Samuel J. Barrows

Barrows was born in New York City to a strict Baptist family. After his father's death, Barrows was sent to school until he became ill around the age of 7 or 8. His doctor recommended that he leave school.[1] Barrows' mother, Jane Weekes Barrow,[2] sent him to work for a printing press owned by Richard Hoe, a cousin of Barrows' late father. He learned to be a messenger and telegrapher, as well as learning shorthand.

He tried to enlist in the United States Navy during the American Civil War but was rejected because of poor health.[3] Barrows was then admitted to a hydropathic sanitarium for treatment and became the personal secretary of the presiding doctor.

Finding a calling to be a minister, he attended the Harvard Divinity School in 1871. While at Harvard, he was the Boston correspondent of the New York Tribune.

After graduating, Barrows served for four years as minister of the First Parish on Meeting House Hill in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and then was editor of the Unitarian publication The Christian Register for the next sixteen years.[3]

He went with the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873, under the command of General Stanley, and with the Black Hills Expedition in 1874, commanded by General Custer. In 1873, he took part in the Battle of the Tongue River.

United States Congress

Samuel J. Barrows

Barrows was elected as a Republican to the 55th United States Congress (March 4, 1897 – March 3, 1899).

He was an advocate for women's suffrage, African American rights, assimilation of Native Americans and prison reform. On the international stage, he was an activist for ending hunger. One of his first actions in Congress was to send ships carrying grain to India to feed the starving. In his later years, he served as executive secretary of the Russian Famine Relief Commission.[4]

Barrows promoted legislation that would remove Native Americans from reservations, believing that cultural assimilation would lead to equality. As a pacifist, he bitterly opposed the Spanish–American War.[3]

He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1898 to the Fifty-sixth Congress.

He met his future wife, Isabel Barrows, during his stay at the sanitarium. She was a medical student there.

During his stay at the sanitarium, Samuel picked up the nickname "June," derived from his sunny personality. He used this as his middle name for the rest of his life.

Barrows had a wide array range of interests and talents including musical composition and singing oratorios, studying the Greeks (he wrote The Isles and Shires of Greece), metal crafting, writing poetry, camping (he and his wife Isabella wrote one of the first books on the subject, The Shaybacks in Camp: Ten Summers under Canvas), travel, and foreign languages. He spoke three languages, read two, and was in the process of learning another at the time of his death.[3][4]

Barrows died on April 21, 1909, of pneumonia, in New York City's Presbyterian Hospital. His remains were cremated and the ashes placed in a private burying ground near Georgeville, Quebec, Canada.

• United States Congress. "Samuel J. Barrows (id: B000186)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Barrows, Isabel Chapin. A Sunny Life: The Biography of Samuel June Barrows, 1913, Boston: Little, Brown and Company
• Kellogg, Paul U., "Samuel June Barrows: A Circuit Rider in the Humanities," Sixty-Fourth Annual Report of the Prison Association of New York (September 1909)
• L.F.F., "Barrows, Samuel June," American Reformers, 1985 ed., 56.
• Solberg, Thorvald: "A Chapter in the Unwritten History of the Library of Congress from January 17 to April 5, 1899: The Appointment of Herbert Putnam as Librarian," The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 9, no. 3 (July 1939)
• Weiss, Robert P.: "Barrows, Samuel June," Biographical Dictionary of Social Welfare in America, 1986 ed., 69.

• Samuel J. Barrows at Find a Grave

 This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.