Samuel Gridley Howe, American physician and activist (d. 1876)
Samuel Gridley Howe (November 10, 1801 – January 9, 1876) was an American physician, abolitionist, and an advocate of education for the blind. He organized and was the first director of the Perkins Institution. In 1824 he had gone to Greece to serve in the revolution as a surgeon; he also commanded troops. He arranged for support for refugees and brought many Greek children back to Boston with him for their education.
An abolitionist, in 1863 Howe was one of three men appointed by the Secretary of War to the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, to investigate conditions of freedmen in the South since the Emancipation Proclamation and recommend how they could be aided in their transition to freedom. In addition to traveling to the South, Howe traveled to Canada West (now Ontario, Canada), where thousands of former slaves had escaped to freedom and established new lives. He interviewed freedmen as well as government officials in Canada.