The death of their beloved father brought a change in the home, and the family went to live with an uncle, Mr. John Ward. Julia continued to spend her time in the cultivation of her mind and in the enjoyment of the fine arts. She excelled in the study of the German language, reading Goethe, Schiller, Swedenborg, Kant, and other great German poets and philosophers, and translating much of their work. She wrote many verses and began to dream of publishing a play.
In Boston, Julia Ward was a welcome addition to the circle of distinguished literary people then living there. She met Margaret Fuller, Horace Mann, Charles Sumner, Ralph Waldo Emerson. All were charmed with the brilliant and intellectual young woman from New York. Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, a philanthropist and reformer, was one of this delightful group.
Dr. Howe, a graduate of Brown University, was deeply interested in the Greek War for Independence. He went to Greece to offer his services as a surgeon and for the purpose of organizing hospitals, but later took such an active part in the war that he endeared himself to the Greeks for his assistance and sympathy. Contracting a fever, however, he was obliged to leave Greece for a better climate. For some time he traveled abroad, studying and attending lectures.
But to help others was his sole object in life. At that time there were no schools for the blind in the United States. Through Dr. Howe's influence, men of wealth became interested in this matter and helped him to establish such a school. Going again to Europe, to investigate such schools in foreign lands, he was temporarily turned aside from his project by the condition of Poland, oppressed as it then was by Prussia. In consequence of the assistance he gave this unhappy country, he was arrested, and imprisoned for some time.
All the world knows now of Dr. Howe through his kindness to Laura Bridgman, a child, who at the age of two years, and before she had learned to speak, became blind and deaf through a severe illness. When she was about eight, Dr. Howe took her into his home and taught her to read, write, do needlework, and play the piano. His success with Laura was so great that he, later, gave almost his entire energy to work for feeble-minded children and in this accomplished many wonderful results.
Dr. Howe fell in love with Julia Ward. Two such souls could hardly meet and not love each other. Though he was eighteen years older than she, similar tastes and aims naturally united them.
Their marriage took place when Julia was twenty-four years of age. Soon after the wedding, Dr. and Mrs. Howe made an extensive tour of Europe. For five months they lived in Rome, where their first child was born.
On their return to Boston, Dr. Howe bought a large estate near the Institute for the Blind, of which he was a Director, and in this happy home were born five more children. While a devoted mother, Mrs. Howe still found time to continue her studies, reading the Latin poets and the German philosophers, and all the while writing essays and poems for the magazines.
At the age of thirty-five she published her first volume of poems entitled Passion Flowers, and two years later, another called Words for the Hour. She also assisted her husband in editing the Boston Commonwealth, an anti-slavery newspaper, for in this cause both became leaders, being associated with Garrison, Sumner, Phillips, Higginson, and Theodore Parker.