Category Archives: Peabody

Peabody, originally South Danvers, is named after George Peabody, a merchant, financier and philanthropist. He spent his early career in Baltimore and in 1837 took up residence in London, where he remained until his death in 1869. During his lifetime he was the benefactor of numerous institutions, including the Peabody Institute Library (1852), the Peabody Institute Library of Danvers (1856), the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University (1857), the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University (1866), the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University (1866) and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem (1867). George Peabody was born in South Danvers in 1795 in a house his father Thomas rented and soon purchased at 205 Washington Street. Built around 1790, the house passed to George Peabody’s older brother David in 1811, who took out two mortgages on the property the following year. In 1816, George Peabody purchased the house, where his mother resided until her death in 1830. Peabody sold it two years later and it has had many owners over the years. In the twentieth century, it housed workers of the American Glue Company (later Eastman Gelatin). In 1989, the City of Peabody purchased the house and restored it to become the George Peabody House Museum.