Samuel Gridley Howe - Marriage and Family

Marriage and Family

On 23 April 1843 he married Julia Ward, the daughter of wealthy New York banker Samuel Ward and Julia Rush Cutler. Julia was an ardent supporter of abolition and was later active in the cause of Woman's Suffrage. She composed the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

They had a passionate and stormy marriage. Julia wrote in her diary of Dr. Howe (whom she referred to as "Chev"):

Chev is one of the characters based upon opposition. While I always seem to work for an unseen friend, he always sees an armed adversary and nerves himself accordingly. So all our lives turn on what I may call moral or personal fiction...

At one point Samuel requested a legal separation, but Julia refused. Many of their arguments centered on Julia’s desire to have a career apart from motherhood. While Dr. Howe was in many ways quite progressive by the standards of the day, he did not support the idea of married women having any work other than that of wife and mother, and he firmly believed that Julia's proper place was in the home.

The couple had six children: Julia Romana Howe (1844–1886) married Michael Anagnos, a Greek scholar who succeeded Dr. Howe as director of the Perkins Institute; Florence Marion Howe (1845–1922), an author, she wrote a well-known treatise on manners and was married to lawyer David Prescott Hall; Henry Marion Howe (1848–1922), a metallurgist who lived in New York; Laura Elizabeth Howe (1850–1943), a Pulitzer prize-winning author, she was married to Henry Richards and lived in Maine; Maud Howe (1855–1948), a Pulitzer prize-winning author, she was married to an English muralist and illustrator, John Elliott; Samuel Gridley Howe, Jr. (1858–1863).

Laura and Florence were closest to their father and defended his opposition to Julia's activities outside the home. Ironically, Florence would later take up her mother's mantle as a committed suffragette, making public speeches on the subject and authoring the book Julia Ward Howe and the Woman Suffrage Movement (1913).