Local Legends: A principled principal

Known for being a proponent of women's education, an opponent of coeducation and a staunch defender of her students, Helen Peabody built what would become Western College for Women from the ground up.

Peabody was the youngest of 14 children, born in Newport, New Hampshire on May 6, 1826 to Ammi Howlet Peabody and Sarah (Johnson) Peabody. 

Her father was a farmer, and her family ranked among the more prominent families in the region. Around the age of 15, Peabody attended school for a year at the Concord Literary Institute, where her brother Rev. Charles Peabody was principal. Afterward, Peabody taught school near her home.

In 1844, she began teaching at Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire, before leaving the following year to attend Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, the most renowned school for women at the time.

Graduating with the class of 1848, Peabody joined Mount Holyoke’s faculty as a teacher until 1853. During her time as a student and teacher at the school, she became a pupil, friend and associate of the school’s founder, Mary Lyon, a pioneer of women’s education. 

In 1855, while teaching at a private seminary in St. Louis, Missouri and living with Charles, Peabody was recruited by the Trustees of the newly formed Western Female Seminary. Upon accepting the position they offered, she became the founding president, though called "principal" at the time, of the college. 

Peabody relocated to Oxford and worked to establish Western according to the “Mount Holyoke Plan,” encountering many obstacles. Under her charge was the completion of the physical structure that would house the college, as well as a number of other administrative and organizational tasks. To undertake the actual subject matter instruction, Peabody assembled a cadre of five teachers, all of whom were graduates of Mount Holyoke. 

The challenges persisted as the first students arrived at the school before the kitchen equipment did, leaving Peabody to work out feeding 150 mouths with only “two dripping pans and a brass kettle.”

However, the biggest challenges Peabody would face came after Western had already been well established on Jan. 14, 1860 and April 6, 1871. Fire destroyed, or mostly destroyed, the main hall of the college on both of these dates, forcing Peabody to start over with the support of the Oxford community after each fire. 

Peabody’s efforts were praised by an 1869 newspaper article: “Miss Peabody, the principal, has devoted her life to the cause of female education, and the large number of educated graduates that have gone out from the seminary during the fourteen years it has been in existence, is an evidence that her efforts have been successful.”

A strongly principled individual, Peabody was also deeply religious and was a member of the Second Presbyterian Church, and later First Presbyterian Church, throughout her time in Oxford. She was also known for being extremely protective of her students, often viewed as strict and formidable. These were essential qualities for a person in her position at a time when the reputations of young, unmarried women were closely guarded. 

However, students occasionally got the better of her. One of these incidents, which was anonymously contributed to the Cincinnati Enquirer in 1857, described a male student from Cincinnati visiting Western while disguised in women’s attire and, after claiming to be their friend or relative, kissed no less than eight Western students in the presence of Peabody without being detected.

Another Enquirer article, entitled “Nuptials Extraordinary,” detailed Peabody’s 1872 elopement to Hamilton and unexpected marriage to the recently divorced Dr. Alexander Guy of Oxford. This was followed a week later by an additional article that identified the wedding as a hoax originating from a letter received by the paper with the forged signature of a “respectable citizen” from Oxford upon it.

There was also a sense of humor under Peabody’s intense facade. She once struggled to keep a straight face while reprimanding a group of female students who had used a system of ropes and pulleys to hoist a cannon, which had been used to frighten them by male Miami students, into a lake.

Peabody retired from the Western Female Seminary at the conclusion of the 1887-1888 school year, after a 33 year career at the school and a 46 year career in education. Peabody left Western debt-free and even had a small endowment in place. 

Leaving Oxford, Peabody resided in Walnut Hills, frequently visiting and speaking at Western. She traveled to Japan as a Presbyterian missionary and after returning to the United States, settled in Pasadena, California with Charles.

She died in Pasadena on Oct. 8, 1905 and her body was cremated. In May 1906, her ashes were buried in Oxford Cemetery and marked by a stone with the epithet of “Nothing in my hand I bring.” 

And nothing did she bring, leaving over a third of her estate to charity, including dedicating her home in Pasadena as a “House of Rest” for those in need. 

Within a year of her death, the Western College dorm building was renamed Peabody Hall in her honor. Over the years students and university employees have made claims that her ghost still resides in the building.

Brad Spurlock is the manager of the Smith Library of Regional History and Cummins Local History Room, Lane Libraries. A certified archivist, Brad has over a decade of experience working with local history, maintaining archival collections and collaborating on community history projects.