Samuel Gridley Howe

Samuel Gridley Howe (1801 to 1876) was an American medical doctor, abolitionist and advocate of education for the blind. Born in Boston, he graduated from Brown University in 1821 and took his medical degree at Harvard in 1824. That same year, inspired by the Greek Revolution, he went to Greece and joined the Greek army as a surgeon, where his bravery and humanity earned him the title the Lafayette of the Greek Revolution. He returned in 1827 to raise funds and supplies, spent about 60,000 dollars on provisions and a relief depot for refugees near Aegina, and later formed a colony for exiles on the Isthmus of Corinth. He organized and became the first director of the Perkins Institution for the blind. During the Civil War he was one of three men appointed to the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, which investigated the condition of freedmen in the South and in Canada West. He died in 1876.