In Peabody, vivid postcards offer a contrasting view of what it was like to live and work in a community having two distinct characters: the town center, with its bustling tanning industries, which soon earned Peabody the sobriquet of "Leather Capital of the World," and the pastoral farming villages of Brookdale, Locustdale, Brooksby, and West Peabody, which portray a sense of life in rural America during this same era.