Orson Squire Fowler (October 11, 1809 – August 18, 1887) was a phrenologist who popularized the octagon house in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The son of Horace and Martha (Howe) Fowler, he was born in Cohocton, New York, He prepared for college at Ashland Academy and studied at Amherst College, graduating in the class of 1834. With his brother, Lorenzo Niles Fowler, he opened a phrenological office in New York City, and wrote and lectured on phrenology, preservation of health, popular education and social reform from 1834 to 1887.
He edited and published the American Phrenological Journal, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1838 to 1842. He was a partner with Fowler & Wells, publishers, New York, from 1846 to 1854, residing in Fishkill, New York and Elizabeth, New Jersey. He moved his office to Boston in 1863, residing in Manchester from 1863 to 1880, and resided in Sharon, New York from 1883 until August 18, 1887, when he died.
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Marriages [link]
Fowler was married three times: to Mrs. Eliza (Brevoort) Chevalier; to Mrs. Mary (Aiken) Poole; and to Abbie L. Ayres. He had three children.
Legacy [link]
The town of Fowler, Colorado is named for Fowler.[1] Fowler too had a subtle influence on modern psychology and anthropology. He is remembered as a man of universal reform who preached for education, temperance, and equality. Orson held forth for the equality for women at a time when women had virtually no legal rights in the United States, and he stood for children's rights when child labor was quite acceptable in the burgeoning industrial factories of his country. He was crucial in the original publication of his good friend Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
Books [link]
- Memory and intellectual improvement (1841)
- Physiology, Animal and Mental (1842)
- Matrimony, or Phrenology applied to the Selection of Companions (1842)
- Self Culture and Perfection of Character (1843)
- Education and Self-improvement
- Hereditary Descent, its Laws and Facts applied to Human Improvement (1843)
- Religion; Natural and Revealed (1844)
- Love and Parentage (1844)
- Maternity: or the Bearing and Nursing of Children (1848)
- The Self Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology (1849), with Lorenzo Fowler
- Sexual Science (1870)
- Phrenology proved, illustrated and applied
- Amativeness
- Human Science
- Creative and Sexual Science, or Manhood, Womanhood, and their Interrelations (1875)
- The Octagon House: A Home for All (reprinted with new illustrations 1973)
See also [link]
- Octagon house for more information on Fowler's architectural influence
References [link]
Secondary References [link]
- Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher." Doubleday, 2006.
- Stern, Madeleine. "Heads & Headlines: The Phrenological Fowlers." University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.
External links [link]
- Video | Biographical profile of Orson Squire Fowler
- Orson Squire Fowler: Phrenology and Octagon Houses by John H. Martin
- Inventory of octagon houses
- Fowler Colorado named for O.S. Fowler.
