Samuel J. Barrows, 1845-1909

Samuel Barrows’s works include:

The  Shaybacks in Camp: Ten Summers under Canvas. (1889)

A Baptist Meeting House: The Staircase to the Old Faith; The Open Door to the New. (1885)

The Criminal Insane in the United States. (1898)

Children’s Courts in the United States. (1904)

The Doom of the Majority of Mankind. (1883)

\Penal Codes of France, Germany, Belgium and Japan. (1901)

Prison Systems of the United States. (1900)

Annexation of Hawaii. (Washington, D. C., 1898)

The Isles and Shrines of Greece. (1899)

The Indeterminate Sentence and the Parole Law. Reports for the International Prison Commission. (1899)

Journalist, Unitarian Minister and advocate for social causes including prison reform, Samuel June Barrows earned his living as a young man as a reporter in New York City. Isabel had the chance to study ophthalmology alongside Mary Safford in Vienna, and he insisted she take advantage of the opportunity. When she returned from a year away, he entered Harvard Divinity School in 1871 and was ordained as the Minister of the First Church in Dorchester on Nov. 2, 1876. His tenure lasted only until 1880 when he became editor of the Christian Register. He was elected to a term in the U.S. House of Representatives. The family remained in Dorchester until 1899. As a journalist for the remainder of his life, he traveled internationally as an advocate of prison reform, publishing articles about his travels and world events.

Barrows published hundreds of articles, but specifically in relation to Dorchester, he contributed a chapter to each of the first three volumes of the Memorial History of Boston about Dorchester’s history.

Barrows and his wife Isabel published The  Shaybacks in Camp: Ten Summers under Canvas in 1889.  A note inscribed in the front of a copy at the Dorchester Historical Society says that S. K. Clapp and William Channing Clapp spent many vacations here on Lake Memphremagog above Georgeville, Canada.  The lake is partly in Vermont and partly in Quebec.

Barrows published hundreds of articles, but specifically in relation to Dorchester, he contributed a chapter to each of the first three volumes of the Memorial History of Boston about Dorchester’s history.

Barrows and his wife Isabel published The  Shaybacks in Camp: Ten Summers under Canvas in 1889.  A note inscribed in the front of a copy at the Dorchester Historical Society says that S. K. Clapp and William Channing Clapp spent many vacations here on Lake Memphremagog above Georgeville, Canada.  The lake is partly in Vermont and partly in Quebec.

Barrows worked for prison and civil service reform.

Titles:

Editor of the Christian Register (1880-1896), a Unitarian Weekly

The Shaybacks in Camp. (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1887)

Excerpt from The Shaybacks in Camp: Ten Summers Under Canvas

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26938623

The custom of taking a summer rest is becoming a fixed habit in American business and professional life. What to do with this annual period is often a puzzle. Many people spend half their vacation in finding out how to enjoy the other half. For the last ten years the Shaybacks have found a practical solution to this question in camping out. The success of this form of recreation depends largely in knowing how to do it. The writers offer no formal treatise on this subject, but the following transcripts from their own experience will illustrate its various methods and possibilities.  Mr. & Mrs Shayback and family go camping. Mr. Shayback was a minister.