prestigious U.S. scientific body. He was prominent in national science affairs and wielded influence in government and academic science circles. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 53-Criticism. He was also criticized by some peers and assistants. One assistant, Samuel Wendell Williston (1852-1918), who achieved scientific renown after leaving O.C. Marsh's employ, criticized him for publishing fossil findings of his assistants as his own. Marsh's last years were marred by lack of money and loss of U.S. government support. Ref.: Ibid.
Marsh-Cope Rivalry: Dinosaur Fossils
Science (O.C. Marsh). 54-Marsh-Cope Compared. Marsh's professional rival was Philadelphia-born paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope (1840-97). Cope was the son of a wealthy Quaker shipowner and philanthropist. Like Marsh, Cope's mother died when he was three-years-old. Unlike Marsh, Cope grew up in a well-ordered household, did well in a Quaker school, and published his first scientific paper at age 18. Marsh did little until age 20 and published his first paper at age 30. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 55-Marsh-Cope Compared Cont'd. Both studied science in Europe. Cope lived with wife and daughter in Haddonfield, N.J. When his father died (1875), Cope at age 35 inherited a fortune which he used to finance his fossil finds. Though wealthy, Cope lived simply, in contrast to Marsh. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 56-Marsh-Cope Rivalry. Marsh and Cope met in Berlin in 1862. They met again for a friendly week in the U.S. in 1868. From then on, they competed for a quarter-century in the rugged west to find and identify new mammal fossils in scientific publications. Cope, of brilliant mind and wider natural history interests than Marsh, had no institutional connections until, financially depleted in his last years, he was a Univ. of Penn. professor. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 57-Marsh-Cope Rivalry Cont'd. Marsh had the knack of management and made the most of academic and federal government connections. From this rivalry came a treasure trove of dinosaur fossil findings, 80 new kinds of dinosaurs found and described in publications by Marsh and 56 found and described in publications by Cope. From this rivalry came much of what is now known about dinosaurs. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 58-Marsh, GP, Science. Dinosaur displays attracted visitors, particularly young visitors, made science museums popular, and furthered science education. Marsh's biographers estimate that GP gave Yale directly and indirectly through bequests to Marsh close to half a million dollars. The Peabody Museums at Harvard and Yale, their collections, field exploration, exhibits, famous murals (particularly at the Yale Museum), and education programs are eminently the achievements of their directors and staffs. Yet GP's gifts to science education, influenced by nephew O.C. March, made these achievements possible. Ref.: Ibid. Ref. Schiff, p. 80.
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.) 59-200-Year History. The Peabody Essex Museum's 200-year history started long before GP's Feb. 26, 1867, $140,000 gift founded the Peabody Academy of Science. This Peabody Academy of Science (1867-1915), renamed the Peabody Museum of Salem (1915-1992), combined the science collections of two societies, the East India Marine Society, founded in 1799, and the Essex County Natural History Society, founded in 1833. Ref. Parker, F.-q, pp. 137-153, reprinted Parker, F.-zd, pp. 129-140.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 60-East India Marine Society. The East India Marine Society's ethnological and marine history collections were brought back by Salem's acquisitive shipmasters from China, Sumatra, India, and the Pacific islands. Before GP's 1867 gift, these were inadequately housed in the moribund East India Marine Society Building in Salem. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 61-Essex Institute. Next door was the Essex County Natural History Society, founded in 1833, to collect New England's natural history antiquities. In 1848 this Essex County Natural History Society merged with the Essex Historical Society, founded in 1821 to preserve the history and relics of Essex County, Mass. The 1848 merger resulted in the Essex Institute. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 62-Peabody Academy of Science. Soon after, the Peabody Academy of Science (1867) housed and displayed the East India Marine Society's (1799) ethnological and maritime history collections, along with the Essex Institute's Natural History Society's (1833) collections. Other New England societies began to donate their ethnological and maritime objects to the then new (1867) Peabody Academy of Science. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 63-Name Change to Peabody Essex Museum. The Peabody Academy of Science (1867-1915) was renamed the Peabody Museum of Salem (1915-1992) and renamed the Peabody Essex Museum since 1992, all at the same location in Salem, Mass. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 64-First Dir. Edward Sylvester Morse. Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925) was Peabody Academy of Science's first director during 1880-1916. E.S. Morse was Louis Agassiz's (1807-73) student at Harvard Univ. and had worked with other Agassiz students, including Frederic W. Putnam (1839-1915), director of the Peabody Museum of Harvard during 1874-1909. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 65-E.S. Morse in Japan. E.S. Morse, who organized the Peabody Academy of Science collections, achieved scientific renown by teaching zoology for the first time at the Imperial Univ. of Tokyo, Japan, during 1877-79 and 1882-83. He founded there a zoological department, library, museum, and journal, and was the first to lecture on Darwinian evolution. For introducing science to Japan during the Meiji period, when Japan first turned to western influence, Morse earned several Japanese honors, including two monuments built to his memory. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 66-Name Change. The Peabody Academy of Science (1867-1915) was renamed the Peabody Museum of Salem (1915-92). In 1984 the Peabody Museum of Salem absorbed the China Trade Museum of Milton, Mass., containing the finest collection of Asian export art in the world. In July 1992, after 200 years of public showing of Asian and Pacific ethnological and marine history treasures, the Peabody Museum of Salem and the Essex Institute consolidated into the Peabody and Essex Museum, soon renamed the Peabody Essex Museum. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 67-Six Departments. The Peabody Essex Museum has more than a hundred staff. Its focus is on science education for the visiting public, especially young visitors. The museum's collections illuminate Salem's history from its founding as the third oldest colonial village to its zenith as a seaport, when its ships carried goods, culture, and artifacts between the U.S. and the then little-known Oriental and Pacific worlds. The museum's six departments cover 1-Maritime History, 2-American Decorative Arts and Essex County Historical Collections, 3-Asian Export Art, 4-Ethnology, 5-Natural History, 6-and Archaeology. These six departments are housed in nine buildings open for public tours. The nine buildings are historic in that they span Salem's residential architecture from its beginning to
Following Background "Preface" below 10 of 14 blogs covers alphabetically: Salem Village, Mass. to U.S. Ministers. 3.
Background: "Preface" 1 of 14 tells the why-when-where-how-findings-and-motives of the authors’ research on Franklin Parker’s doctoral dissertation, “George Peabody, Founder of Modern Philanthropy,” completed 1956 at George Peabody College for Teachers, adjoining Vanderbilt University, which on July 1, 1979, became Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville.
George Peabody, so well known in the 1850s-60s but since sadly neglected, was a significant 19th century figure as: 1-a Massachusetts-born merchant in the U.S. South: Riggs & Peabody, later Peabody & Riggs (1814-38), who imported dry goods and other commodities (worldwide) for sale to U.S. wholesalers. George Peabody then became: 2-a London-based merchant-banker, George Peabody & Co. (1838-64), who financed in part the B&O RR, the 2nd Mexican War Loan, the Atlantic Cable, and with J.S. Morgan as partner, was the root of the JP Morgan international banking firm. Finally, this merchant-turned-banker became: 3-the best known philanthropist of his time (1850s-60s), who founded the Peabody Homes of London for the working poor; in the U.S. 7 Peabody Libraries and Lecture Halls; the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Baltimore; three Peabody Museums at Harvard (Anthropology), Yale (Paleontology), and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (maritime history); and founder of the Peabody Education Fund for the South (1867-1914), basis for all later larger U.S. funds and foundations. End of Background.
Salem Village, Mass., first called Brooksby (1626), became known as Salem Village, and then Danvers (1752-1855), then South Danvers (1855-68), and since April 13, 1868, Peabody, Mass. See: Peabody, Mass.
London Times Editor
Sampson, Marmaduke Blake (d.1876). 1-London Times Editor. Marmaduke Blake Sampson was an accomplished classical scholar, had been secretary of the treasury committee of the Bank of England, was city editor of the London Times for 30 years, and wrote its financial columns (1854-74). He was present at GP's July 4, 1854, dinner at the Star and Garter at Richmond near London, at which super patriot U.S. London Legation Secty. Daniel Edgar Sickles (1819-1914) walked out in anger because GP toasted Queen Victoria before toasting the U.S. President. GP consulted with M.B. Sampson during the subsequent charge and countercharge in letters to newspapers over the incident. Ref.:(Blake mentioned): Wallace and Gillespie, eds., II, pp. 896 (footnote 8), 1110-1111, ff. See: Dinners, GP's, London. Peabody Homes of London. Sickles, Daniel Edgar.
Sampson, M.B. 2-Attended July 9, 1858, Dinner. M.B. Sampson was also the only Englishman who attended GP's July 9, 1858, banquet at the Crystal Palace, London, for 50 Americans, including U.S. Minister to Britain George Mifflin Dallas (1792-1864) and family and John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870). M.B. Sampson is also mentioned in connection with the public announcement of GP's March 12, 1862, Peabody Donation Fund letter founding the Peabody Homes of London. Ref.: Ibid.
Trent Affair
San Jacinto (ship). 1-British Trent Illegally Stopped. On Nov. 8, 1861, Union warship San Jacinto under Capt. Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) fired shots that stopped the British mail packet Trent in the West Indies Bahama Channel. Four Confederate emissaries were illegally and forcibly removed from the Trent and taken to Boston Harbor's Fort Warren prison. They were James Murray Mason (1798-1871) of Va. and his male secretary, seeking recognition, aid, and arms from England; and John Slidell (1793-1871) of La. and his male secretary (George Eustice, 1828-72, from La.), seeking aid and arms from France. See: Trent Affair.
San Jacinto. 2-Affected News of Peabody Homes of London Gift. Their seizure created exultation in the U.S. North but anger and near-war preparations by Britain. Bad feelings lasted well into 1862, affecting GP in London who, with his advisors and trustees, delayed until March 12, 1862, announcement of the Peabody Donation Fund, a $2.5 million (total, 1862-69) gift for apartments for London's working poor. Ref.: Ibid.
San Jacinto. 3-Mrs. Louise Morris (née Corcoran) Eustice. Another GP-Trent connection was with Slidell's secretary George Eustice, married to Louise Morris Corcoran (1838-67), only daughter of GP's longtime business associate William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888) of Washington, D.C. She was a favorite of GP, who had entertained Corcoran and his daughter, sometimes the daughter alone, on European trips. She was on the Trent when her husband was illegally removed. When she reached England, GP's partner in George Peabody & Co., Junius Spencer Morgan (1813-90), called on her to see after her welfare. U.S. jingoism calmed. Pres. Lincoln's cabinet met Dec. 26, 1861, disavowed Capt. Wilkes's action, and the four Confederates were released Jan. 1, 1862. Ref.: Ibid. See: persons named.
GP In Rome
San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy. 1-In Rome. GP gave a $19,300 gift to San Spirito Hospital, a Vatican charitable hospital, Rome, Italy, during Feb. 24-28, 1868. He was in Rome, Italy, with philanthropic advisor Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-94), Feb. 19-28, 1868, for sittings in U.S. sculptor William Wetmore Story's (1819-95) studio for the GP seated statue Story was preparing for placement on Threadneedle St., near the Royal Exchange (unveiled July 23, 1869, by the Prince of Wales).
San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy. 2-Visit with the Pope. About Feb. 24-25, 1868, GP and Winthrop, accompanied by former Secty. of the U.S. Legation in Rome Mr. Hooker (who arranged the visit), had an audience with Pope Pius IX (Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, 1792-1878, Pope during 1846-78). It was GP's only audience with the Pope and Winthrop's second audience (Winthrop's first audience with the Pope, 1860). Cornell Univ. Pres. Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918) heard from sculptor W.W. Story that Winthrop introduced GP to the Pope "as a gentleman who though unmarried, had hundreds of children; whereupon the Pope, taking him literally, held up his hands and answered, 'Fi donc! Fi donc!" (French expression of disapproval). Ref.: Ibid.
San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy. 3-Charitable Hospital Gift. Leaving the Pope, Mr. Hooker introduced GP and Winthrop to Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli (1806-76). The conversation turned to the hospital of San Spirito among other charitable institutions in Rome. When GP reached his room that night (about Feb. 24-25, 1868), he sent the cardinal a contribution. GP left Rome Feb. 27, 1868, for Genoa, then went by boat to Nice, France, arriving March 3, 1868, where Baltimore friend John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870) briefly visited him (Kennedy was on his way to Rome). Ref.: Ibid.
San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy. 4-To Cannes & Paris. GP then went to Cannes, France, March 16, 1868, to visit George Eustis (1828-72), William Wilson Corcoran's son-in-law (Corcoran's only daughter Louise Morris née Corcoran Eustis died Dec. 4, 1867, leaving him and their three children). GP, accompanied by Winthrop, then went to Paris about March 16, where they were received by Napoleon III (1808-73) and Empress Eugénie (1826-1920). Ref.: Ibid. See: persons named.
San Spirito Hospital, Rome, Italy. 5-False Report of GP Statue in Rome. GP's visit to Rome, audience with the Pope, and gift to the San Spirito Hospital may have been the basis for a short item from Rome in the vast publicity on GP's death (Nov. 4, 1869) and transatlantic funeral: "A statue of Mr. Peabody is to be erected at Rome by order of the Pope." No GP statue in Rome ever materialized. Ref.: Ibid.
Carl Sandburg
Sandburg, Carl (1878-1967). 1-"poor boys who have become rich." Carl Sandburg was a U.S. poet (The People, Yes, 1936) and biographer of Abraham Lincoln, six volumes, 1926-39. His autobiographical Always the Young Strangers, 1953, tells of his first reading about GP in a small vest pocket booklet series titled "Packed in Duke's Cigarettes." As a schoolboy growing up in Galesburg, Ill. (about 1890), walking to school he picked up a smudged booklet (2" & 3/4 " long by l" & 1'/2 " wide), brushed off the dirt, and saw its title, A Short History of General P.T. Beauregard, part of a "Series of Small Books." Ref.: Sandburg-b, pp. 260, 262-263, 269.
Sandburg, Carl. 2-"poor boys who have become rich" Cont'd. Fascinated with it, he found adults who smoked that brand. One adult agreed to give him the booklet inserts. He collected this series, read and swapped them with other boy collectors. Sandburg was charmed by the Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of a series of 50 on the lives of "poor boys who have become rich." Proud of his vest pocket library, the future poet and biographer reflected on his remembrance on reading the booklet on GP. Ref.: Ibid.
Sandburg, Carl. 3-On First Reading About GP. Sandburg remembered that: "On the back of another book was a bare-shouldered woman worth looking at, one breast bare, and she held a shining green wreath and a banner that read above her 'Charity' and below 'George Peabody, a Philanthropist.' It was what we called a 'jawbreaker,' the word 'Philanthropist,' but the book made it clear. 'During his long life he not only gave away millions of dollars but he placed his great wealth where it would do the most good.'" Ref.: Ibid.
Sandburg, Carl. 4-On First Reading About GP Cont'd. "After making one fortune in America in the grocery and dry-goods business he went to London as a banker and made a bigger fortune. For all of his money he didn't marry and the book said: 'The story is told that a young American girl who had refused him in the day when money was scarce married one of his friends, whereupon Peabody resolved to remain single --a resolve which he faithfully kept." Ref.: Ibid.
Sandburg, Carl. 5-On First Reading About GP Cont'd. "I wanted to know more about that girl and how her husband did by her and what they talked about when George Peabody threw a million dollars to Baltimore for a free library, lecture hall, academy of music, and an art gallery--and later when he put three millions into tearing away tumbledown shanties in the London slums and building brick houses with a little grass around for children to play on--and later when he put another three million dollars into better schools for Negro children of the South." Ref.: Ibid.
Sandburg, Carl. 6-On First Reading About GP Cont'd. "The Queen of England wanted to give Peabody a title. He thanked her, said he could get along without it, and went home to Baltimore, where twenty thousand children met him and waved their hands and their handkerchiefs and he said, 'Never have I seen a more beautiful sight.' I wondered if the girl who had refused him was anywhere among the thousands of grownups looking on. On the front cover Mr. Peabody's white hair fell over his ears, and with his white side whiskers he reminded me of one of our Lutheran deacons." Ref.: Ibid.
Sandburg, Carl. 7-Criticism of GP. Not withstanding his boyhood admiration of GP, in his Pulitzer prize Abraham Lincoln, The War Years (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1939), III, pp. 124-125, Carl Sandburg repeated unsubstantiated charges against GP as a Confederate sympathizer in the Civil War. Such charges had first been made in 1862, without substantial evidence by John Bigelow (1817-1911), U.S. Consul General in Paris; repeated by Samuel Bowles (1826-78), editor of the Springfield Daily Republican (Springfield, Mass.), Oct. 27, 1866; by Gustavus Myers (1872-1942) in History of the Great American Fortunes, 1910, rev. 1936; by Matthew Josephson (1899-1978) in The Robber Barons (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1934 and 1962), p. 60; and by Leland DeWitt Baldwin in The Stream of American History (New York: American Book Co., 1952), II, p. 121. See: Civil War and GP. See: Felt, Charles Wilson. For defense of GP as Union supporter, see McIlvaine, Charles Pettit. "S.P.Q." Weed, Thurlow.
Sandburg, Carl. 8-Criticism of GP Cont'd. (Sandburg wrote): "Of the international bankers Peabody & Morgan, sturdy Samuel Bowles said in the Springfield [Mass.] Republican that their agencies in New York and London had induced during the war a flight of capital from America." Sandburg then quoted Bowles: '"They gave us no faith and no help in our struggle for national existence.... No individuals contributed so much to flooding the money markets with evidence of our debts to Europe, and breaking down their prices and weakening financial confidence in our nationality, and none made more money by the operation.'" Ref.: Ibid.
Great Exhibition of 1851, London (first world's fair)
Sands, Joshua Ratoon (1795-1884). 1-GP's Timely Loan. Joshua R. Sands was the U.S. Navy officer commanding the frigate St. Lawrence authorized by the U.S. Congress to transport U.S. exhibitors and their exhibits to the Great Exhibition of 1851, London, the first world's fair. The St. Lawrence left NYC Feb. 8, 1851, arrived in Southampton, March 1851, when a lack of funds led to a crisis. Congress had neglected to appropriate funds to transfer the exhibits and adorn the Crystal Palace exhibition area. The British press ridiculed American pretensions. A New York Times writer later recorded: "The whole affair looked like a disgraceful failure. At this juncture Mr. Geo. Peabody, of whom not one exhibitor in twenty had ever heard, and who was personally unknown to every member of the Commission, offered through a polite note addressed to Mr. [Abbott] Lawrence [1792-1855, U.S. Minister to Britain] to advance £3,000 [$15,000] on the personal responsibility of [U.S. Commissioner] Mr. [Edward W.] Riddle and his secretary, Mr. [Nathaniel Shattwell] Dodge [1810-74]. This loan, afterward [three years later re]paid by Congress, relieved the Commission of its difficulties, and enabled our countrymen to achieve their first success in industrial competition with the artisans and manufacturers of Europe." See: Great Exhibition of 1851, London (first world's fair).
Sands, J.R.. 2-Career. U.S. Navy officer Sands was born in Brooklyn, NY, May 13, 1795. He was appointed midshipman in the U.S. Navy (June 18, 1812), served in the War of 1812 on Lake Ontario, saw action against the Royal George; served on the Madison (April 1813), took part in the capture of Toronto and the capture of Fort George. He was attached to the Pike, and served on shore (1814), on the frigate Superior, was attached to the Washington in the Mediterranean (1815–18), was promoted lieutenant (April 1, 1818), served on the Hornet off the coast of Africa, in the West Indies (1819), on the Franklin on the Pacific coast (1821–24), on the Vandalia near Brazil (1828–30), was on recruiting duty (1830–40), was promoted Commander (Feb. 23, 1841), served at the NYC navy yard (1841–43), commanded the Falmouth in the Gulf and West Indies (1843–45), the Vixen during the Mexican War, took part in the capture of Alverado, Tabasco and Laguna, and was made governor of Laguna. He participated in the attack on Vera Cruz; assisted in the capture of Tampico and Tuspan (1847) and served in other actions. Ref.: Internet, "Sands, Joshua Ratoon [1795-1884], http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~dav4is/people/SAND320.htm
Sands, J.R.. 3-Career (Cont'd.). After taking the frigate St. Lawrence to the Great Exhibition of London, 1851, he took it to Portugal that year, was promoted Captain (Feb. 25, 1854), commanded the Susquehanna in Central America, in the Mediterranean, and in England (1856), was engaged in laying the Atlantic Cable (1857), served in Central America, commanded the Brazilian squadron on the flagship Congress (1859–61), retired (Dec. 21, 1861), was promoted commodore on the retired list (July 16, 1862), and made rear admiral (July 25, 1866). He served as light-house inspector on Lakes Erie and Ontario and the St. Lawrence River (1862–66), and was port-admiral, Norfolk, Va. (1869–72). He died in Baltimore, Md. (Oct. 2, 1883). Ref.: Ibid.
Satterlee, Herbert Livingston (1863-1947), was John Pierpont Morgan Sr.'s (1837-1913) son-in-law and author of Life of J. Pierpont Morgan (New York; privately printed, 1937). For Satterlee's connection with GPCFT Pres. Bruce Ryburn Payne (1874-1937), See: Payne, Bruce Ryburn. PCofVU. Conkin, Peabody College, index.
Scarritt College for Christian Workers, Nashville. See: Jean and Alexander Heard Library of Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville. PCofVU, history of. Conkin, Peabody College, index.
Naval Reception for GP's Remains
Schenck, Robert Cumming (1809-90). 1-Opposed U.S. Navy Reception for GP's Remains, Portland, Me. U.S. Rep. Robert Cumming Schenck (Republican-Ohio) on Dec. 21, 1869, objected to U.S. House Resolution No. 96 which asked Pres. U.S. Grant (1822-85) to order a U.S. Navy reception for GP's remains, then aboard HMS Monarch, escorted by USS Plymouth, from Portsmouth, England, to Portland, Me. Rep. Schenck led the opposition to the resolution by moving that the House adjourn to allow time to consider if it should go to this expense. Rep. Daniel Wolsey Voorhees (1827-97, Democrat-Ind.) regretted that a move to adjourn was made, in view of GP's vast gifts to U.S. education and science. Rep. Schenck defended his move to adjourn and challenged GP's patriotism during the Civil War, while some Republican members applauded. See: Death and funeral, GP's.
Schenck, R.C. 2-Resolution Passed. U.S. Rep. Thomas Laurens Jones (1819-87, D-Ky.), who originally introduced U.S. House Resolution No. 96 on Dec. 15, 1869, expressed shame that his proposal to honor GP was being so debated. He mentioned withdrawing the resolution. The House refused to adjourn and, with Rep. Schenck still objecting, passed the resolution that day. It was passed by the U.S. Senate on Dec. 23, 1869, and was signed into law by Pres. Grant on Jan. 10, 1870. Ref.: Ibid.
Schenck, R.C. 3-Career. Rep. R.C. Schenck was born in Franklin, Ohio; graduated from Miami Univ. (1827); taught French and Latin; practiced law in Dayton, Ohio; served in the Ohio legislature (1840); in the U.S. House (1843-51); was U.S. Minister to Brazil (1851-53); was a Union general (1861-63); and a radical Republican in the U.S. House (1863-70). There was a touch of irony when in 1870 U.S. Pres. Grant appointed R.C. Schenck (who opposed a U.S. Naval reception for GP's remains on the Monarch at Portland, Me.) to replace John Lothrop Motley (1814-77) as U.S. Minister to Britain during 1871-76. In that capacity, Schenk was a member of the Joint Commission that arbitrated the Alabama Claims and signed the Treaty of Washington in May 1871 by which Britain paid the U.S. $15.5 million in reparations. Ref.: Ibid. Ref.:(Schenck as Union general): Boatner, p. 725. Ref.:(Schenck as U.S. Minister to Britain): Welch, p. 137.
Elopement that Shocked Queen Victoria
Schenley, Edward W.H. (1798-1878). 1-GP in Pittsburgh, April 14-16, 1857. During GP's Sept. 15, 1856, to Aug. 19, 1857, U.S. visit, his first return from London in nearly 20 years, he stayed in Pittsburgh, Penn., with Capt. and Mrs. Edward W.H. Schenley during April 14-16, 1857, where a reception was held in his honor. GP's connection with the Schenleys, not precisely known, may have had to do with her father's initial displeasure at their scandalous elopement from the U.S. to England in 1842, and the possible use by the later reconciled father of George Peabody & Co.'s service in transferring funds to support the Schenleys in London. Ref. Pittsburgh, Penn., Evening Chronicle, April 14, 1857, p. 1, c. 1-3. See: Visits to the U.S. by GP, 1856-57.
Schenley, E.W.H. 2-Scandalous Elopement. Pittsburgh, Penn., heiress Mary Elizabeth Croghan (1827-1903, pronounced "Crawn") attended Mrs. McLeod's boarding school in Staten Island, N.Y. Miss Croghan was aged 15 when in 1842 British military officer Capt. Edward W.H. Schenley (said to have fought in the Battle of Waterloo, 1815) visited that school to see Mrs. McLeod, his sister-in-law. He at age 43 and Miss Croghan at age 15 met, fell in love, and created a sensation by eloping to England. Ref. Shine, Bernice. "Schenley Park Donated by Girl Whose Romance Shocked a Queen." Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, September 15, 1941, seen July 10, 2002, at http://einpgh.org/exhibit/neighborhoods/oakland/oak_108.html
Schenley, E.W.H. 3-Descendant of Pittsburgh Founders. Mary Elizabeth Croghan, her father's only child and heir to a large fortune, was the maternal granddaughter of Pittsburgh founder and landowner Revolutionary War Quartermaster General James O'Hara (1754-1819). She was also related to Pittsburgh's first mayor (1816) Ebenezer Denny (1761-1822). Her father, William Croghan, Jr. (d. 1850), had a stroke on hearing of the elopement. He recovered and, convinced that Capt. Schenley was a fortune hunter, legally blocked Schenley's access to his daughter's fortune. Other parents with daughters in Mrs. McLeod's school, believing her involved in the elopement, withdrew their daughters, causing its closure. Ref. Ibid.
Schenley, E.W.H. 4-Reconciliation. The Schenleys lived in modest circumstances in London. They were excluded from court functions because Queen Victoria disapproved of the elopement. In time the birth of Schenley children and the family's apparent happiness led her father to relent. He visited them in London, restored her inheritance, and wanted them to return to Pittsburgh. The Schenleys made some prolonged visits to the Croghan mansion in Pittsburgh (including GP's April 14-16, 1857, stay with them) but lived permanently in London. Ref. See under Schenley, Capt. Edward W. H., in Ref.: g. Internet: http://www.wqed.org/tv/pghist/oakland.lhtml (seen July 12, 2002).
Schenley, E.W.H. 5-Schenley Park and other Philanthropies. Mrs. Schenley's philanthropic gifts came from land inherited from her maternal grandfather Gen. James O'Hara. She gave land for Pittsburgh's 456-acre Schenley Park; gave adjacent land for the Pittsburgh Carnegie Public Library and the Western Pennsylvania Institute for the Blind; and a lot for a Newsboys' Home. The proximity to Schenley Park of the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning building and the Carnegie Mellon University make it a significant cultural center. Ref.: Ibid.
Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, Penn. See: Schenley, Edward W.H. (1798-1878) above.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Sr. (1888-1965), was the Harvard Univ. history professor who suggested GP's contributions to educational philanthropy as a doctoral research topic to Felix Compton Robb (1914-97) when Robb attended Harvard Graduate School of Education. Robb, then a GPCFT administrator (assistant to the president, dean of instruction, president during 1961-66), pursued another topic in education administration. In 1953 when he was Dean of Instruction at GPCFT he suggested the topic to co-author Franklin Parker. See: Robb, Felix Compton.
GP’s Nephew, O.C. Marsh
Schuchert, Charles, and Clara Mae LeVene. 1-Biographers of O.C. Marsh. Charles Schuchert and Clara Mae LeVene were the authors of O. C. Marsh, Pioneer in Paleontology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), biography of Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99), based on his papers at Yale Univ. GP paid for the education of his nephew Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99) education at Phillips Academy, Mass., Yale College (B.A., 1860), Yale's Sheffield Scientific School (M.A., 1863), and study abroad at the German universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Breslau (1863-65). See: Marsh, Othniel Charles.
Schuchert, Charles, and Clara Mae LeVene. 2-Marsh, First U.S. Paleontology Prof. GP also paid for O.C. Marsh's science library (paleontology) and paid to ship these and fossil specimens (2.5 tons) to New Haven, Conn., where Marsh was the first U.S. professor of paleontology at Yale Univ. and the second such professor in the world. O.C. Marsh influenced GP's founding of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard (Oct. 8, 1866, $150,000), the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale (Oct. 22, 1866, $150,000), and less directly what is now the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass. (Feb. 26, 1867, $140,000). See: Science: GP's Contributions to Science and Science Education (below). Institutions named.
Schuchert, Charles, and Clara Mae LeVene. 3-Authors Worked with O.C. Marsh. Charles Schuchert (1858-1942), O.C. Marsh's biographer, helped Charles Emerson Beecher (1856-1904) prepare fossils at Yale during 1892-93, served on the U.S. Geological Survey (1893-94), was Yale's third paleontology professor (1904-23), taught the history of geology at Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, and was geological curator at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. Schuchert and co-author Clara M. LeVene, Peabody Museum of Yale librarian, both worked with O.C. Marsh and had full access to his papers. Reviewers praised the Schuchert and LeVene biography as "a labor of love." Ref.: Book Review Digest 1941, pp. 815-816. See: persons named.
Schuler, Hans (1874-1951), was the U.S. sculptor, born in Alsace Lorraine, then part of Germany, who was commissioned to create a bust of GP which was unveiled May 12, 1926, at the University Heights site of the Hall of Fame of New York Univ. See: Hall of Fame of New York Univ.
GP's Gifts to Science
Science: GP's Gifts to Science and Science Education. 1-Seven Gifts. GP's seven gifts to science, totaling $551,000, included: 1-The Md. Institute for the Promotion of Mechanic Arts, Baltimore, Oct. 31, 1851, $1,000 for a chemistry laboratory and school. 2-The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 8, 1866, $150,000 for a museum and professorship of anthropology. 3-The Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale Univ., New Haven, Conn., Oct. 22, 1866, $150,000 for a museum and professorship of paleontology. See: institutions named.
Science: GP's Gifts. 2-Seven Gifts Cont'd. 4-Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., Oct. 30, 1866, $25,000 for a professorship of mathematics and natural science. 5-Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, Nov. 6, 1866, $25,000 for a professorship of mathematics and civil engineering. 6-The Peabody Academy of Science (Feb. 26, 1867 to 1915), $140,000 to promote science in Essex County, Mass., renamed Peabody Museum of Salem (1915-92), and renamed Peabody Essex Museum (since 1992), Salem, Mass. 7-Washington College, renamed Washington and Lee Univ., Lexington, Va., 1871, $60,000 for a professorship of mathematics. Ref.: Ibid.
GP’s Nephew, O.C. Marsh, First U.S. Paleontologist, Yale
Science (O.C. Marsh). 3-Nephew O.C. Marsh. GP's nephew, Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99), influenced his uncle's gifts to science and science education, particularly the founding of the Peabody Museums of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard (Oct. 8, 1866) and of Natural History at Yale (Oct. 22, 1866), and to a lesser extent the Peabody Academy of Science (Feb. 26, 1867), now the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 4-Family Background. O.C. Marsh was the son of GP's younger sister Mary Gaines (née Peabody) Marsh (1807-34). Mary Gaines was the seventh child born to Thomas Peabody (1761-1811) and Judith (née Dodge) Peabody (1770-1830), who had eight children. GP, third-born and second son, was the enterprising family member who, a few years after his father's death (May 13, 1811), became the family supporter. See: Marsh, Othniel Charles.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 5-Mary Gaines Peabody Married Caleb Marsh. GP paid for his siblings' schooling and their children's schooling. He paid for Mary Gaines to attend Bradford Academy, Bradford, Mass. In 1826 at age 19 she fell in love with 26-year-old Caleb Marsh (b. c1800), who taught school near Bradford, Mass. The Peabody and Marsh families had been neighbors in Danvers, Mass., with the Marshes more affluent. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 6-Caleb Marsh, Farmer, Lockport, N.Y. About to marry Mary Gaines Peabody, Caleb Marsh expected financial or other help from GP. Caleb Marsh wrote to GP, busy traveling for his firm (Riggs, Peabody & Co.), asking help in getting starting in the dry goods business. Aware of pitfalls for beginners, GP discouraged Caleb Marsh. Caleb Marsh then wrote GP asking for a dowry and under what conditions it would be given. GP provided a monetary settlement, with safeguards. Inept in several enterprises and said later "not to be the best of husbands," Caleb Marsh turned to farming in Lockport, N.Y. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 7-Mary Gaines (Peabody) Marsh died Age 27. Mary Gaines (née Peabody) Marsh died of cholera before her 27th birthday after giving birth to her third child, George Marsh, who also died in his first year of life. She left Caleb Marsh a widower with two children: Mary, age five, and Othniel Charles, approaching age three. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 8-Early Years. Caleb lost heart, returned to Mass., remarried, started a shoe factory which failed, and returned with his second wife to his farm near Lockport, N.Y. There, he fathered six more children. Still inept, he squandered some dowry funds GP had given his sister. Ref.: Ibid. Wallace, D.R., pp. 24-25.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 9-Early Interest in Fossils. O.C. Marsh, called "Othy" as a boy, lived sometimes with aunts and uncles, and also with his father and stepmother on the Marsh farm about a mile from Lockport, N.Y., near the recently excavated Erie Canal. The oldest son in a growing family whose stepmother had little time for him, O.C. Marsh, expected by his father to help with farm work, resisted. He preferring to roam, hunt, and search for fossil-rich rocks in nearby Erie Canal excavations. These fossil-rich rocks attracted fossil collectors from far and wide, both professional and amateurs, including Col. Ezekiel Jewett (1791-1877) who, about 1845 when Marsh was about age 14, first turned the boy's interest toward science and paleontology. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 10-Geologist Ezekiel Jewett. Born in Rindge, N.H., Ezekiel Jewett was an ensign in the 11th U.S. Army infantry, War of 1812, under Gen. Winfield Scott (1786-1866). Jewett was later promoted to second lieutenant and was a colonel about 1816 after serving heroically in Chile and other South American insurrections. The crusty soldier of fortune was also an enthusiastic and indefatigable collector of fossil rocks. A fellow geologist described him as: "Invincible in his search and accordingly successful; intelligent, quick of apprehension and understand; [and] exquisitely and effectively profane…." Col. Jewett conducted a summer school in geology in Lockport for several years when he came to young Marsh's attention. Ref.: Ibid., p. 18. Clarke, p. 242.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 11-Ezekiel Jewett Cont'd. Young Marsh first admired Ezekiel Jewett's skill as a rifleman. Marsh later wrote: Col. Jewett was "the best shot in Western New York…. All envied him but I resolved to beat him…. One day I saw him collecting fossils near the locks…. I joined him occasionally…[and] helped him collect, imbibing wisdom with every hour…. Take him all in all he was one [of the] grandest men I have ever met." Ref. O.C. Marsh, "Col. E. Jewett & what he did for me as boy & man," U.S. National Archives, Record Group No. 57, from Archivist Barbara Narendra, Yale Univ.'s Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 12-Ezekiel Jewett Cont'd. Col. Jewett became curator of the N.Y. State Cabinet of Natural History. Young Marsh went on to an erratic schooling at the Collegiate Institute, Wilson, N.Y. (1847-49) and the Lockport Union School (1850) before attending (at uncle GP's expense) Phillips Academy, Andover Mass., where he blossomed as a scholar. Ref. Schuchert and LeVene, pp. 17-18, and Plate III (medallion portrait of Ezekiel Jewett). Clarke, pp. 241-243. Wells, John W., p. 34-39. See: Jewett, Ezekiel. Marsh, Othniel Charles.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 13-Marsh at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. The death of his sister Mary when she was 22 is said to have shocked O.C. Marsh into buckling down to hard private study. At age 21, inheriting $1,200 of his deceased mother's dowry from GP, Marsh enrolled at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. His fellow students, who were in their teens, called Marsh, who was in his early 20s, "Daddy," and "Captain" (he captained the football team), more in respect than ridicule. He soon became an academic achiever and did some summer fossil hunting. A classmate later recalled that O.C. Marsh made “a clean sweep of all" Phillips Academy honors. He also showed a shrewdness in being elected president of a school society in a strategy planned a year ahead. Ref.: Ibid. Wallace, D.R., p. 26.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 14-Marsh at Yale. GP, in London, pleased by good reports of his nephew Marsh's progress from his sister Judith Dodge (née Peabody) Russell Daniels (1799-1879), helped pay his expenses at Phillips Academy. Learning that young Marsh wanted to attend Yale College, GP agreed to pay for his schooling there. Marsh studied geology under Prof. James Dwight Dana (1813-95) and chemistry under Benjamin Silliman, Jr. (1816-85). Marsh was eighth in his graduating class of 109 students at Yale in 1860 (B.A. degree). With GP's approval and support, O.C. Marsh attended Yale's newly opened (1861) graduate Sheffield Scientific School. In two years he earned the M.A. degree in science (1862), at a cost to GP, according to science historian Bernard Jaffe, of $2,200. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 15-Budding Scholar. In 1861 Marsh wrote a scientific paper read at a Geological Society of London meeting, published in its Transactions, and reprinted in the U.S. and Europe. His summer vacation field work on fossils in Nova Scotia, Canada, brought praise from Harvard zoology Prof. Louis Agassiz (1807-73), world authority on fossil fishes. Agassiz wrote to Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr.: "A student from your Scientific School, Mr. Marsh, has shown me today two vertebrae...which has excited my interest in the highest degree." Marsh wrote proudly from Georgetown, Mass., to GP, London, June 9, 1862: "I was so fortunate during one of my vacations as to make a discovery which has already attracted considerable attention among scientific men." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 16-Marsh Plans German Univ. Study. Weak eyesight kept Marsh from serving in the Civil War. In that same June 9, 1862, letter to GP he added: "If the plan for completing my studies in Germany, which you once so kindly approved, still meets with your approbation, I should like to go in September next [1862]." GP approved and sent Marsh £200 ($1,000). Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 17-Marsh: Ambitious, Eager. Always eager to please his uncle, Marsh was upset by an article his father sent him from the Lockport Journal and Courier, reprinted from a Danvers, Mass., newspaper. He wrote his father that he was "sorry that someone had no more discretion than to preface the notice with some statements which are calculated to do me more injury than...good. The published statement that I am expecting a Professorship at Yale would do not a little towards preventing my getting it. So also that my expenses at College were paid by Uncle George and that he intended to make me his heir, were certainly very injudicious remarks." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Gift). 18-Marsh on GP's Intended Harvard Gift. Marsh sailed for Europe in Oct. 1862. GP talked to his nephew in London about his [GP's] intended gift to Harvard Univ. Marsh described these talks in a letter to his mentor, Yale Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr. "I had a long talk with Mr. P. in regard to his future plans and donations.... I will tell you confidentially that Harvard will have her usual good fortune. So many of our family have been educated at Harvard that he naturally felt a greater interest in that institution than in Yale, of which I am the only representative." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Gift). 19-Marsh on GP's Intended Harvard Gift. Cont'd. "I can assure you, however, that I did [not] allow the claims of my Alma Mater to be forgotten...and I have strong hopes that she may yet be favored although nothing is as yet definitely arranged. The donation to H. [Harvard] is a large one and for a School of Design.... I did not recommend an endowment for a similar object at Yale, partly because I did not feel so much interest in Art as in Science and partly because Mr. P. manifested so much interest in my scientific studies that I thought it not unlikely that he would be more inclined to that department. I did not propose any definite plan..., as I had then none to propose, but shall hope to do so before long as I do not intend to let the matter rest until something definite is decided upon...." Ref.: Ibid.
Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Science (Harvard Gift). 20-What Gift to Harvard? GP's first gift idea for Harvard in 1861 was an astronomical observatory. He discussed this idea in letters to Francis Peabody (1801-68) of Salem and William Henry Appleton (1814-84) of Boston. The Harvard gift idea was also discussed with former Harvard Pres. Edward Everett (1794-1865). Everett thought Harvard needed a "School of Design" [i.e., art], more than an observatory. GP's Harvard gift idea thus changed from observatory to a School of Design (art) when he spoke to his nephew O.C. Marsh in London in mid-Oct. 1862. Marsh's enthusiasm about science influenced GP, turning his Harvard gift idea toward science, and resulting in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard (Oct. 8, 1866). Ref.: Ibid. See: persons named.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 21-Science at Yale. O.C. Marsh's letters from Germany evoked special interest among Yale's small band of scientists. By one account, Prof. Silliman, Sr., had years before sounded out GP about aiding science at Yale, but nothing came of it. Now, with O.C. Marsh as a budding Yale scholar, his Yale teachers had renewed hope of GP's aiding science at Yale. Learning that Prof. Silliman, Jr., had worked out with Prof. James Dwight Dana a plan for a possible Peabody Museum at Yale, Marsh wrote on Feb. 16, 1863: "I shall see Mr. P. in the spring or early in the summer, and shall then try to bring the subject before him in a way best suited to ensure its success." See: Marsh, Othniel Charles.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 22-Plan Peabody Museum, Yale. At the Univ. of Berlin, on advice from his Yale mentors, Marsh specialized in vertebrate paleontology. When he met GP in mid-May 1863 in Hamburg, Germany, Marsh was better able to explain to his uncle the need for an endowed museum which would send out expeditions to find ancient animal and human remains and so reconstruct the antecedents and cultural history of man. Marsh told his uncle that Yale's Sheffield Scientific School (founded 1861) had made such a beginning. He laid out Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr.'s, plan for a scientific Peabody museum at Yale. Satisfied that it was a sound idea, GP named five trustees: O.C. Marsh, Benjamin Silliman, Sr. and Jr., James Dixon, and James Dwight Dana. Ref.: Ibid.
Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History
Science (Yale Hopeful). 23-Plan Peabody Museum, Yale Cont'd. GP told Marsh that he would soon add a codicil to his will endowing the Yale museum. Marsh wrote jubilantly from Hamburg to Prof. Silliman, Sr., May 25, 1863: "I take great pleasure in announcing to you that Mr. George Peabody has decided to extend his generosity to Yale College, and will leave a legacy of one hundred thousand dollars to promote the interests of Natural Science in that Institution." Marsh added: "Mr. Peabody suggests that the Trustees...decide upon a plan...best adapted to promote the object proposed, and to embody the main features of this plan in a clause to be inserted in his will." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 24-Plan Peabody Museum, Yale Cont'd. GP also told Marsh in their May 1863 meeting in Hamburg that although he set the amount to Yale at $100,000, he might raise it and that Yale would receive the gift on his death. As it turned out, GP gave the museum gift to Harvard on Oct. 8 and to Yale on Oct. 22, during his May 1, 1866, to May 1, 1867, U.S. visit, raising the amounts to $150,000 each. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 25-Plan Peabody Museum, Yale Cont'd. Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr., urged Marsh to collect fossils, books, and scientific papers on paleontology. He explained that doing this would prepare Marsh for a Yale professorship in paleontology and would also make the need for a museum more evident to all. Prof. James Dwight Dana echoed Prof. Silliman, Jr.'s suggestion for Marsh to study further in Germany. Unlike the strong U.S. liberal arts tradition, teaching science was new and suspect after Christian fundamentalists denounced the theory of evolution described in Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). Fundamentalists feared that belief in evolution might supplant belief in divine Biblical revelation. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 26-Yale Professorship for Marsh. Amidst this conflict between science and religion, Yale's small band of scientists saw hope for their science disciplines in GP's intended museum gifts to Harvard and Yale, and particularly in the Morrill Act of 1862. That act provided federal land grants to states' higher education for science and mechanic arts (engineering). The Conn. legislature in 1863 voted to allocate Morrill Act funds to Yale's Sheffield Scientific School. Prof. Dana remarked, "The fact is Yale is going to be largely rebuilt, and all at once! The time of her renaissance has come!!" Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 27-Plan Peabody Museum, Yale Cont'd. July 1863 Marsh, studying at Heidelberg, wrote to GP: "One...result of your [projected] donation to Yale has been to...realize my highest hopes of a position [there].... The faculty propose to create a new Professorship of Geology and Paleontology.... This Professorship...corresponds to that held by the great Agassiz at Harvard." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Yale Hopeful). 28-Marsh Needed Science Library and Fossil Collection. Marsh explained to his uncle that he needed a library and fossil collection: "Such a library and cabinet...can only be obtained in Europe.... The amount necessary...would be 3 or 4 thousand dollars.... I have felt some hesitation in asking you for this assistance in view of all you have already done for me, but I have thought it much the best way to state the whole case frankly and leave the matter with you." GP wrote Marsh from Scotland in Aug. 1863 that he would give him $3,500 to buy a library and specimens. Ref.: Ibid.
Science. 29-GP Retired. Ill and wanting to retire, GP cut his ties with George Peabody & Co. on Oct. 1, 1864. Without a son and knowing he would have no control after death, he asked that his name be withdrawn from the firm. Partner Junius Spencer Morgan (1813-90) urged GP to postpone retirement. GP wrote J.S. Morgan politely but firmly: "...I can now make no change, for although the continuance of the firm for three or six months, which you suggest, may appear short to you, to me--feeling as I deeply do, the uncertainty of life at the age of seventy--months would appear as years, for I am most anxious before I die to place my worldly affairs in a much more satisfactory state than they are at present." Ref.: Ibid.
Science. 30-Successor Firms. Thus was George Peabody & Co. (1838-64) succeeded by J.S. Morgan & Co. (1864-1909), by Morgan Grenfell & Co. (1910-1918), Morgan Grenfell & Co. Ltd. (1918-90), and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell (since June 29, 1990, German owned). O.C. Marsh wrote GP from the Univ. of Breslau Oct. 21, 1864: "I saw in the papers the announcement of your retirement.... Before I retire I should like to do for Science as much as you have done for your fellowmen; and if my health continues I shall try hard to do so." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 31-Marsh at Univ. of Breslau. Marsh expected his Yale professorship in June 1864, but was disappointed when it was postponed until June 1865. Being already in Germany, he wrote his uncle that he thought it best to study at the Univ. of Breslau (he was the first U.S. student to attend there). GP approved and paid his expenses. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 32-Marsh's Books and Fossils. Marsh selected a library of books on geology and paleontology, for which his uncle paid $5,000. GP arranged with his agent-friend, Horatio Gates Somerby (1805-72), born in Newburyport, Mass., a London-based genealogist, to ship Marsh's effects to the U.S. The books and fossils went through customs two years later weighing 2.5 tons. Marsh's fossils were the basis of the collection of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale. His books formed the basis of its library collection in geology and paleontology. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 33-Marsh and Leading Scientists. In Berlin Marsh met and spoke with Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875). In Paris he met and spoke with French geologist Philippe-Èdouard Poulletier de Verneuil (1805-73). In London, when he was not with his uncle, he spent his time at the British Museum with the Keeper of Geology, Henry Woodward (1832-1921). Marsh also met such British scientists as Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) and Charles Darwin (1809-82). Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 34-GP's U.S. Visit, 1866-67. Back at Yale in March 1866, teaching Prof. Dana's classes in geology, Marsh wrote to his cousin-in-law Charles W. Chandler (d. 1882), husband of cousin Julia Adelaide (née Peabody) Chandler (b. April 25, 1835) and a lawyer in Zanesville, Ohio, that GP was about to visit the U.S. (May 1, 1866 to May 1, 1867). Ref.: Ibid.
Science. 35-Philanthropic Advisor R.C. Winthrop. GP arrived in NYC on the Scotia, May 3, 1866, for his year-long U.S. visit. He conferred on May 9 and frequently thereafter with his philanthropic advisor, Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-94). Winthrop had been highly recommended to GP in 1862 in London by Thurlow Weed (1797-1882), politically powerful N.Y. State editor. Weed was in London in 1862 as Pres. Lincoln's emissary to keep Britain from siding with the Confederacy in the Civil War. Weed pointed out that Winthrop was uniquely qualified to advise and guide GP's philanthropy. Ref.: Ibid.
GP’s Philanthropic Advisor, Robert Charles Winthrop
Science. 36-R.C. Winthrop's Career. Winthrop was the distinguished descendant of early Mass. Bay Colony Gov. John Winthrop (1588-1649). He was a Harvard graduate (1828), trained in Daniel Webster's law office, member of the Mass. legislature (1834-39, and its Speaker), member of the U.S. House of Representative (1842-50, its Speaker during 1847-50). He was appointed to fill Daniel Webster's U.S. Senate seat (1851). He gave the main addresses at the Washington Monument cornerstone laying (1848) and at its completion (1885). Known and respected by the U.S. political and academic power structure, Winthrop agreed in 1866 to help plan GP's philanthropy. In 1867 Winthrop helped name the PEF trustees, was president of that board, and guided its work to his death in 1894. Ref.: Ibid.
Science. 37-GP Laid His Philanthropic Plans before Winthrop. When GP first laid before Winthrop his philanthropic plans (most likely on May 9, 1866), Winthrop expressed amazement at their size and scope. Winthrop remembered GP's reply and quoted it in his Feb. 8, 1870, eulogy at GP's funeral service. GP's words, underlined below, were later cut into the stone marker placed at the temporary grave site in Westminster Abbey where GP's remains lay in state 30 days (Nov. 11-Dec. 12, 1869). GP had replied: "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 for my fellow-men." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 38-Meetings on Peabody Museum, Harvard. Winthrop had a series of meetings on the Peabody Museum of Harvard: with GP on June 1, 1866, at the Tremont House, Boston; on June 4 with GP's nephews, Yale Prof. O.C. Marsh and George Peabody Russell (1835-1909, Harvard graduate, class of 1856) at the Massachusetts Historical Society; and on June 17 again with GP, who gave Winthrop permission to consult confidentially with Harvard friends. Winthrop especially sought the advice and approval of Louis Agassiz (1807-73), leading U.S. scientist and Harvard zoologist. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 39-James Walker on Peabody Museum, Harvard. Winthrop also talked to Harvard's former Pres. James Walker (1794-1874, Harvard president during 1853-60). Agassiz, Winthrop, and Walker knew that Harvard officials preferred new gifts of money to go to its library and to its Museum of Comparative Zoology rather than for GP's proposed museum. Pres. Walker said to Winthrop: "...When a generous man like Mr. Peabody proposes a great gift, we...had better take what he offers and take it on his terms, and for the object which he evidently has at heart.... There...will be, as you say, disappointments in some quarters. But the branch of Science, to which this endowment is devoted, is one to which many minds in Europe are now eagerly turning.... This Museum...will be the first of its kind in our country." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 40-Peabody Museum, Harvard, Founding Letter. Winthrop communicated his conversation with Pres. Walker to GP on July 6, 1866. On Sept. 24 Winthrop again met with GP and his nephews, Prof. O.C. Marsh and G.P. Russell. On Sept. 28, 1866, Winthrop called the first meeting of the trustees of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard. The trustees accepted GP's gift of $150,000. His founding letter, dated Oct. 8, 1866, ended with these suggestions that: "...In view of the gradual obliteration or destruction of the works and remains of the ancient races of this continent,[that] the labor of exploration and collection be commenced...as early...as practicable; and also, that, in the event of the discovery in America of human remains or implements of an earlier geological period than the present, especial attention be given to their study, and their comparison with those found in other countries." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 41-Anthropology at Harvard. Thus, O.C. Marsh, a Yale man, influenced the founding at Harvard of the first U.S. museum of anthropology in the U.S. It was endowed by GP nine years after the discovery in 1857 in Prussia of the Neanderthal skull, which renewed interest in man's origins. Ethnological items, long collected but unexamined, were soon donated to the new Peabody Museum at Harvard by New England societies, including the Mass. Historical Society. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 42-Walker on Science at Harvard. When the Mass. Historical Society's ethnological items were transferred to the Peabody Museum at Harvard, former Harvard Pres. James Walker said, "For a long time Harvard has exhausted her resources on the traditional liberal arts. The time has come for her to advance scientific knowledge. Mr. Peabody shows great wisdom in facilitating cooperation between the Massachusetts Historical Society and his Museum at Harvard through trustees of the latter who are prominent members of the former." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 43-Harvard Began Study of Anthropology. Anthropologists-historians Charles Franklin Thwing (1853-1937) and Ernest Ingersoll (1852-1946) each wrote that the Peabody Museum at Harvard began the systematic study of anthropology in U. S. higher education. Pre-Columbian life in North America was largely unexplored; existing collections were slight and fragmentary. Ref.: Ibid.
Frederic Ward Putnam, "Father of American Anthropology”
Science (Harvard Museum). 44-Putnam at Harvard. Many early prominent scientists were officers of the Peabody Museum of Harvard, including Frederic Ward Putnam (1839-1915). He was its curator during 1874-1909 and enhanced its reputation as well as his own. He was called by his peers the "Father of American Anthropology." Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 45-Putnam at Harvard Cont'd. While at the Peabody Museum of Harvard, he yet found time to help found the 1-Anthropology Dept. of the American Museum of Natural History, NYC, during 1894-1903; 2-the Dept. and Museum of Anthropology, Univ. of California, during 1903-09; and 3-he was secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, during 1873-98. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 46-Putnam at Harvard Cont'd. Famed anthropologist Prof. Franz Boas (1858-1942) wrote that F.W. Putnam pursued the subject of early man in North America with "unconquerable tenacity." Putnam wrote over 400 anthropological reports, many of them on the culture of the "mound builders," ancient ancestors of the American Indians. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Harvard Museum). 47-Putnam at Harvard Cont'd. At its centennial in 1967, Peabody Museum Director John O. Brew (1906-88) stated that its personnel had pioneered in studying the unique Mayan culture in Central America and had led a total of 688 expeditions worldwide to study early human life. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 48-Praised by Charles Darwin. O.C. Marsh was a convinced evolutionist when in the early 1860s he visited Charles Darwin at his country home in England. Twenty years later Charles Darwin wrote to Marsh, crediting him with findings fossils that provided the best evidence to prove the theory of evolution. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 49-Praised by T.H. Huxley. Marsh also published fossil proof of the North American origin of the horse. The previous belief was that the horse originated in Europe and was brought to America with Christopher Columbus and the conquistadors. Darwin's strongest defender, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95), visiting Marsh at Yale in 1876, became so convinced by Marsh's horse fossil findings that he changed the content of his U. S. lectures, citing Marsh's proof of the pre-Columbian origin of the horse in North America. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 50-Astute Organizer. As Yale Prof. of Paleontology and Director of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, Marsh did not teach or receive a salary until his last years, when his private income (left to him by GP) was almost gone. He was an astute organizer of Yale assistants, directing their field work by telegraph and letter, overseeing their collecting and shipping of railroad carloads of fossils. At Yale he assembled entire dinosaurs, toothed birds, and other extinct mammals. His enormous collection at Yale was still being catalogued in the 1990s. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 51-Dinosaur Fossil Finder. He made his major dinosaur fossil finds in the mid 1870s-80s in the Rocky Mountain region; at Como Bluff in eastern Wyoming; Canyon City, Colorado; and elsewhere in the rugged U.S. West. He used Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History resources, student assistants, and federal funds in his capacity as U.S. Geological Survey paleontologist (1882-92) and honorary curator of vertebrate paleontology at the U.S. National Museum (1887) to find over 1,000 new fossil vertebrates, many of which he classified and described. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 52-Prominent Scientist. Marsh lived like a Victorian gentleman in his 18-room New Haven, Conn., house, courting U.S. and foreign scientists and politicians. On frequent trips to NYC Marsh was often seen in fashionable clubs. For 12 years he was president of the National Academy of Sciences, the most prestigious U.S. scientific body. He was prominent in national science affairs and wielded influence in government and academic science circles. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 53-Criticism. He was also criticized by some peers and assistants. One assistant, Samuel Wendell Williston (1852-1918), who achieved scientific renown after leaving O.C. Marsh's employ, criticized him for publishing fossil findings of his assistants as his own. Marsh's last years were marred by lack of money and loss of U.S. government support. Ref.: Ibid.
Marsh-Cope Rivalry: Dinosaur Fossils
Science (O.C. Marsh). 54-Marsh-Cope Compared. Marsh's professional rival was Philadelphia-born paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope (1840-97). Cope was the son of a wealthy Quaker shipowner and philanthropist. Like Marsh, Cope's mother died when he was three-years-old. Unlike Marsh, Cope grew up in a well-ordered household, did well in a Quaker school, and published his first scientific paper at age 18. Marsh did little until age 20 and published his first paper at age 30. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 55-Marsh-Cope Compared Cont'd. Both studied science in Europe. Cope lived with wife and daughter in Haddonfield, N.J. When his father died (1875), Cope at age 35 inherited a fortune which he used to finance his fossil finds. Though wealthy, Cope lived simply, in contrast to Marsh. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 56-Marsh-Cope Rivalry. Marsh and Cope met in Berlin in 1862. They met again for a friendly week in the U.S. in 1868. From then on, they competed for a quarter-century in the rugged west to find and identify new mammal fossils in scientific publications. Cope, of brilliant mind and wider natural history interests than Marsh, had no institutional connections until, financially depleted in his last years, he was a Univ. of Penn. professor. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 57-Marsh-Cope Rivalry Cont'd. Marsh had the knack of management and made the most of academic and federal government connections. From this rivalry came a treasure trove of dinosaur fossil findings, 80 new kinds of dinosaurs found and described in publications by Marsh and 56 found and described in publications by Cope. From this rivalry came much of what is now known about dinosaurs. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (O.C. Marsh). 58-Marsh, GP, Science. Dinosaur displays attracted visitors, particularly young visitors, made science museums popular, and furthered science education. Marsh's biographers estimate that GP gave Yale directly and indirectly through bequests to Marsh close to half a million dollars. The Peabody Museums at Harvard and Yale, their collections, field exploration, exhibits, famous murals (particularly at the Yale Museum), and education programs are eminently the achievements of their directors and staffs. Yet GP's gifts to science education, influenced by nephew O.C. March, made these achievements possible. Ref.: Ibid. Ref. Schiff, p. 80.
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.) 59-200-Year History. The Peabody Essex Museum's 200-year history started long before GP's Feb. 26, 1867, $140,000 gift founded the Peabody Academy of Science. This Peabody Academy of Science (1867-1915), renamed the Peabody Museum of Salem (1915-1992), combined the science collections of two societies, the East India Marine Society, founded in 1799, and the Essex County Natural History Society, founded in 1833. Ref. Parker, F.-q, pp. 137-153, reprinted Parker, F.-zd, pp. 129-140.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 60-East India Marine Society. The East India Marine Society's ethnological and marine history collections were brought back by Salem's acquisitive shipmasters from China, Sumatra, India, and the Pacific islands. Before GP's 1867 gift, these were inadequately housed in the moribund East India Marine Society Building in Salem. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 61-Essex Institute. Next door was the Essex County Natural History Society, founded in 1833, to collect New England's natural history antiquities. In 1848 this Essex County Natural History Society merged with the Essex Historical Society, founded in 1821 to preserve the history and relics of Essex County, Mass. The 1848 merger resulted in the Essex Institute. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 62-Peabody Academy of Science. Soon after, the Peabody Academy of Science (1867) housed and displayed the East India Marine Society's (1799) ethnological and maritime history collections, along with the Essex Institute's Natural History Society's (1833) collections. Other New England societies began to donate their ethnological and maritime objects to the then new (1867) Peabody Academy of Science. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 63-Name Change to Peabody Essex Museum. The Peabody Academy of Science (1867-1915) was renamed the Peabody Museum of Salem (1915-1992) and renamed the Peabody Essex Museum since 1992, all at the same location in Salem, Mass. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 64-First Dir. Edward Sylvester Morse. Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925) was Peabody Academy of Science's first director during 1880-1916. E.S. Morse was Louis Agassiz's (1807-73) student at Harvard Univ. and had worked with other Agassiz students, including Frederic W. Putnam (1839-1915), director of the Peabody Museum of Harvard during 1874-1909. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 65-E.S. Morse in Japan. E.S. Morse, who organized the Peabody Academy of Science collections, achieved scientific renown by teaching zoology for the first time at the Imperial Univ. of Tokyo, Japan, during 1877-79 and 1882-83. He founded there a zoological department, library, museum, and journal, and was the first to lecture on Darwinian evolution. For introducing science to Japan during the Meiji period, when Japan first turned to western influence, Morse earned several Japanese honors, including two monuments built to his memory. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 66-Name Change. The Peabody Academy of Science (1867-1915) was renamed the Peabody Museum of Salem (1915-92). In 1984 the Peabody Museum of Salem absorbed the China Trade Museum of Milton, Mass., containing the finest collection of Asian export art in the world. In July 1992, after 200 years of public showing of Asian and Pacific ethnological and marine history treasures, the Peabody Museum of Salem and the Essex Institute consolidated into the Peabody and Essex Museum, soon renamed the Peabody Essex Museum. Ref.: Ibid.
Science (Peabody Essex Museum). 67-Six Departments. The Peabody Essex Museum has more than a hundred staff. Its focus is on science education for the visiting public, especially young visitors. The museum's collections illuminate Salem's history from its founding as the third oldest colonial village to its zenith as a seaport, when its ships carried goods, culture, and artifacts between the U.S. and the then little-known Oriental and Pacific worlds. The museum's six departments cover 1-Maritime History, 2-American Decorative Arts and Essex County Historical Collections, 3-Asian Export Art, 4-Ethnology, 5-Natural History, 6-and Archaeology. These six departments are housed in nine buildings open for public tours. The nine buildings are historic in that they span Salem's residential architecture from its beginning to
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