Peabody Library Post Mills Thetford Vermont

Peabody Library
Post Mills Thetford Vermont

The Peabody Library

Susan Cloke

Journal Opinion Winter Columnist

March 19, 2014

The Peabody library, given to the people of Thetford by George Peabody, is well cared for and well loved.  You are invited to join Librarians Peter Blodgett and Emily Zollo for a fun-filled evening of Celtic music at the Peabody Library in Post Mills on Wednesday, March 26, at 7:00 pm.

Peabody has been called “America’s First Philanthropist” said Blodgett, Library Director at Peabody and Latham Libraries.  "In 1866, when the Peabody Library opened it was the 6^th largest library in Vermont. It is the oldest library building in the State that is in continuous usage as a library and it has the most elegant public room in Thetford.”

Emily Zollo reading "Lemonade in Winter" and making
lemonade with Sadie, Maggie, Max and Garrett

Zollo, Children’s Librarian at Peabody, talked about the library and how well used it is by the community. “The Library is open weekly, on Tuesday evenings and Wednesdays from 2 – 8 pm.  It has an active after school program, well attended by Thetford Elementary School students and an adult book discussion series.

“The Library also hosts annual events: the Celtic Concert, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day; Chocolate Indulgence for Valentine’s Day, the summer Penny Carnival and our Winter Solstice Readings,” said Zollo.

“At the Valentine’s Day event the long, original, central table is loaded with chocolate cakes, mousses, handmade chocolates, chocolate cookies and chocolate pies.

“The Winter Solstice is celebrated with holiday stories from around the world read aloud.  The Library is decorated with boughs and lit with historic candelabra,” said Zollo.

Dalia Panani, a volunteer librarian described the Penny Carnival saying, “It’s great because the 10 -13 year olds set up the carnival for children under 6.  The price is one cent per game and everyone wins.”

Peabody was born in 1795, one of eight children, to a family that struggled to get by.  He went on to be one of the most successful American businessmen in London. Peabody’s fortune came from his merchant and banking companies.

“He never gave up his loyalty to America,” said Blodgett. He was famous for hosting an elaborate yearly dinner in London to celebrate the 4^th of July.  When Queen Victoria wanted to bestow a knighthood on him for promoting Anglo-American harmony he refused because he wanted to remain an American Citizen.”

Local lore tells of George Peabody, when he was a fifteen year old teenager, walking the 150 miles from his hometown in Danvers (now Peabody) MA to Post Mills VT.

“He would walk 10 miles in a day and then stop at a local town and ask for meals and a place to sleep in the barn. In exchange he would split wood and do other chores,” said Blodgett.

The young Peabody arrived in Post Mills and lived for a year on the farm of his maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Dodge, according to a manuscript published in 1882.

(“THE LIFE of GEORGE PEABODY” By PHEBE A. HANAFORD

Boston, D. Lothrop & Company.  Franklin Street 1882)

Hanaford wrote, “With such grandparents and such surroundings, George Peabody’s year at Post Mills must have been a year of intense quiet, with good examples always before him, and good advice whenever occasion called for it; for Mr. Dodge and his wife were both too shrewd to bore him needlessly.

 “The interest with which Mr. Peabody remembered his visit to Post Mills is shown by his second visit so late in life, and his gift of a library – as large a library as that place needs,” wrote Hanaford.

In a letter, dated 1866, from Peabody to the Library Committee, Peabody writes about the library and speaks of his “…  sense of gratitude for kindness shown to me in my early life by my late revered uncle, Eliphalet Dodge, and his excellent wife, who still lives in your village,” and of his “desire that there shall always be three of their descendants … among the trustees of the library.”

In his lifetime he established The Peabody Trust.  The Trust continues to “provide housing of a decent quality for the artisans and labouring poor of London.”

He is best known for establishing the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University; the Peabody Museums at Harvard and Yale Universities; the Peabody Academy of Science in Salem, MA; the Peabody Room of the DC public library; and the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University.  At the end of the Civil War he established the Peabody Education Fund “… to encourage the intellectual, moral, and industrial education of the destitute children of the Southern States.”

The Peabody library in Post Mills is listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings.  The 850 square foot, one story, white, wood building is an iconic Vermont public building with both Greek Revival and Palladian architectural references.  It sits right on 113 with flags flying from the columns.