James and Jim Peabody: From Farm to Table

Last month we covered one half of the Birmingham Peabody story with Lyman Peabody and his dry goods store. This month we are diving into James and his descendants, notably Jim Peabody… he of the Peabody’s restaurant fame. If you are a long time Birmingham resident or you know one, you’ve probably heard all about the restaurant. Let's dive into the farm that became a grocery store that became a restaurant.

To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material, check out our website.

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at museum@bhamgov.org.

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, and our amazing volunteers.

Transcript

Last month we covered one half of the Birmingham Peabody story with Lyman Peabody and his dry goods store. This month we are diving into James and his descendants, notably Jim Peabody… he of the Peabody’s restaurant fame. If you are a long time Birmingham resident or you know one, you’ve probably heard all about the restaurant. So let’s get into it! And, as you may have noticed, this episode is a little longer than others, because we are covering two people. I thought about making this a two-parter, but as I mentioned in the previous episode on Lyman, the Peabodies are kinda my archenemies and for that reason they are only getting two episodes. 

                This is Birmingham Uncovered, a podcast by the Birmingham Museum, where we are exploring the diverse and compelling lives that built Birmingham Michigan into the community that it is today. First, some background on Birmingham: we are a city of approx. 20,000 people over 4.73 square miles, approximately halfway between Detroit and Pontiac in Oakland County. This area was occupied by members of the Three Fires Confederacy of Indigenous People before white settlement in the area started in the late 1810s. Birmingham became a city in 1933 and today is known as a prosperous and multi-faceted community with a thriving cultural scene.

                Let’s look at James Peabody, Lyman’s little brother, and what brought him to Birmingham before getting into the life of his grandson Jim. James Henry Peabody was born in 1839 in New York, smack dab in the middle of seven children born to John and Sarah Peabody. His family moved several times, but seemed to stick to the area of New York between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Check out our episode on Rhoda Bingham Daniels to learn more about the social and religious upheavals that were taking place in that area around the time James was born. John, James’ father, was a farmer and later on in his life, James followed in his footsteps. 

But first, he enlisted in Battery M of the First New York Light Artillery in September 1861 to fight in the Civil War. A battery unit used artillery, in this case cannons, to support the infantry and cavalry. Artillery fire could be defensive or offensive. At the time, everyone thought the war would only last a few months, so short enlistments were common. On November 20th, James was promoted from a private to a 1st Lt. 20 years later or so later, a captain who served with James wrote a letter to the editor of a Pontiac paper and claimed that he received the promotion for “acts of bravery” but unfortunately didn’t specify what those were. They hadn’t yet seen battle, so it had to happen during training. The same letter notes that he often stayed up studying military tactics and strategy all night and that Lieutenant Peabody brought Battery M “to a degree of excellency”.

Battery M’s first major engagement was the first battle of Winchester on May 25, 1861 where they engaged the Confederate forces under the command of Stonewall Jackson. This Union defeat was the high point of Jackson’s so called “Valley Campaign” and diverted thousands of Union troops from the campaign against the Confederate capital in Richmond, Virginia to protect Washington DC. As an fourth grader learning about the Civil War I always thought that it was very silly to have both capitals about 100 miles apart. The National Museum of Civil War Medicine put the average miles marched in a day during the Civil War at 15, which means that an army from one capital could be at the other in less than a week. So if your campaign against the opponent’s capital fails, you put your own in immediate danger. Fourth grade me figured that she would have been a military genius during this time period because she would have simply moved her capital further away. And is she wrong? 

But back to the actual battle in a world in which fourth graders did not make strategic military decisions: The Union forces at the battle, including light artillery company M, had to a beat a hasty retreat. And this retreat was particularly chaotic because Confederate forces were right on their heels. 

                And just what is a “battery” unit anyhow? The “battery” refers to, at this point in military history, a unit armed with a bunch of cannons used together for a combined effect. Battery M had six 10 lb cannons. And that name is a bit of a misnomer, the gun itself wasn’t ten pounds, the projectile it fired was. The cannon itself was 890 pounds. That’s not something that’s easy to move around. A six cannon battery unit required fourteen six horse units and seven spare horses to move the cannon wagons and all the stuff like battery armaments. So you can see how no retreat of this battery was going to be very hasty, especially since Lt Peabody and his fellow officers were not going to leave their cannons behind, even though their orders were to “spike”, or to make them inoperable, and to abandon them on the battlefield.  

One first-hand account of the battle describes the heroism of two soldiers who worked valiantly to free the cannon they were transporting from a gate that it got stuck in as enemy soldiers closed in on them. 

Either during the battle or perhaps during the retreat, Lt James Peabody was nearly crushed to death, according to a later newspaper report. As an officer, James may have been on horseback during the battle, and may have fallen under his horse, had his horse fall on him if it was killed under him or he may have ended up underneath the wheels of a cannon or an artillery wagon. At this time, we simply do not know. But what we do know is that he was one of the lucky ones that survived the battle of Winchester. Over 2,000 Union soldiers out of the 6,000 that took part in the battle died and that many others were taken prisoner.

James resigned from the army in June of 1862 and was honorably discharged. His military career lasted less than a full calendar year. And here, we lose track of him for two years. Was he recovering at a hospital somewhere? Did he go out to Ohio with older brother Lyman? 

                The next time we catch James is in August of 1864, when he marries Ellen Freelove Gardiner in Detroit. Ellen was born in Royal Oak and I wish I could tell you where and how she met James, but alas. Between 1865, when their daughter was born in Detroit, and 1869, when their next child was born in Oakland County, they had moved to a sizable farm in Birmingham.

                One of the most frustrating things for me, when doing history is sometimes not knowing why somebody did something. Sure, there are some logical reasons he may have come to Michigan- maybe Lyman, with his keen business sense told him the Michigan was the place to be, maybe he read about the good farmland the state had, maybe one of his war buddies had moved to Detroit and invited him to visit and he never left. But people don’t operate on logic alone 100% of the time-sometimes we make decisions based on emotions like love or hatred. I bought my house based on vibes and I bet that many of you listening have also made major life decisions that weren’t 100% based upon logic. And I just want to know why James came here to Birmingham instead of settling down to farm anywhere else. 

                In the 1870 census, James and Ellen are recorded as living in Bloomfield Township with some impressive real estate worth $2,000 and personal estate valued at $1,000. According to a 1987 USDA report, the average value of an acre of farmland in 1870 was $52. James and Ellen had two children by 1870; 5 year old Alice and one year old George. Although is occupation is noted as “farmer”, it looks like, in the census records, that he and his family may have lived in town during the census. Perhaps they had bought the 100 acre property on Quarton Rd south of Gilbert Lake already but hadn’t built a house there yet.

                 James died on June 6, 1893 at the age of 54 after suffering heart failure at a Memorial Day event where he was giving a speech both in his capacity as a veteran and as a Congressman. While James’ brother, Lyman, had been content to serve in a local political capacity as Birmingham Village and school board president, James set his sights higher. A republican, he was elected to be a representative in Michigan’s state legislature in 1888 and served one session from 1889-1890.

                His reputation as an honorable soldier helped him secure the vote, as did his reputation of being a conscientious and well-educated farmer who was known for breeding excellent livestock. As previously mentioned, a former comrade in arms vouched for him publically during his campaign. 

                Even with his sterling reputation though, he did face a bit of an uphill battle. While Republican candidates had a fairly easy time securing votes in Oakland County in the mid-1800s because of the strong abolitionist base in the county (and at that time, one of the pillars of the party was its opposition to slavery), an event in the 1870s caused a backlash and many laid the blame on the Republican Party. And yes, we are talking about the economic recession of 1873, sometimes known as the great depression before the Great Depression. Our episode on Robert Opdyke, the disappearing man, has a more in-depth view of the recession, but the tl:dr version is that it was a world-wide recession that caused bank failures and mass lay-offs in the United States. And usually during an economic downtown, the political party in charge gets the blame and often gets voted out at both the national and local level in the next few election cycles. Additionally, this ended the post-civil war reconstruction era and ushered in the Jim Crow era in the south, which unfortunately dominated into the 20th century.

                This anti-Republican feeling continued even when things began to pick up again in the 1880s and 1890s. But James was able to overcome this lack of support, which probably speaks to just how well-trusted and popular he was. 

                In the Michigan legislature, James served on three committees during his year in office: The Eastern Asylum for the Insane, Lumber and Salt (please don’t ask me why these two things are lumped together in the same committee, I genuinely do not know) and Public Health. I was also able to find one petition that he put forth during his time as a legislator in February of 1889 about increasing the pay of Game Wardens.  The first game warden in Michigan was appointed in 1887 and was responsible for ensuring that hunting and fishing laws were obeyed. We have several photos and documents from the Peabody family in our archives that relate to their shared love of hunting, so this seems on brand.

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                James Henry Peabody was widely mourned when he died. After his death, Ellen took over the operation of the farm and eventually the farm passed to Stanley, the second son and his wife, Louise Marr Peabody. Their big innovation was to create a stand to sell their fruits and veggies to folks in Birmingham. A simple stand though, can only hold so much produce and in 1928 they bought an old mill building that was conveniently located on Woodward Avenue to sell their produce out of.  I’ll put a picture of the building on our website, but it looks like a barn. Because it was a barn. This will become important and iconic later.

                And here we come to Jim Peabody, second of his name and the reason why some of the Birminghamsters you know and love continue to rave about Peabody’s Restaurant. 

                James Maurice Peabody, who we’ll just call Jim from here on out because that’s what he called himself and to spare us all confusion with his grandfather, was born on December 14, 1917. The family appears to have lived on the family farm at this time but they already had connections to the village of Birmingham. Gilbert Lake is only about 5 miles from Birmingham’s downtown. And, as we’ve covered in previous episodes, Birmingham’s downtown was well known to local farmers, as a place with access to the railroads, schools and shopping. 

                Jim’ grandmother, Ellen, moved to Birmingham after the death of her husband and hired somebody to manage to day-to-day operations of the farm before Stanley and Louise took it over. And, like other farmers in the area, he Peabodys went to Birmingham High school as well. Jim graduated in 1937 from Birmingham High, which at that point was Baldwin School. “Birmingham High” has been three different schools throughout Birmingham’s history and we have our whole collection of yearbooks from the various “Birmingham High”’s digitized on our website, including 1937, the year Jim graduated. It is a great resource if you are a little curious about what the kids of Birmingham (including the 109 other seniors Jim graduated with) were concerned about, doing and looked like during Jim’s childhood.

                Jim worked the family farming business after high school and in subsequent censuses and in his enlistment papers for WWII he lists his occupation as farm or orchard work.

                Jim enlisted in the United States’ Army Air Corps on Jan 8, 1942.This was one month and one day after the attack of the US Naval Base of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by Imperial Japan that got the United States militarily involved in WWII. At the time of the attack, the US was officially neutral in the conflict but, by the next day Congress declared war against Japan, which lead to Japan’s ally, Germany, declaring war against the US and then the US declared war against Germany. 

                This surprise attack during the wee hours of the morning caused the death of 2,403 members of the armed services and civilians, along with the loss of 18 ships which were sunk or run aground. The attack was over in 90 minutes and Americans were horrified by the images, video footage and first-hand accounts of survival that made their way into the newspapers, magazines, radio programs and newsreels that afternoon (the attack was announced by the White House at 8:52am  Hawaii time which is 2:22 pm Eastern Time) and over the following days.

                The attack created a wave of patriotism and outrage. Within the first month of the War, 134,000 Americans, Jim included, enlisted to fight. Those who couldn’t enlist, due to age or sex, joined the Red Cross, became nurses, donated to the war effort or sought employment in industry that was building the war machines that helped the allies win the war. 

                Pearl Harbor remained a potent symbol of propaganda in the United States throughout WWII. And while it did increase patriotic fervor, it should also be remembered that during the war over 110,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated to concentration camps with only what they could carry with them. Japanese immigrants and their descendants (2/3rds of those forced into camps were second or third generation Japanese with American citizenship) were seen as much more dangerous to the nation than other immigrant decedent community because of the prevalence of Pearl Harbor in wartime imagery. Later commissions by the US government reported that there had been no evidence that Japanese Americans were any less loyal or more of a threat than any other group of Americans and that the internment was a product of racism stoked by images of Pearl Harbor. 

                And I bet you many of you cocked your head in confusion a bit at the “Army Air Corps” that Jim enlisted in, unless you are a fan of aviation or WWII history buff. The technology of aviation had grown leaps and bounds since WWI and there was a whole new generation of pilots that were ready to take air warfare to new heights. But there was still a bit of debate over what branch of the armed forces aviation belonged in. The US Army Air Corps was the name of one of the combat arms of the Army until it was replaced by the Department of the Air Force in 1947. 

                Jim wasn’t the only Peabody to serve in WWII either. His cousins, great-grandsons of Lyman and grandsons of J Bert, enlisted as well. Super fans will remember that I promised to explain how a man named Ford Peabody was related to the restaurant and there you go- he was Lyman’s grandson and Jim’s cousin of some degree. Or maybe second cousin? Donna is gonna burst into my office as soon as she hears this episode and tell me exactly what degree of cousins they are. I obviously wasn’t hired for my genealogical knowledge. Fun Fact: Ford Peabody had a son named Alford, because why not? Alford was a corporal in the air force in WWII and he and his wife donated many Peabody-related artifacts to the museum. 

                World War II ended in September 1945 and the next year Jim married Wilma Ward, who grew up on Frank Street in Birmingham. Wilma also served during WWII, as an army captain. Wilma was commissioned into the Army Nurses corps in 1942 and served in Italy and Africa during the War. More than 59,000 American nurses served in the Army Nurses Corps during the six years of the conflict in field and evacuation hospitals, on trains and ships and as flight nurses on medical transport planes. Thanks to these brave and skilled individuals, fewer than 4 percent of American soldiers who received medical care or underwent evacuation died from their wounds or disease across all theaters of the conflict. Compare that to the number one killer during the Civil War: infectious diseases killed 500,000. Wilma had to have nerves of steel to serve in the Army Corps, another woman who served in the Corps from Birmingham wrote back to the Birmingham Eccentric to give her report of being among the first wave of American soldiers invading North Africa. We see this bravery later in life too, as she and Jim risked their business to catch new consumer trends not once, but twice.

Jim returned to the produce market and farm, but from here on out in his professional life he showed the business and marketing genius that his great-uncle, Lyman, had. Jim decided to expand the selection of items sold at his family’s market from in-season produce to a full service grocery store. 

                When we think about how people ate in the past, we often focus on recipes. When did turkey become the standard thing that Americans ate for Thanksgiving? Why was there an obsession in the 1950s and ‘60s with putting savory foods in jello? And while that’s worth looking at, it’s also worth considering when folks could get the ingredients for those recipes. Nowadays, I can walk into a grocery store and buy a zucchini anytime of the year because of the global trade networks that link my grocery store in suburban Detroit to farmers in warmer climates or using industrial scale greenhouses to grow zucchinis when farmers in my area cannot. Without those networks, I’d have to wait until late summer, when nearby farmers and gardeners’ zucchinis are ready to harvest, before I could make zucchini bread. 

                During the late 1800s and early 1900s, those global trade networks were growing, thanks to things like railroads, steam ships and the burgeoning automotive field. But during wartime, civilians and the markets that serve them often face the rationing of fuel that can slow down or stop those networks. A lot of foods like, butter, sugar and meat were also harder to get during wartime because those foods were diverted to feed the troops. Jim realized that the American consumer was hungry for a lot of consumable goods that were rationed or hard to get for several years. 

                And changing technology meant that, unlike his great-uncle’s dry goods store, Jim could put in refrigeration and sell a wide variety of dairy, meats, and frozen goods. So in 1947, Jim retrofitted the building that his parents had purchased and turned it into a grocery store.

                And Birminghamsters reacted positively to it. Kids growing up then later recalled how much fun they had running up and down the ramp to the store and how annoying it was to have to wait for their mom to finish shopping when she stopped to talk with every single neighbor she saw. My favorite memory that someone shared on Facebook was that Mr Peabody always handed her and other kids a carton of eggs when they walked into the store and had them carry it around with them the whole time. They only realized later that this was probably done to keep kids from running around the store and grabbing things off the shelf. 

                Peabody’s Market also had one thing going for it that no other grocery store in Birmingham had at the time- it was open on Sundays. Folks appreciated that they could pop in after their religious services to grab something to make for lunch or dinner or to grab necessities like some bread or milk before the start of the school and work week.

                So, Jim was able to see and jump on an upcoming business opportunity once, but could he do it again?

                He could. In 1975, Peabody’s Market caught fire. Jim could have simply rebuilt the market and carried on as before. But Jim saw that a new consumer market in Birmingham was opening up and he could take advantage of it as he had done decades earlier when he turned the fruit market into a grocery store. And it involved a change in local liquor laws.

                A holdover from Prohibition, Birmingham didn’t allow liquor to be sold by the glass in restaurants or other establishments until voters overturned the law in a referendum on November 7, 1972. Until then, restaurants couldn’t serve things like cocktails, limiting their potential clientele who could and did, choose to go to restaurants outside the city where they could enjoy a meal with a beer or cocktail. Restaurants did exist in the city, but they were what we might describe as “fast casual” or diners today. Hunter House Hamburgers and Alban’s served sandwiches, burgers, fries and pop and appealed to families and teens. 

                So Jim rebuilt the building, in the same iconic barn shape but a little larger than the original mill building, and he and his daughters Nancy, Susan and Barbara opened Peabody’s restaurant. 

                Once again, Jim’s instincts proved to be correct and the community quickly fell in love with the restaurant. It wasn’t just the great food either, it was the sense of place. It was already a neighborly location that generations of Birminghammers had been coming to, but there was more to it. At it’s height, the restaurant employed around 100 members of the community and Birmingham history was literally woven into the fabric of the restaurant itself- for example, the tables all included embedded historic photographs of Birmingham and its people. And it was also an iconic barn shaped building just past Maple on Woodward Avenue. It was a recognizable landmark that folks’ used for navigating up and down Woodward Avenue, even if they never stopped by to check out the lunch specials. 

                In 1980, the building burned down again. Restaurant staff and community members weren’t about to let this be the last hurrah for Peabody’s though and begged the family to rebuild and reopen. And they did. For another several decades, Peabody’s anticipated and met the dining and socializing needs of the community.

                Jim Peabody died on December 6, 2001. Leaving behind a legacy of hard work and the ability to shift business plans as the winds of commerce changed. One of his favorite things to say was that “it’ll only take 20 minutes once you get started” to motivate others to start tasks that seemed to big or daunting. 

                Peabody’s Restaurant continued to be a beloved staple in Birmingham until its closure in 2016 and the buildings demolition in 2017. I was fortunate enough to be there the first day after its closure when Nancy, Barbara and Susan graciously invited the museum to come and get some artifacts for our collection. As we left, I spoke with a woman in the parking lot who had just found out about the closure and was wondering where her lunch group was going to meet because they had been coming to Peabodys for over a decade. And that’s a fairly common story in our community. People miss Peabodys as that familiar restaurant with good, consistent food, friendly employees that you knew and as a cornerstone of the community that bought ads in yearbooks, supported local fundraisers and really cared about their customers.

                Also, whoever ordered their dining chairs deserved all the raises. I’m using one as a desk chair as I type this and it is incredibly comfy. If you are out there and listening, well done and thank you. 

                So there you have it, the two Peabody families and their two legacies here in Birmingham. Both stories show the opportunities that existed in the village in the 1870s, when Lyman and James Peabody arrived in Birmingham, up until the present day. The lives of James Henry Peabody and his grandson Jim parallel each other in fascinating ways. Both had their young adult lives and their early career paths unexpectedly interrupted by war. After the wars, both adapted to the changed world and chose to go down different routes than what they had set out to do before: James chose to continue farming, like his father, but moved westward and Jim chose to turn the traditional farmstand into a modern grocery store and later a restaurant.  

                And, if you want to try out the Peabody’s Restaurant’s chairs for yourself, we have original table and chairs in our lobby. Just don’t ask me to try my hand at making their French onion soup.

                Join us next episode as we delve into the life and times of Birmingham’s first female mayor. Twink Willietts was once described in a newspaper story as a “perfect size 12”…which means nothing when you make all your own clothing, like Twink did. It’s a story of a trailblazer in the mid 20th century who broke ceilings and also got a lot of the same sexist bs that many modern female politicians do- like a focus on their clothes over their policies and faux concern over how they can possibly balance politics and child rearing. Sometimes, the fact that things have stayed the same from decade to decade is comforting, but other times its very frustrating. 

                I’m Caitlin Donnelly and thank you for joining us for this episode of Birmingham Uncovered. To see photos and other documents related to James and Jim Peabody, their family, and their wartime service, check out our website, the link is in the shownotes. For questions, comments and episode suggestions, feel free to reach us at museum@bhamgov.org. Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, and our amazing volunteers.