George Foster Peabody

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George Foster Peabody (July 27, 1852 – March 4, 1938) was banker born in Columbus, Georgia to George Henry Peabody and Elvira Canfield. He moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York, shortly after the American Civil War and worked in the family's mercantile business before joining Spencer Trask & Company, an investment firm specializing in utilities (including railroads, Peabody's specialty).

Peabody retired from business in 1906 to pursue a life of public service. Long interested in social causes, he supported such progressive ideas as free trade, women's sufferage and government ownership of railroads; he was also active in the anti-war movement. He was also interested in education, particularly in the South and particularly for African-Americans. He served as director of the General Education Board, treasurer of the Southern Education Board and on the boards of trustees of the American Church Institute for Negroes, Hampton and Tuskegee institutes, the University of Georgia and the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. Prior to his retirement he served as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.

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.

While his formal education was limited and he had no college degree, Peabody received honorary degrees from Harvard and Washington and Lee Universities and the University of Georgia. This latter institution was the recipient of much of Peabody's philanthropy, including funds to build a fireproof building to house the university's library. He also donated land to help reorganize the State College of Agriculture and founded the university's School of Forestry.

Perhaps Peabody's best-known legacy are the George Foster Peabody Awards, presented annually since 1941 by the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication for excellence in radio and television broadcasting.

Peabody remained unmarried through much of his life, marrying Katrina Trask, the widow of his close friend and business partner, Spencer Trask, in 1921; she died in 1922. Peabody himself died in his home in Warm Springs, AR.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• 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.
• Dorothy Orr. (1950). A History of Education in Georgia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

[edit] External links

• 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)