HENRY MARION HOWE 



By George K. Buhgess 



A very beautiful memorial service was held at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the 

 Divine, New York City, at 5 o'clock on the evening of October 25, 1923, in honor of the late 

 Henry Marion Howe, who was a vestryman in an Episcopal church of that diocese. Dr. 

 Michael I. Pupin, professor of electro mechanics, Columbia Universit}^ was the speaker on 

 this occasion, his theme being "The power of coordination" as exemplified by Doctor Howe 

 in his life and works. This service coincided with the date of the fall meeting of the American 

 Iron and Steel Institute and there were gathered in that quiet and peaceful corner many of 

 his old friends and associates to do honor to the man whose life was so worthy and fruitful 

 in his endeavor to be of service to mankind. 



Henry Marion Howe was born March 2, 1848, in Boston. His death occurred in the 

 seventy-fourth year of his life at his home in Bedford Hills, N. Y., on May 14, 1922, of an 

 illness from which he had been suffering, acutely at times, for some 15 months. He is survived 

 by his wife, Fannie Gay Howe, whom he married in Troy, N. Y., April 9, 1874, and also by 

 two sisters, Mrs. Laura E. Richards, of Gardiner, Me., and Mrs. Maude Elliott, of Newport. 



In order to have a proper background for such a life as was that of this eminent scientist 

 and teacher, it is of interest to note that his father, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, American phil- 

 anthropist, and son of Joseph N. Howe, a shipowner and cordage manufacturer, and Patty 

 Gridley, one of the most beautiful women of her day, was educated at Boston and Brown 

 University, taking his degree in medicine in Boston. However, he was no sooner admitted 

 to practice than he abandoned all prospects of following his chosen profession. With Byron 

 as an example, his enthusiasm carried him to Greece, where he joined the army and spent 

 six years in the midst of scenes of warfare. After this, in turn, he established a relief depot 

 near Aegina, and formed another colony of exiles on the Isthmus of Corinth, writing meantime 

 a History of the Greek Revolution, which was published in 1S28. After his return to America, 

 in 1831, he began receiving a few blind chddren at his father's house in Pleasant Street, and 

 thus sowed the seed which grew into the famous Perkins Institution for the Blind. He was the 

 director, heart and sold of the school; he organized a fund for printing for the blind — the first 

 done in America — which gained for him the title, "Cadmus of the Blind." 



His mother, Julia Ward Howe, American author and reformer, daughter of Samuel Ward, 

 a New York banker, and Julia Rush (Cutler), a poet of some ability, when 16 years of age 

 began to contribute poems to New York periodicals. Among her many works of art, 

 undoubtedly the most popular is her poem, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," written 

 to the old folksong associated with the song of "John Brown's Body," when Mrs. Howe was 

 at the front in 1861, published in the Atlantic Monthly. Her children were Julia Romana 

 Anagnos, 1844-1886, who, like her mother, wrote verse and studied philosophy, and who taught 

 in the Perkins Institution, in the charge of which her husband, Michael Anagnos, succeeded 

 her father; Florence Marion Howe Hall; Henry Marion Howe, the well-known metallurgist, 

 and subject of this biography; Laura Elizabeth Richards; and Maude Howe Elliott, wife of 

 John Elliott, the painter of a fine ceiling in the Boston library, both these daughters being 

 contributors to literature. 



Henry Marion Howe, the only son of these two illustrious personages, was in his early 

 childhood trained by tutors in the persons of Polish and Greek refugees to whom his father's 

 beneficence was well known to many. With these for teachers, and in the atmosphere of a 

 home such as was his, young Howe was surrounded throughout his childhood by the very 



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