George Foster Peabody

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This article is about George Foster Peabody, the businessman from the Southern United States. For information about George Peabody, the dry goods merchant and philanthropist from the northern United States, see George Peabody.

George Foster Peabody (July 27, 1852 – March 4, 1938) was born in Columbus, Georgia. He was educated there in private schools. A lifelong Democrat, he broke temporarily with the party in 1896 because of William Jennings Bryan's opposition to the gold standard. Instead, Peabody supported the "National Democratic" third party, as did his friend President Grover Cleveland. The National Democrats championed the gold standard and limited government.

Peabody spent many years in realty and mining, serving as president, vice-president, or director of many firms, but retired in 1906 to pursue a life of public service. In 1904-1905, he was the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, then served as director of the General Education Board, treasurer of the Southern Education Board, and trustee of the American Church Institute for Negroes, of Hampton and Tuskegee institutes, of the University of Georgia, and the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He was the original owner of what was to eventually become the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation; the property was purchased from him by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who turned it from a limited rehab center into the institute that we know today. George Foster Peabody received honorary degrees from Harvard, Washington and Lee Universities, the University of Georgia. He donated the funds for the Peabody Awards and numerous other programs, buildings and schools at the University of Georgia. He married Katrina Trask, the widow of a close friend, on February 5, 1921, but she died in 1922.

[edit] References

• Source: This article is based largely on Who Was Who in America, Volume I: 1897–1942 (Chicago, 1942).
• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, "Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896-1900,"Independent Review 4 (Spring 2000), 555-75.

[edit] External link

• George Foster Peabody (1852–1938) and Peabody Park at UNCG - A lengthier biographical excerpt written by Louise Ware in the Dictionary of American Biography (23: 520–521, 1958)