Miriam Peters, 100, retired head of Burnham School

She pursued her love of education, particularly for women, as associate head and later head of the Burnham School, where she helped mold the lives of generations of young women, not only through the classics and the arts but by teaching them how to cope with life’s challenges.

In June, many of her “girls’’ came from around the country to share Mrs. Peters’s 100th birthday at the Northhampton home she shared with her younger brother, John Endicott Emerson. Many returned some four months later to attend their beloved Mrs. Peters’s funeral. She died at home of complications of an infection on Oct. 29.

“Aunt Miriam stayed busy,’’ said her nephew, Galo Putnam Emerson Jr. of Danvers. “She was on a number of community, college, and school boards and volunteered at the local hospital for 12 years. Her health never failed. She just got frail in the last three or four years. Her hearing failed, never her body, never her mind. She played bridge competitively until about five years ago and did the New York Times crossword puzzle up until two years ago. With a pen. She was driving until not long ago. A few days before she died, she was playing Scrabble with her hospice caretakers. Her only conversation in regards to passing on was, ‘Don’t live beyond 85.’ ’’

However, Mrs. Peters seemed to belie that. “When she was 99, she was still watching ‘Jeopardy’ and getting the answers before the contestants,’’ said Jo-Ann Emerson, Galo’s wife. “To me, Miriam never aged until the last two months.’’

Mrs. Peters came from a long line of hardy New Englanders. She was a direct descendant of Danvers General Israel Putnam, who was in command of the American troops in the Battle of Bunker Hill. “Miriam and John are certainly members of New England aristocracy, if there is one,’’ said Peter Rowe, their neighbor and a retired Smith College professor. He said that even within the last year, Mrs. Peters was walking around the neighborhood with a walker, “elegantly dressed, as always,’’ in a beautiful light blue mohair coat.

Through the years, she had kept in touch with her “girls’’ from Burnham by mail and visits. Carol Somerville of Washington, D.C., who graduated from Burnham in 1969, talked on the phone with her often when she was manager of Blair House in Washington, the guest house of presidents, during the Reagan administration.

Somerville said she would call to get advice on matters such as gloves at dinner, finger bowls, and seating arrangements. “Miriam had such manner and grace and knew everything about protocol.’’

Like other Burnham graduates, Somerville said Mrs. Peters had a profound effect on her life. “She taught us that being a good person mattered more than making money.’’

Many of them still remember the mantra Mrs. Peters created from the name Burnham: “B is for betterment, Each day we try to do a little better. U is for understanding. It is important to try to understand other people. R is for reverence, the highest human emotion. N is for nobility. Noblesse oblige; when there are privileges, there are also responsibilities. H is for health, God’s greatest gift. Let us guard it carefully. A is for altruism, the greatest good for the greatest number. M is for manner, the manner in which one does a thing often makes or mars one’s successes in life.’’

She was born in Amesbury and grew up in Danvers, one of seven children of Susan Mabel Hood and George Waldo Emerson. The Putnams were one of the earliest families from the 17th century to settle in Danvers. Mrs. Peters spent her childhood in the General Israel Putnam House in Danvers. In 1991, she and her two brothers gave the house to the Danvers Historical Society.

When it came time for young Miriam to go to college, she enrolled at Smith in Northampton and spent her junior year in France, where she received a diploma from the Alliance Français in Paris, a certificate from the University of Grenoble, and a degree with honors from the Sorbonne. She graduated from Smith cum laude in 1932 and began teaching at the Bolton School in Westport, Conn.

There, she met the man she would marry, Macdonald Peters, an art teacher from Inverness, Scotland. They wed in 1937. Mr. Peters died in 1970.

She would follow in her mother’s footsteps as an educator. Her mother had established several private schools around New England and became head of the Burnham School in Northampton in 1938.

Mrs. Peters was associate head of Burnham from 1940 to 1958. From 1943 to 1950, she was director of studies at the Stoneleigh School, another girls’ private school in Greenfield. In 1958, she became head of Burnham. In 1950, she cofounded Burnham-by-the-Sea in Newport, R.I., a girls’ summer school.

In 1968, when Burnham and Stoneleigh merged, she served as coprincipal of the Stoneleigh-Burnham School for two years before retiring in 1970. Before and after she retired, Mrs. Peters traveled to at least 40 countries.

The “girls’’ who boarded at the private schools, recalled that she could be firm when necessary, but “always with a twinkle in her eye.’’

She was a stickler for perfect table manners. Sandy Wettingfeld of Syracuse, N.Y., recalled sitting at dinner with Mrs. Peters and “holding my soup bowl incorrectly; today, it irritates me when I go out and see a table not set properly.’’

“On first impression, Mrs. Peters seemed proper, stern, and polished,’’ said Nancy Hallen of Sudbury, Burnham class of 1969.

“Clothing never wrinkled, each hair in place, posture always erect. Her formidable office, observed from the opposite side of her fashionable desk, was eye-stoppingly orderly. It later became apparent that she was also kind, fair, and concerned. Only upon graduation were we to learn that she also possessed a great sense of humor and a slightly irreverent wit.’’

“We were teenagers away from home, and Mrs. Peters was our mother in absentia,’’ said Jennie Hollister of Acton. “Everything Mrs. Peters did was perfect. When she corrected us, it was always with a twinkle in her eye.’’

Sally Mixsell, head of Stoneleigh-Burnham, recalled going on the first student French trip that Mrs. Peters led for five weeks to absorb French culture, food and fashion. She felt Mrs. Peters provided some of the motivation for her becoming an educator.

Stoneleigh has an annual graduation award in Mrs. Peters’s name. On her 100th birthday, it established the Miriam Emerson Peters Speaker Series in Global Understanding.

Her impression on her “girls’’ was lasting. “She scared us; she challenged us; she set very high standards,’’ Nancy Hallen said.

“But, it was obvious that she valued each of us and impressively never forgot any one of us. Whenever a group of us gets together, it is not uncommon to hear us ask, ‘What would Mrs. Peters do?’ ’’

Her brother is Mrs. Peters’s only immediate survivor. Services have been held, with burial in the family cemetery in Danvers.