Julia Ward Howe

Julia Ward Howe was born on May 27, 1819, in New York City to poet Julia Rush Ward and prominent banker Samuel Ward. She was an American poet and author, best known for writing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (the Atlantic Monthly, 1862). She was also an abolitionist, social activist, and co-founder of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Howe was the author of several books of poetry, essays, and biographies including From Sunset Ridge (Houghton Mifflin, 1898) and Passion-Flowers (Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1854). Howe also wrote The Hermaphrodite (University of Nebraska Press, 2004), an unfinished novel about an intersex individual. She was the mother of the poet Laura Elizabeth Richards. Howe died on October 17, 1910 in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.