Howe

Westminster Abbey. He was succeeded in the
title by his brother, Richard, Earl Howe, and
later by his brother William, both of Revolu-
tionary fame.

[A. W. Ward, The Electress Sophia and thet Han-
overian Succession (1909), pp. 143-44* discredits the
story, first told by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, that
Baroness von Kielmansegge was the mistress of George
I, and Lord Howe his grandson. Scanty information of
his early life is in F. W. Hamilton, The Origin and
Hist, of the First or Grenadier Guards (1874), II, 141,
148, III, 451; and Wra. Cobbett, The Parliamentary
Hist, of England (1813), XIV, 75, XV, 309- For his
American career the Jours, of Maj. Robert Rogers
(1765) ; Mrs. Anne Grant, Memoirs of an American
Lady (2 vols., 1808); Thos. Mante, The Hist, of the
Late War in North-America (1772); Correspondence
of William Pitt (2 vols., 1906), ed. by G. S. Kimball;
E. B. O'Callaghan, Docs. Relating to the Colonial Hist.
of the State of N. Y.} vol. X (1858) are important. The
Gentleman's Mag. (London), Aug. 1758, published an
account of his death. In Proc. N. Y. State Hist. Asso.t
vols. II (1902), X (1911), and XIV (1915) are con-
troversial articles regarding his place of burial; see
letter from Napier to Abercromby, Aug. 24, 1758,
Abercromby Papers in the Henry E. Huntingdon Li-
brary, San Marino, Cal, The Abercromby Papers and
the Loudoun Papers, also at San Marino, contain many
references to Lord Howe.] $. M. p.

HOWE, HENRY (Oct. n, i8i<5-0ct. 14,
1893), historian, was born in New Haven, Conn.,
the son of Hezekiah and Sarah (Townsend)
Howe and a descendant of James Howe, who was
admitted freeman of Roxbury, Mass., in 1637 and
later settled at Ipswich. Henry's father, a bib-
liophile, published the first edition of Webster's
dictionary and conducted a bookstore which was
a favorite resort of Yale professors and other
scholarly men. There Henry developed his lit-
erary inclinations, and when John Warner Bar-
ber's Connecticut Historical Collections (1836)
came into his hands, he decided that he would
like above all things to dedicate his life to mak-
ing such records. In 1839 he published Eminent
Americans, then after several distasteful months
in Wall Street, he joined forces with Barber in
1840 in compiling the Historical Collections of
the State of New York (1841). Sometimes rid-
ing, usually walking, Howe "zigzaged from
county-seat to county-seat, collecting material
and taking sketches," a picturesque figure with
his piercing dark eyes, high brow, flowing hair,
scarlet leggings, and knapsack strapped on his
back. In the same year, 1841, he published Mem*
oirs of the Most Eminent American Mechanics.
In 1844 Howe and Barber published Historical
Collections of the State of New Jersey, followed
in 1845 by Howe's Historical Collections of Vir-
ginia. Ohio next attracted Howe's attention.
There he made contacts with earlier historians
and pursued his studies as before. Sometimes
sitting upon a snowbank he would sketch a dis-
tant view of a town; sometimes working in the

Howe

middle of a street he would cause the bystanders
to inquire what he was doing. Local chroniclers
and pioneers opened up to him their recollec-
tions ; strangers sent in reports; and with such
warm cooperation the first edition of his His-
torical Collections of Ohio (3 vols.) was pub-
lished in 1847.

In September 1847 Howe married Frances A.
Tuttle of New Haven, Conn., and thereafter he
was for thirty years a citizen of Cincinnati. Dur-
ing this period he compiled and published His-
torical Collections of the Great West (1851);
The Travels and Adventures of Celebrated
Travelers (1853) ; Life and Death on the Ocean
(1855) ; Adventures and Achievements of Amer-
icans (1859); and, with Barber, Our Whole
Country (2 vols., 1861), reprinted in part as All
the Western States and Territories (1867).
Owing to the outbreak of the Civil War Our
Whole Country was a financial failure, but Howe,
assigning his property to his creditors, carried
on the subscription book business with moderate
success and in 1867 published The Times of the
Rebellion in the West. In 1878 he removed to
New Haven, where he continued his literary
work, but he had long expressed a desire to bring
his Historical Collections of Ohio down to date
and in 1885 he returned to the West. By this
time the book had become a matter of state in-
terest. When the exhaustion of Howe's private
resources left him with a large deficit after the
publication (2 vols., 1890-91) of the Centennial
edition, his son, Frank Henry Howe, who had
been his father's assistant, secured an appropri-
ation of $20,000 from the legislature for the pur-
chase of the copyright and plates of the Collec-
tions. Unfortunately, however, this reward for
his long labors came only after Howe, suddenly
stricken by paralysis, had passed away.

Any estimate of Howe's work must involve a
consideration of the fact that Howe preceded the
modern school of scientific historians. The blend-
ing of geography, biography, economics, ar-
chaeology, and history in his kaleidoscopic picture
of progress entailed inevitably a superficial treat-
ment of his subjects and laid him, in spite of the
precautions which he took—especially in his later
books—somewhat open to error. Nevertheless
the original drawings and photographs, the quot-
ed narratives and first-hand anecdotes, preserve
much picturesque and illuminating material. It
is doubtful, moreover, if any later specialized
scholar has elicited warmer tributes from all
classes of people than this pioneer state chroni-
cler.

[See Henry Howe, "Some Recollections of Historic
Travel," in Ohio Archaol. and Hist. Quart., Mar. 1889,
and the reminiscences in his Hist. Colls, of Ohio (ed.

288