PEABODY — When a contingent of Peabody residents visited London on March 23, they were given a memorable promise during a ceremony at Westminster Abbey.
"We were told we were going to sit where the royals sat," Bill Power of the Peabody Historical Society said.
And so they did, as guests of the George Peabody trust, which is celebrating its 150th year. Thus, they rested precisely where Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip sat to watch the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
"We were in the royal keister section," Power joked.
The group then listened to Londoners talk glowingly about George Peabody and his work to help those less fortunate.
"It gave me a new appreciation of all he did," Peabody City Councilor Dave Gravel said.
The local group paid their own way over to London, but once there, they were guests of the trust.
"And they treated us royally," said Power, who briefed Mayor Ted Bettencourt on the visit this week.
The mayor was unable to go on the trip but is interested in re-establishing the exchange that once sent Peabody students on visits to London and vice versa, Power said. Talks on resuming these trips next fall was part of the mission.
The trust was set up by George Peabody in 1862 to provide decent housing to the working poor. Like nearly all of Peabody's philanthropic projects — he endowed scores of schools and libraries in his homeland — the trust was designed to be a self-sustaining and lasting operation.
Today, Gravel said, the trust houses more than 50,000 residents and is administrated by roughly 600 people.
The Peabody group discovered that this city's favorite son remains an honored figure in London. "If you were talking to a London cabbie, you had to pronounce the name (of the city) very carefully," Gravel said, "Pee — BODY."
But once you did, Londoners often made the connection to the Peabody trust. For that matter, they sometimes seemed more familiar with the 19th-century financier than those in his hometown.
A tour of the "estates" was part of the visit, Power said. "The grounds were beautiful," he said, and the housing remains wonderfully built and wonderfully maintained.
Also part of the tour was a dominating statue of a seated George Peabody near the Royal Exchange in the heart of the city.
The ceremony at Westminister Abbey involved 2,000 people, including representatives from the U.S. Embassy.
George Peabody's contribution to the British people was so valued that at his death in 1869 he was buried in Westminster Abbey, along with Great Britain's greatest heroes.
That was an extraordinary honor. Yet, on examination of his will, it was seen that the patriotic Peabody had left instructions he be buried in his own country, in Salem's Harmony Grove Cemetery.
He was escorted back to America aboard a British warship.
The Peabody visitors exited the Abbey in high style, as well, filing past Britain's Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. "Bells were pealing," Power said. "It was just like in the movies."