Howe, Samuel Gridley

Howe, Samuel Gridley,

1801–76, American reformer and philanthropist, b. Boston, Mass., grad. Brown, 1821, M.D. Harvard, 1824. He began his life-long service to others by going to Greece to aid in its war for independence and spent six years there. He is best remembered for his work with the blind; he was the organizer of the New England Asylum for the Blind (now the Perkins School for the BlindPerkins School for the Blind,
at Watertown, Mass.; chartered 1829, opened 1832 in South Boston as the New England Asylum for the Blind, with Samuel G. Howe as its director; moved 1912. From 1877 to 1955 it was called the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind.
..... Click the link for more information. ) and was its head for 44 years. The remarkable success of the education of Laura BridgmanBridgman, Laura,
1829–89, the first blind and deaf person to be successfully educated, b. Hanover, N.H. Under the guidance of Dr. S. G. Howe, of the Perkins School for the Blind, she learned to read and write and to sew, eventually becoming a sewing teacher at the school,
..... Click the link for more information. , who was both blind and deaf, did much to improve the education of the disabled in the United States. He was chairman of the Massachusetts state board of charities from 1865 to 1874. He also supported Dorothea DixDix, Dorothea Lynde,
1802–87, American social reformer, pioneer in the movement for humane treatment of the insane, b. Hampden, Maine. For many years she ran a school in Boston. In 1841 she visited a jail in East Cambridge, Mass.
..... Click the link for more information.  in her work for the insane, sought to help the mentally retarded, approved the educational reforms of Horace MannMann, Horace
, 1796–1859, American educator, b. Franklin, Mass. He received a sparse preliminary schooling, but succeeded in entering Brown in the sophomore class and graduated with honors in 1819.
..... Click the link for more information. , and with his wife, Julia Ward HoweHowe, Julia Ward,
1819–1910, American author and social reformer, b. New York City. Although unhappily married, she assisted her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, in his philanthropic projects and in editing the Boston Commonwealth, an abolitionist paper.
..... Click the link for more information. , strongly and vocally opposed slavery. The troubles in Crete (1866–67) took him again to Greece.

Bibliography

See his letters and journals (1906–9); biographies by H. Schwartz (1956) and M. Meltzer (1964); E. Freeberg, The Education of Laura Bridgman (2001); E. Gitter, The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman (2001).

Howe, Samuel Gridley

(1801–76) physician, social reformer; born in Boston, Mass. Immediately after taking his M.D. from Harvard (1824), he sailed for Greece to serve as a surgeon during the Greeks' independence struggle against the Turks; he stayed in Greece until 1830 to help build the new nation. Back in Boston, in 1832 he became the first director of a new school for the blind and remained as its head until his death; it became the Perkins Institute for the Blind and he achieved international acclaim for helping educate the blind deaf-mute Laura Dewey Bridgman. He supported Horace Mann's efforts on behalf of public education, helped Dorothea Dix in her campaign for humane treatment of the mentally ill, and fought for prison reform; in the late 1840s he founded the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth (now the Walter E. Fernald State School). An opponent of slavery, he and his wife, Julia Ward Howe, whom he married in 1843, published the Commonwealth (1853), an abolitionist newspaper; he actively supported the Underground Railway, vigorously opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), and secretly aided John Brown. He also continued to work on behalf of the Greeks, returning to Crete in 1866–67 during an uprising against the Turks. But for all his progressive views, he was a man of his time who opposed his wife's public activities and their marriage was strained during its early decades to the point that divorce was considered.