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Great to discover your substack! I've been following Charles Smith in my own records for some time, but have never had an opportunity to find anywhere near your level of detail. So great to have a chance to learn more about him. (We also have wonderfully different takes on Samuel Howe -- https://naomischoenfeld.substack.com/p/profiles-angeline-arms )

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YES!!! This is great Naomi! Thanks so much and excuse my ignorance of your substack which I'll now subscribe to (and I'll reach out). And oh no, there's not enough space here for a full snapshot of Howe but your take vibes with my feeling. A moralist. Arrogant. Effectively an evangelical Christian degenerationist. A zealot. Just not unusual in many of those sentiments, especially in his times, and not just among his friends (his whole thing with Dickens being a revealing schism with someone who simply had the same-sized ego and certitude). I do always have in mind the level of cruelty and abuse that he and Dix witnessed, and in that regard, perhaps my overarching views on society's treatment of the disabled are so bleak, he still stands out for some of his more exceptional departures from the status quo. It's been a lonely go these ten years, so I'll be eager to reach out to you in the coming days. Thank you for all you're doing.

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I wonder if you have any ideas on why Charles' family was so focused on Howe's school, when the later-named Elm Hill school, under the Browns, seems like it would have been a more natural fit if they were willing to send their child to Massachusetts -- it had something of a niche in terms of educating children with intellectual disabilities from wealthy families, had an excellent reputation, and, as far as I know, was actively taking pupils in the timeframe when H. C. Smith was working so hard to get a placement for Charles in Boston.

Do you get any sense at all whether they'd considered other such possibilities?

(Your email just landed -- I'll reply as soon as I'm back at the computer with my calendar!)

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Oct 26·edited Oct 26Author

A great question. They may have considered others but I have some hunches.

1. They seem to have known that Howe was working with folks with I/DD earlier than it was widely known that Brown was going to open a private school at Barre. So they may have stuck with what they knew and then been willing to wait based on the friendship with Howe.

2. It's impossible for me to be certain but my hunch is that Smith's father was actually more radically committed to the ideals of abolitionism than it might seem at first glance (or that his lived practices may reveal to us now) and that they may have been ideologically aligned in particular ways that made it a close fit through a network of mutual friends and allies.

3. In general (somewhat related to the first point) I've seen applications to the school from all over and I think that word of Howe's work was simply more widespread, so people heard about him first. In some instances they went to Brown and in some instances they stayed in Boston. For instance, there's a young man whose name I forget who was a direct descendant of a president and ended up at Barre (Mass Historical has a page about him) and the family first applied at Boston and then I think Howe sent them to Brown.

They also may have wanted to financially support Howe's way of doing things? But that's a big conjecture!

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