After 90 full years of life, Margaret "Peggy" Tremaine Brace passed away peacefully on April 1, 2024. She was living in Concord MA, her town of residence for nearly 40 years.

Peggy was born to Laura and Macgregor Grant of St. John, New Brunswick Canada, and came to New England to attend college. While skiing on the slopes of Mount Washington and folk dancing in Cambridge she met William "Bill" Brace, an MIT graduate student from New Hampshire. The couple married and settled in Cambridge, MA after Bill graduated and accepted a professorship of Geology at MIT.

In Cambridge and later in Concord, she and Bill raised three children, with whom they shared their love for the outdoors. The young Brace family embarked on adventures including skiing in New Hampshire, hiking on the flanks of the White Mountains and Mount Katahdin, and exploring the shorelines of New England. The family spent several weeks every summer at the Grant cottage on the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, Canada. With Peggy and Bill's passion for mountains, the family packed up the station wagon and drove west for backpacking, rafting and exploring the Rocky Mountains, Grand Canyon, and other wilderness parts of the west.

Peggy's love of the environment is a strong thread throughout life. She was an avid gardener and created spectacular perennial gardens and maintained productive crops of blackberries, raspberries, and currents. Her avid birdwatching and conservation interests branched out to include hosting biodiversity days and birding outings with local naturalists from the Boston area. She also became an avid participant in recovering the Eastern Bluebird populations through placing and monitoring dozens of nesting boxes across fields on her property and around town.

Peggy's passion for protecting the environment also led to her advocating for a simple, cheap and well-proven solution to climate change: the clothes line. She was an outspoken advocate to local and state governments to bring back the clothesline, and was awarded the 2012 Third Middlesex Massachusetts Democrat of the Year award for this effort. "The right to dry" became her hallmark slogan.

She also became deeply fascinated by Concord's rich literary past and hosted academic, writers and historians at her home overlooking the Concord River for events focused on the work and life of Henry David Thoreau and other Concord literary luminaries.

Peggy was immersed in activities of the Town of Concord; she was a regular Town Meeting attendee and vocal advocate for many civic causes throughout the years including Concord's ban on single-use plastic water bottles, the first municipal ban of its kind in the nation.

She was a longtime congregation and choir member of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Concord. She was the head of the flower committee there for many years, creating beautiful bouquets for services and other church events.

Peggy is survived by her three children, Colin, Nathaniel and Sarah, and her four grandchildren Schuyler, Lavinia, Clark and Colin. She is also survived by her brother Charles Grant of St Johnsbury VT. Peggy is predeceased by her husband Bill (1926-2012), her parents, Laura and Macgregor Grant and brothers Rory and Richard.

Peggy's life will be celebrated during a memorial service at First Parish, 20 Lexington Road, Concord Center on Friday, September 6, 2024 at 10 am.  A reception will follow in the Parish Hall. You may replay the church's livestream link here using the passcode: 8Wn*0kEN.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Concord Land Conservation Trust , 175 Sudbury Road, Concord MA 01742 or Massachusetts Audubon Society , 208 South Great Road, Lincoln, MA 01773.

Arrangements are entrusted to Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord.