Katharine Peabody Loring

Katharine Peabody Loring RRC (May 21, 1849 – August 16, 1943) was an American educator. She was head of the history department at the Society to Encourage Studies at Home, the first correspondence school in the United States, where she developed a lifelong companionship with well-known diarist Alice James. She was also a trustee of the Beverly Public Library in Beverly, Massachusetts, and president of the Beverly Historical Society from 1918 to 1941. Early life Katharine Peabody Loring was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1849, to Caleb William Loring, president of the Plymouth Cordage Company, and Elizabeth Peabody. Her name was occasionally misspelled as Katherine in many letters. The Loring family were descendants of Thomas Loring, who came to Hingham, Massachusetts from Devonshire, England, and they were influential in Massachusetts. Her grandfather Charles Greeley Loring was a landowner in Prides Crossing, Beverly, Massachusetts, which was passed on to Loring's father, Caleb, who built a new house in 1852. The family often moved between the Prides Crossing home, Burnside, and the family house in Boston until 1872, when they all moved permanently to Beverly. In the spring of 1888, while travelling to Florida and South Carolina with her father and sister, Loring met Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett, with whom she was a lifelong friend.