Samuel Gridley Howe

Samuel Gridley Howe (November 10, 1801 - January 9, 1876) was a prominent 19th century United States physician, abolitionist, and an advocate of education for the blind. He was the husband of Julia Ward Howe and the father of Pulitzer prize-winning writers Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott.

Biography

Howe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, Joseph N. Howe, was a ship-owner and cordage manufacturer; and his mother, Patty Gridley, was one of the most beautiful women of her day. Young Howe was educated at Boston and at Brown University, Providence, and in 1821 began to study medicine in Boston. He took the degree of M.D. at Harvard Medical School in 1824. But fired by enthusiasm for the Greek revolution and by Byron’s example, he was no sooner qualified and admitted to practice than he abandoned these prospects and took ship for Greece, where he joined the army as a surgeon.

In Greece his services were not confined to the duties of a surgeon, but were of a more military nature, and his bravery, enthusiasm, and ability as a commander, as well as his humanity and nobility of character, won for him the title of "The Lafayette of the Greek Revolution."New International Encyclopedia] Then, to raise funds and supplies to alleviate the famine and suffering in Greece, he returned to America in 1827; his fervid appeals enabled him to collect about $60,000, which he spent on provisions and clothing, and he established a relief depot near Aegina, where he started works for the refugees, the existing quay, or American Mole, being built in this way. He formed another colony of exiles on the Isthmus of Corinth. He wrote a "Historical Sketch of the Greek Revolution", which was published in 1828.

He then spent some time in medical studies at Paris, where his enthusiasm for a republican form of government led him to take part in the July Revolution.

Work for the blind

In 1831 he returned to America. Here a new object of interest engaged him. Through his friend Dr. John Dix Fisher (d.1850), a Boston physician who had started a movement there as early as 1826 for establishing a school for the blind, he had learned of a similar school founded in Paris by Valentin Hay. It was proposed to Howe by a committee organized by Fisher that he should direct the establishment of a “New England Asylum for the Blind” at Boston. He took up the project with characteristic ardour, and set out at once for Europe to investigate the problem. There he was temporarily diverted from his task by becoming mixed up with the Polish revolt. He became chairman of the American-Polish Committee at Paris, organized by himself, J. Fenimore Cooper, S. F. B. Morse, and several other Americans living in the city, for the purpose of giving relief to the Polish political refugees who had crossed over the Prussian border into Prussia. Dr. Howe undertook to distribute the supplies and funds personally and while in Berlin he was arrested and imprisoned, but was released after five weeks through the intervention of the American minister at Paris.

Returning to Boston in July 1832, he began receiving a few blind children at his father’s house in Pleasant Street, and thus sowed the seed which grew into the famous Perkins Institution. In January 1833 the funds available were all spent, but so much progress had been shown that the legislature approved funding, later increased to $30,000 a year, to the institution on condition that it should educate gratuitously twenty poor blind from the state; money was also contributed from Salem and Boston. Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a prominent Boston trader in slaves, furs, and opium, then presented his mansion and grounds in Pearl Street for the school to be held there in perpetuity. This building being later found unsuitable, Colonel Perkins consented to its sale, and in 1839 the institution was moved to the former Mount Washington House Hotel in South Boston. It was henceforth known as the "Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum (or, since 1877, School) for the Blind."

Howe was director, and the life and soul of the school; he opened a printing-office and organized a fund for printing for the blind — the first done in America; and he was unwearied in calling public attention to tile work. The Institution, through him, became one of the intellectual centres of American philanthropy, and by degrees obtained more and more financial support. In 1837, Howe brought to the school Laura Bridgman, a young deaf-blind girl who later became a teacher at the school. She became famous as the first known deaf-blind person to be successfully educated.

Dr. Howe himself was the originator of many improvements in method as well as in the process of printing books in raised types. Besides acting as superintendent of the Perkins Institution to the end of his life, he was instrumental in establishing a large number of institutions of a similar character throughout the country.

Antislavery activities

He entered publicly into the antislavery struggle for the first time in 1846, when as a "Conscience Whig," he was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress against Robert C. Winthrop. In 1851 he was one of the founders and editor of an antislavery paper, the Boston "Daily Commonwealth", upon which his wife, Julia Ward Howe, assisted him. Howe funded the abolitionist John Brown and the Underground Railroad as a member of the Secret Six. After Brown's arrest, Howe temporarily fled to Canada.

Philanthropic activities

Howe also brought about the establishment of the Massachusetts School for Idiotic Children (later renamed the Walter E. Fernald State School), the Western Hemisphere’s oldest publicly-funded institution serving the mentally disabled. He founded the school in 1848 with a $2,500 appropriation from the Massachusetts Legislature. For nearly a century the school was viewed as a model educational facility for the congenitally retarded, but after 1950 it fell into much disrepute due to unconscionable conditions for the incarcerated children and a series of unethical radiological experiments performed upon some boys.

He was the originator of the State Board of Charities of Massachusetts, in 1863, the first board of the sort in America, and was its chairman from that time until 1874. In 1866 he made a last trip to Greece to carry relief to the Cretan refugees and in 1870 was a member of the commission sent by President Grant to inquire into the practicability of the annexation of Santo Domingo.

He was a prominent member of the Kansas Committee in Massachusetts, and with Sanborn, Stearns, Theodore Parker, and Gerrit Smith, was interested in the plans of John Brown, although he disapproved of the attack upon Harper's Ferry. During the Civil War Howe was one of the directors of the Sanitary Commission and at its close entered into the work of the Freedmen's Bureau.

Final years and death

In 1866, Howe gave the keynote address at the opening of a new institution (New York State Institution for the Blind at Batavia," Genes Co., NY) and shocked the audience by warning about the dangers of segregation based on disability:"We should be cautious about establishing such artificial communities...for any children and youth; but more especially should we avoid them for those who have natural infirmity...Such persons spring up sporadically in the community, and they should be kept diffused among sound and normal persons...Surround insane and excitable persons with sane people and ordinary influences; vicious children with virtuous people and virtuous influences; blind children with those who see; mute children with those who speak; and the like..."' from: " [Howe, S.G. (1866) In "Ceremonies on laying the cornerstone of the New York State Institution for the Blind at Batavia," Genes Co., NY: Henry Todd] "

Samuel Gridley Howe died January 9, 1876. He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Books

*The Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Edited by His Daughter Laura E. Richards.

:Volume I- The Greek Revolution.

:Volume II-The Servant of Humanity.
* F. B. Sanborn, "Dr. S. G. Howe, American Philanthropist" (Neww York, 1891)
* L. E. Richards (editor), "Letters and Journals" (two volumes, Boston 1906-09)
* L. E. Richards, "Two Noble Lives" (Boston, 1911)

Notes

External links

* [http://www.aph.org/hall_fame/howe_bio.html Howe Biography on "Leaders & Legends of the Blindness Field Hall of Fame"]
* [http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/storydetail.cfm?ID=2816 Brown alumni magazine, Fall 05: "The man who would change everything"]