Julia Ward Howe

Born:  May 27, 1819, New York City, New York

Died:  October 17, 1910, Portsmouth, Rhode Island

Resting Place:  Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Brief History:  Howe was educated by private tutors and schools for young ladies until she was sixteen. Her eldest brother, Samuel Cutler Ward, traveled in Europe and brought home a private library. She had access to these books, many contradicting the Calvinistic view. She was a wealthy heiress, that brought her into contact with some of the leading minds of the time. It was her brother Sam who exposed her to people like Longfellow, Dickens, Charles Sumner and Margaret Fuller. Though raised an Episcopalian, Julia became a Unitarian by 1841. In Boston, Ward met Samuel Gridley Howe, a physician and reformer who had founded the Perkins School for the Blind. Howe had courted her, but he had shown an interest in her sister Louisa. In 1843, they married despite their eighteen-year age difference. Samuel Gridley Howe was a strong willed and autocratic husband. He forbade Julia from working outside of the home. His views on the roles of married women suggested that they forge a career out of doing duties assigned to being a wife and motherhood. The marriage was troubled from the start; Howe enjoyed writing and socializing while her husband preferred the solitude of his studies at the Perkins Institute and wanted her to be content with homemaking.

Julia and her two youngest children stayed with her sister in Rome while her two eldest daughters remained in Boston with their father. During this period a family dynamic emerged between the couple and their children that would remain throughout their lives. She attended lectures, studied foreign languages, and wrote plays and dramas. Prior to her marriage, Howe had published essays on Goethe, Schiller and Lamartine in the New York Review and Theological Review. Despite his objections to Julia’s working outside the home, Sam relied heavily on his wife as editor and writer for his newspaper, "The Commonwealth." In the early 1870s, Howe was nominated by Massachusetts governor William Claflin as justice of the peace. Among her many contributions to American society is her famous "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which has become a national anthem of sorts. She was also co-editor and writer for The Woman's Journal, which lobbied for suffrage and human rights. After the war, an active clubwoman, Howe established and led major women’s organizations. She championed the vote for women, helping to found the New England Suffrage Association in 1868, as well as the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association.