ABIGAIL ADAMS ELIOT: NURSERY
SCHOOL MOVEMENT PIONEER 1892-1992
by Paula Robbins,
Editor and Author
Abigail
Adams Eliot was a pioneer of the nursery school movement, best
known for her work with young children and for teaching other
people to work with young children.
As her name suggests, she was
a member of two of the most illustrious Unitarian families of
New England: the Adamses and the Eliots. She was also related
to the Mays. Abby Eliot, as she was called, was born in Dorchester,
Massachusetts on October 9, 1892, the third child of Rev. and
Mrs. Christopher Rhodes Eliot. Her father was the minister of
the Meeting House Hill Church in Dorchester for thirteen years.
Following a year of study at Oxford, he became minister and
social worker of Bulfinch Place (Chapel) Church, one of the
mission churches of the Benevolent Fraternity in Boston's West
End. The
family lived at 2 West Cedar Street on Beacon Hill. Abby attended
Radcliffe College, graduating in 1914.
Eliot began her
career as a social worker with the Children's Mission to Children.
Quickly disillusioned with social work, she studied at Oxford
for the academic year 1919-20 and, upon her return, was invited
by Mrs. Henry Greenleaf Pearson to establish a nursery school
in Boston. The Women's Education Association then sent her to
study at the McMillan Nursery School in London for six months.
Returning in January, 1922 to join the Ruggles Street Day Nursery
in Roxbury, Eliot also continued her formal education, earning
a M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1926
and a doctorate in 1930.
Abigail
Eliot with Queen Mary at the Rachel McMillan Nursery School
and Training Centre in London (1921).
As the nursery school movement grew,
Eliot was part of the leadership that formed the National Association
for the Education of Young Children as well as the National Association
for Nursery Education. In 1933, she was their representative to
the federal Works Progress Administration, which provided funds
to nursery schools for children in unemployed families and jobs
for teachers. Later, she became responsible for the program in
the New England states. During World War II she consulted on the
provision of day care for the children of war workers under the
Lanham Act.
In 1951 the Nursery Training School
affiliated with Tufts University and moved to the campus in
1954. In 1955 the Tufts Corporation changed the name to "Eliot-Pearson
School." In 1952 Eliot retired as head of the school which she
had founded and moved with her friend Anna Holman to Pasadena,
California to found a Nursery Training School at the Pacific
Oaks Friends School.
Choosing
a favorite color for Miss Abigail Eliot is young pre-school
artist Eric Gruenbaum of Cambridge.
Upon their return from California
in 1954, tEliot and Anna Holman moved to a house on Main Street
in Concord on the Sudbury River, where they lived together until
Holman's death in 1969. In 1971 Eliot gave the house to the
First Parish in Concord, and it became the home of Rev. and
Mrs. Dana McLean Greeley. In Concord she assisted in the First
Parish Sunday School and taught for three years at the Brooks
School. She assisted in the formation of the Walden Clinic,
now known as the Eliot Community Mental Health Center, and Belknap
House, a boarding house for the elderly. In 1961 she became
the unpaid Director of Development for the Eliot-Pearson School.
She raised funds to build the Children's School and the administration
building. In 1964 the school became the Eliot-Pearson Department
of Child Study at Tufts University which, in 1981, began to
award the Ph.D.
Of her Unitarian faith, Eliot
said, "Religion has always been an important part of my life
— a subconscious influence, as well as a conscious directive."
She proudly affirmed that she was "born and bred a Unitarian"
and that she had "always gone to church nearly every Sunday."
In
religious education, Eliot worked as a teacher and program director.
She supported teaching the Bible in Unitarian Church schools
against the views of Sophia Lyon Fahs who advocated a more naturalistic
approach to religion with children. "I always felt that Mrs.
Fahs threw the Bible out of the window," she is reported to
have said. Despite this difference of approach, Eliot respected
the great religious education reformer highly, affirming that
Fahs "was a great person and led the religious education for
the denomination in good, up-to-date directions."
Abby Eliot lived her last years
at Rivercrest in Concord because of her failing eyesight.
Her brother, Frederick May Eliot,
was minister of the Unitarian Church in St. Paul, Minnesota
and then President of the American Unitarian Association (AUA),
1937-1958. Dr. Martha May Eliot, her sister, was Chief of the
U.S. Children's Bureau and worked for UNESCO and the World Health
Organization (WHO).
Abigail
Adams Eliot was a pioneer of the nursery school movement, best
known for her work with young children and for teaching other
people to work with young children. 
The
family lived at 2 West Cedar Street on Beacon Hill. Abby attended
Radcliffe College, graduating in 1914. 
In
religious education, Eliot worked as a teacher and program director.
She supported teaching the Bible in Unitarian Church schools
against the views of Sophia Lyon Fahs who advocated a more naturalistic
approach to religion with children. "I always felt that Mrs.
Fahs threw the Bible out of the window," she is reported to
have said. Despite this difference of approach, Eliot respected
the great religious education reformer highly, affirming that
Fahs "was a great person and led the religious education for
the denomination in good, up-to-date directions." 