Samuel Howe and Julia

Howe, Samuel and Julia, name of a U.S. husband and wife who were prominent social reformers. The physician and teacher Samuel Gridley Howe (1801–76) ran a school for the blind in Boston (later the Perkins School for the Blind), where he achieved outstanding successes, most notably in teaching the deaf-blind child Laura Bridgman. He was also an active abolitionist and published the antislavery journal Commonwealth. Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910), an author, is best known for her words to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (1862). She was coeditor of Commonwealth and a campaigner for women's rights.