In her pioneering book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), writer and thinker Margaret Fuller articulated the goal of women’s progress in America: “We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man.” Spoken seventy-five years before women had the legal right to vote, Fuller’s words served as a rallying cry for generations of people who fought to live and work as they pleased.
On a rainy morning in early May, in the small back parlor of 13 West Street, Boston, a wedding was about to take place. It would be the second wedding for the Peabody family in less than a year, and while 38-year-old Elizabeth could certainly claim an intimate relationship with each of the handsome grooms, she would be bride to neither.
