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Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910
Born New York City
Author of the North's unofficial Civil War anthem, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," Julia Ward Howe balanced multiple identities as a mother, poet, playwright, peace advocate, and tireless promoter of women's rights. While raising six children, she sought ways to participate in public life, eventually becoming a leader of the suffrage movement. Although her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, head of Boston's Perkins Institute for the Blind and an active leader in abolitionism, did not support his wife's public activism, she made her voice heard through publishing. In 1870, she founded Woman's Journal, a suffragist weekly magazine. Subsequently, she founded and served as president of the Association for the Advancement of Women. New York portrait photographer Alice Boughton met Howe in Boston at the end of Howe's life for a brief portrait session. Boughton captures Howe's keen intellect, a quality that defined her as she laid the groundwork for the feminist movement.
Alice Boughton, 1908 |