Howe, Samuel Gridley (1801–1876)

US educational reformer and philanthropist. A close associate of Horace Mann and Dorothea Dix, he campaigned for expanded public education and better mental health facilities. He served as chair of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities 1865–74.

Born in Boston, Howe was educated at Brown University and received an MD degree from Harvard in 1824. He spent seven years in Greece during its War of Independence 1821–29, and became known as ‘the Lafayette of the Greek Revolution’. As director of a school for the blind in Boston in 1831, he developed innovative educational techniques that were widely emulated. He was also an abolitionist and prison reformer, and was married to the US feminist and abolitionist Julia Ward Howe.

He wrote Historical Sketches of the Greek Revolution (1828), and a Reader for the Blind.