Howe

land in 1824. During the winter of 1830-31, in
his abandoned rubber factory, he undertook his
first serious experiments looking toward the de-
signing of a pin machine and made his first rough
model. Having little mechanical experience, he
turned for aid in 1832 to Robert Hoe [g.z/.], who
was then manufacturing printing presses of his
own design. In the course of this year he built
in the Hoe establishment a working model of a
machine that would make pins—though in an
imperfect way—and patented the device. The
machine was exhibited that year at the American
Institute Fair in New York, where Howe re-
ceived a silver medal "for a machine for making
pins at one operation." Financed by his broth-
ers-in-law, Jarvis Brush and Edward Cook of
New York, he built a second and better machine
in the winter of 1832-33 and then went abroad to
obtain foreign patents, which he secured in
France, England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1833.
After spending another year in England demon-
strating his machine and unsuccessfully trying
to sell patent rights, he returned to the United
States early in 1835, considerably in debt By
the close of the year, however, he had brought
about in New York the organization of the Howe
Manufacturing Company. He himself was made
general agent in charge of manufacture. Within
eighteen months five pin machines making "spun
head" pins were made and put into production.
In 1838 the company moved to Birmingham, in
the town of Derby, Conn., where cheaper water
power was available, and a few months later
Howe perfected the rotary pin machine on which
he had started work while in New York. This
machine, patented in 1841, made solid-head pins,
and with minor improvements continued in use
for over thirty years. One of this type is now
in the National Museum, Washington. The de-
signing of a machine to stick pins into paper, next
in importance to the perfecting of a pin-making
machine, resulted from the joint work of Samuel
Slocum, DeGrasse Fowler, and Howe, the latter
inventing in 1842 a device to crimp the paper into
ridges through which the pins were stuck. With
one of his employees, Truman Piper, Howe was
joint patentee, June 10, 1856, of a process of
japanning pins. After rounding out thirty years
of active management of his company, he retired
and lived the rest of his life in Birmingham,
Conn., where he died. He was married May 20,
1820, to his cousin, Cornelia Ann Ireland of New
York.

[J. L. Bisliop, A Hist, of Am. Manufactures, 1608-
1860 (1864), vol. II; W. G. Lathrop, The Brass In-
dustry in Conn. (1909) ; Samuel Orcutt and Ambrose
Beardsley, Hist, of the Old Town of Derby, Conn.
(1880); D. W. Howe, Howe Genealogies . . . Edward

Howe

of Lynn (1929); Boston Daily Globe, Sept 11, 1876-
.Patent Office records; U. S. National Museum records.]

C W M

HOWE, JULIA WARD (May 27, isVo'ct
17, 1910), author, reformer, was born in New
York City, the daughter of Samuel Ward [$.?.],
a wealthy banker, and Julia Rush (Cutler)
Ward, writer of occasional poems. She was a
descendant of John Ward of Gloucester, Eng-
land, one of Cromwell's officers who came to
America after the Restoration and settled in
Rhode Island. Two of her ancestors, Richard
Ward [q.vJ] and Samuel Ward [g.v.], were colo-
nial governors of Rhode Island. Her grandfa-
ther, Samuel Ward [q.v.'], was a distinguished
Revolutionary officer. Having abundant means,
her parents gave her an excellent education un-
der governesses and in private schools, and her
inborn esthetic taste had ample means of cul-
tivation. The Ward house on the corner of Bond
Street and Broadway, then very far uptown, con-
tained a picture gallery, and its carefully chosen
art strongly influenced the young girl. An urge
for self-expression found vent, even in childhood,
in poems and romances. The ethical spirit con-
trolled the esthetic, however. Though she chafed
because her father's religious scruples delayed
her entrance into New York society, when she
chose her husband he was not one of the youths
with whom she had sung and danced, but a man
of unusual moral earnestness, Samuel Gridley
Howe [#.z/.], almost twenty years her senior.
After their marriage in 1843, &ey spent a year in
England, Germany, France, and Italy. Even in
her youth, the European prestige of her father's
banking firm, together with her own eager in-
terest, had accustomed her to think internation-
ally, and her trip abroad strengthened this habit
and began friendships with literary people and
leaders of thought in several countries. Her
marriage also placed her in the Boston environ-
ment of philosophers, poets, and Unitarians;
practically all of the prominent Massachusetts
intellectuals and reformers of that period be-
came her acquaintances. She herself began to
exercise her literary gifts assiduously, and in
spite of domestic duties, proficiency in perform-
ing which she acquired with some difficulty, and
though five children were born to her within
twelve years of her marriage, she published
anonymously in 1854 her first volume of lyrics,
Passion Flowers. This was followed by Words
for the Hour (1857), ako a volume of poems;
A Trip to Cuba (1860) and From the Oak to the
Olive (1868), both prose travel sketches; and
by a play, The World's Own (1857). None of
these productions, notwithstanding the facile mu-
sic and buoyant spirit of the lyrics, obtained, or

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