Ephraim Peabody

Ephraim Peabody (March 22, 1807 – November 28, 1856) was an American Unitarian clergyman, preacher, and philanthropist who was one of the founders of the Provident Institution for Savings in Boston. Peabody also founded a school for adults whose education had been neglected and was otherwise largely interested in devising measures for the relief of the poor. Biography Peabody was born March 22, 1807, in Wilton, New Hampshire, to Ephraim Peabody II and Ruth Abbot. His father was the village blacksmith and died young in 1816, leaving his mother Ruth to raise him and his sister. He went to school for a year at Byfield Academy, then to Phillips Exeter Academy, which was at the time headed by his uncle Benjamin Abbot. Peabody attended Bowdoin College and graduated in 1827. Afterwards he studied theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the Harvard Divinity School where he graduated in 1830. Soon after, he went to Meadville, Pennsylvania, to tutor the family of Harm Jan Huidekoper and to begin to preach. In 1832, Peabody accepted a call to preach at the First Unitarian Church congregation in Cincinnati, Ohio. Here he began a long association with Louisville minister James Freeman Clarke with whom he started a Unitarian periodical The Western Messanger. In the summer of 1835, while visiting Boston, Massachusetts, Peabody suffered a lung hemorrhage due to tuberculosis and the death of his first son. He returned to Cincinnati, but was unable to continue his work and spent the following winter preaching in Mobile, Alabama. He resigned from the Cincinnati congregation in 1836 and spent the next winter back in Mobile. During the summer of 1837, Peabody returned to Boston and preached at the Federal Street Church. Soon after he was offered a position at the First Congregational Society in New Bedford, Massachusetts, alongside Rev. John H. Morison. While in New Bedford, Peabody lost two more children. He resigned from the New Bedford congregation in 1845 and was called to preach at King's Chapel in Boston, where he was pastor for the remainder of his life. A parishioner of Peabody's at King's Chapel said: