Zadok Howe

Zadok Howe was born in Bolton, Connecticut, on February 15, 1777, the son of Zadok and Rachel Howe. According to the National Register nomination for the Howe School he served an apprenticeship as a watchmaker before turning to medicine. He graduated from the Medical Department of Dartmouth College in 1809 and began practice in Concord, New Hampshire, where, Hazen wrote, "he soon became distinguished." In 1814 he moved to Franklin, Massachusetts, as a partner of Dr. Nathaniel Miller in an infirmary "which was not successful," and after a few months in Boston he came to Billerica in the autumn of 1816. There he "spent his life in the town, useful, eminent and beloved."

For thirty-five years he practiced as a physician in Billerica, and his reputation reached well beyond the town. He was president of the Berkshire Medical Institute at Pittsfield, and in 1834 he gave the annual discourse of the Massachusetts Medical Society, "On Quackery"; Hazen also records an address on "Fear." The society chose him as its president for 1847 to 1848. At home he was one of the first trustees of the Billerica Academy, opened in 1820 under Bernard and Bathsheba Whitman, alongside Francis Faulkner and Rev. Nathaniel Whitman, and in 1831 the town sent him to the General Court as its representative.

He was remembered as much for his humor as for his skill. Martha Hill Sage, recalling the First Parish in 1898, told how he sent an immense three-tiered frosted cake to a tea party in the new town hall, asking that it not be cut until the end of the evening; the children who hovered around it all night learned too late that it was "three inverted pasteboard boxes," frosted with white wrapping paper and trimmed with sugarplums, "all being done by the good doctor himself."

The Howe School was his own design. The Billerica Academy, Hazen wrote, "lacked the pecuniary foundation needful for permanence" and closed in 1836, and Dr. Howe, "instructed by the failure of the Academy," set about "a more substantial foundation." He chose and bought the lot himself, and by his will a board of trustees, to be incorporated, received the bulk of his estate with the duty of carrying out his plan: a school "not intended for the admission of small children, but for instruction in the higher branches of English education" and for preparing young men for college. A second paper read to the trustees asked them to get a plan from "a scientific Architect," adding "I should prefer the taste of a good Architect to that of any board of Trustees," so that the building might be "an ornament to the village."

Dr. Howe died in Billerica on March 8, 1851, and the rest was carried out by others. The first trustees, John Baldwin, James R. Faulkner, Dudley Foster, William H. Odiorne, Marshall Preston, Amos Spaulding and George H. Whitman, were incorporated in February 1852, followed his wish by consulting the Boston School Committee, whose member Frederick Emerson advised on the building, and dedicated the brick school on May 31, 1852, with an address by Whitman, their long-time secretary. It opened with fifty-two pupils, more girls than boys, under William C. Grant. Later trustees were appointed by the Judge of Probate. By 1883 the income of the fund, "somewhat more than $20,000," no longer covered the costs and a small tuition fee was charged; in 1891 the town voted to make the Howe School its high school, and the trustees later gave up active control while the fund's income continued to go to the school. In 1944 the superintendent still credited the town's yearly benefit to "the generous munificence of Dr. Zadoc Howe and others."

In 1852 the town erected a monument over his grave in the Old South Burying Ground, inscribed to "The Faithful Citizen and Distinguished Physician" in gratitude for "his long and Skillful Services" and for his legacy "for the Endowment of a High School."

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 75, HOWE, Zadok
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), pp. 257-258, Education (Billerica Academy and Howe School)
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 305, Representatives
4. Catalogue of Howe School, August 1880
5. Catalogue of Howe High School, 1897, History
6. Dr Zadok Howe (1777-1851), Find a Grave
7. Howe School (Wikipedia)
8. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 258 (Dr. Howe founds the Howe School by will; first trustees)
9. Burrage, A History of the Massachusetts Medical Society (1923), p. 462 (presidents: Zadok Howe, Billerica, 1847-1848)
10. Burrage, A History of the Massachusetts Medical Society (1923), p. 468 (annual discourses: 1834, Zadok Howe, On Quackery)
11. Sage, Old Families of the First Parish (1898), p. 12 (Dr. Howe and the pasteboard cake)
12. National Register of Historic Places nomination, Howe School (2002): Dr. Howe, his will and the founding
13. Billerica Town Report 1944, p. 158, Superintendent: Endowments ("Dr. Zadoc Howe and others")