Four Peabody women are the focus of new exhibit at Peabody Historical Society and Museum – The Salem News

Eleanor Felton was a widow who moved from England to Peabody with three small children in 1636, carving a life for her family out of what was then a wilderness.

Feltons home now houses the Peabody Historical Society and Museum, and she probably would have liked the exhibit thats opening there on Sunday, March 26, which features four women who shared her independent spirit.

The Peabody Woman: Love, War, Work and Beauty introduces visitors to Elizabeth Whitman, Mary Ophelia Stevens, Martha Osborne Barrett and Bessie Buxton, who lived during different eras in Peabodys history.

We asked ourselves, can we pick four women from Peabody that would help us characterize would it would be like to be a woman at those times?said Kelly Daniell, curator at the historical society.

That question was raised because Daniell felt that historical societies tend to focus on men, and define women only in terms of the men in their lives. Shebegan to assemble this show six months ago, and always planned to open it in March for Womens History Month.

The exhibition has grown to be timely with the national conversation right now, and Im pleased thats happening, she said.

Peabody Woman also goes hand in hand with an April exhibit at the society, Inspired by Time, featuring a display of quilts by local artisans that were inspired by the four women and the times when they lived.

Whitman, the earliest of the four subjects in Peabody Woman, was born in 1752 andlived a restless life, moving up and down the East Coast until she finally took a room under an assumed name in 1788 at the Bell Tavern, which at the time was in Danvers.

She came to Bell Tavern in May, and kept telling people her husband would be joining her, Daniell said. In July she ended up giving birth to a stillborn child, then dying a few weeks later.

The local community publicized her fate, and eventually made contact with her family, discovering Whitmans real identity.

Whitman is best remembered today as the inspiration behind the central figure in the novel The Coquette, which was written by her cousin Hannah Webster Foster. The book romanticized Whitmans life, and after it was published people made pilgrimages to her grave in the Old South Burial Ground.

As an unmarried woman who followed her passions, Whitman represents love, one of the four themes that the exhibit explores through the lives of its subjects.

That contrasts with the theme of war represented by Mary Ophelia Stevens, who lived from 1842 to 1928 and served as a nurse in the Civil War, working in the same hospital in Washington, D.C., as Clara Barton.

She would have seen casualties straight from front, Daniell said.

After moving to Peabody with her husband in 1868, Stevens then became a suffragette, fighting for womens right to vote.

Women gained the vote in 1919 and she registered to vote at City Hall in Peabody, Daniell said. We have the book she registered in at the exhibit.

The show also examines the life of Martha Barrett, a diarist and poet who was born in 1827 and died in 1905, and represents the theme of work.

While she published essays on the abolition of slavery and wrote speeches for public occasions, Barrett had to support herself by working in a millinery shop in Salem.

She writes about depression and being unmarried and working hard to support herself, Daniell said.

Barretts economic struggles contrast with the wealth of Bessie Buxton, who represents the theme of beauty because she founded the Peabody Garden Club. She wanted to counter the impact of the leather industry on the citys appearance.

Buxton was also concerned that older ways of life were disappearing, and she recorded sea chanteys that she heard during her many travels.

Her thing was, she wanted to make Peabody a more beautiful place to live, and the garden club is still around, Daniell said. She left a lasting legacy, to be sure.

IF YOU GO

What: The Peabody Woman: Love, War, Work and Beauty

When: Opening reception Sunday, March 26, 2 to 4 p.m., and open Saturday, April 1, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sunday, April 2, noon to 3 p.m.

Where: Nathaniel Felton Senior House, Felton-Smith Historic Site, 47 Felton St., Peabody.

Information: Exhibit open for groups and by appointment. More details at http://www.peabodyhistorical.org or 978-877-0514.

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Four Peabody women are the focus of new exhibit at Peabody Historical Society and Museum - The Salem News