The Biographical Dictionary of America/Barrows, Samuel June

​BARROWS, Samuel June, representative, was born in New York, May 20, 1845. His mother being left a widow with six children, the boy at eight years of age entered the printing-office of his cousin, Colonel Hoe, the inventor of the Hoe press. Young Barrows attended night school, and by his own efforts became proficient in telegraphy and stenography, and when still quite young was employed as a reporter on a New York daily newspaper of some repute. In 1867 he became private secretary to Wm. H. Seward at Washington, D. C., and afterwards held the same relation to Hamilton Fish. While in Washington, he studied at Columbian university, and then went to Leipzig, Germany; returning to America, he entered Harvard divinity school, graduating in 1875. His summer vacations he spent in railroad surveying and as a newspaper correspondent on the western plains, where he met and travelled with General Custer in his last campaign. In 1876, he became pastor of the Meeting House Hill church, Dorchester, Mass., and was its pastor until 1880, when he became editor of the Christian Register. He subsequently took a very active interest in prison reform. In 1895 he was secretary of the American delegation to the Paris prison congress, and when, in 1896, the United States became a member of the international prison commission, President Cleveland appointed Dr. Barrows the U. S. commissioner, and as such he joined the other commissioners in Switzerland, August, 1896, where they met to arrange for the quinquennial congress in Brussels in 1900. He was elected a representative from the 10th Massachusetts district to the 55th congress, serving 1897-'99; was an unsuccessful candidate for librarian of Congress in 1898, and was made corresponding secretary of the Prison association of New York in 1900. He acquired reputation as a Greek and Sanskrit scholar, and published several books in the writing of which he was greatly assisted by his wife, Isabella C. Barrows: "The Doom of the Majority of Mankind" (1883); "A Baptist Meeting House" (1885); "The Staybacks in Camp" (1888).