Specializing in early childhood education, she helped create the National Association for Nursery Education, served as an advisor to the Roosevelt administration’s depression era nursery schools for poor children, and a consultant for a program to provide day care to working families contributing to the war effort during World War II. During the 1950s, she became involved with the Tufts University establishment of what became known as the Eliot-Pearson School. She continued teaching at various institutions including Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, California. Her former Radcliffe classmate, Anna E. Holman, also a teacher as well as a poet, was her lifelong partner. The couple lived together in Concord until Anna’s death in 1969. Abigail died at age 100 after a life of service to the education of young children, a field that she helped establish.
