Samuel J Barrows

Samuel June Barrows (May 26, 1845 – April 21, 1909) was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts.

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. Barrows' doctor recommended that he leave school. After leaving school, Barrows' mother, Jane Weekes Barrow, sent him to work for a printing press owned by Richard Hoe, a cousin of Barrows' late father. There he learned to be a messenger and telegrapher, as well as shorthand. He tried to enlist in the United States Navy during the American Civil War but was rejected because of poor health. Barrows then went to a hydropathic sanitarium for treatment and became the personal secretary of the presiding doctor. There he met his future wife, Isabel C. Barrows, who was a medical student at the sanitarium at the time. During his stay at the sanitarium, Samuel picked up the nickname "June" because it was an apt description of his sunny personality. He then used "June" as his middle name or "J" as his middle initial for the rest of his life.

Finding a calling to be a minister, he attended the Harvard Divinity School in 1871. While there, he was the Boston correspondent of the New York Tribune. After graduating, he served for four years as minister of the First Parish on Meeting House Hill in Dorchester, Massachusetts and then became editor of the Unitarian publication, the Christian Register for the next sixteen.

Barrows 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.

Throughout his life, Barrows was an advocate for women's suffrage, African American rights, assimilation of Native Americans and prison reform. He fought for these reforms throughout his life and time in Congress. On the international stage, Barrows was an activist for ending hunger and achieving peace – one of his first actions in Congress was to send ships carrying grain to India to feed the starving and later he served as executive secretary of the Russian Famine Relief Commission.

Barrows was elected as a Republican to the Fifty-fifth Congress (March 4, 1897 – March 3, 1899). During his term in Congress, he promoted legislation that would remove Native Americans from reservations, believing that cultural assimilation would lead to equality. Also a pacifist, Barrows bitterly opposed the Spanish–American War. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1898 to the Fifty-sixth Congress.

After a failed nomination for Librarian of Congress, he accepted a position as the Corresponding Secretary of the New York Prison Association where he would serve from 1899 to 1909. In this role, Barrows successfully advocated for juvenile courts, parole, probation, indeterminate sentences, and improved prison conditions. Additionally, he argued forcefully against capital punishment and the fee system.

Barrows was the American representative to the International Prison Congress of 1895, 1900, and 1905, and president-elect of the 1910 congress before his death.

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.

Outside of his vast professional attentions, Barrows had a wide array range of interests and talents included 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 of which he spoke three, read two, and was in the process of learning another at the time of his death.