This collection contains 4 letters that Samuel Gridley Howe wrote to Secretary of State Josiah Stevens and Governor Samuel Dinsmoor, Jr., of New Hampshire, regarding the education of New Hampshire residents at the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind (now the Perkins School for the Blind).
Howe wrote 3 letters to Josiah Stevens concerning specific students at the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind (June 8, 1840; August 22, 1840; and February 26, 1841). He discussed the students' progress at the school and suggested which of them would benefit from further education and, therefore, from further financial support from the state of New Hampshire. In one case, Howe offered his opinion that a student was in less need of the school's services than others, because of his partial ability to see. The June 8, 1840, letter also contains an account of the amount of money remitted by the state of New Hampshire for several students' education.
In an October 19, 1849, letter, Howe addressed New Hampshire Governor Samuel Dinsmoor, Jr., on behalf of a young man who wished to attend the Perkins School. He wrote this letter on official "Perkins' Institution, and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind" stationery.
Samuel Gridley Howe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 10, 1801, the son of Joseph Neals Howe and Patty Gridley. He graduated from Brown University in 1821 and earned a degree from Harvard Medical School in 1824. After briefly practicing medicine in Boston, he traveled to Greece, where he fought in the Greek War of Independence until around 1831. That year, he returned to Boston, where he helped establish several schools for blind, deaf, or otherwise disabled children. Howe also became a prominent abolitionist and edited the anti-slavery Boston newspaper, the Daily Commonwealth. After the Civil War, he briefly traveled to Greece to help supply Cretan rebels during a revolt against Turkish rule, and he served as part of a U. S. commission to assess the desirability of annexing the Dominican Republic as a United States territory in the late 1860s. On April 27, 1843, he married activist Julia Ward, and they had six children. Samuel Gridley Howe died on January 9, 1876.
