Left fatherless at the age of three, he shared the life of his grandfather's farm and from the age of four attended the district school.
Terms of district school taught in Rhode Island and in Massachusetts alternated with attendance at Uxbridge Academy and at the Phillips Academy at Andover, which he entered in 1851.
At the age of twenty-five he entered Brown University in the class with John Hay and worked his way through the junior year, when he broke down in health and withdrew from college, but in 1866 he received an honorary degree of A. M. , and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa society.
He received an honorary Ph. D. degree from Bates College in 1882.
Career
After his thirteenth year he was self-supporting, working on farms and in mills, selling books, and teaching school.
His early youth was a constant, although apparently joyous, struggle with grim necessity.
For nineteen years he was executive head of the pioneer summer school for teachers, the famous Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute, which was established in 1878 and was a forerunner of the now almost universal summer schools of pedagogy.
His various elementary books of history and civil government, widely used as texts, have influenced the ideas concerning citizenship of school children for several generations.
He compiled several books of genealogy such as The Descendants of Nathaniel Mowry (1878) concerning his own ancestral line and The Descendants of John Mowry (1909), of a collateral line.
He also published The Uxbridge Academy (1897), partly devoted to his own schooldays, and Talks with my Boys (1885), which went through several editions.
His Recollections of a New England Educator (1908) was a review of school conditions in New England from 1838 to 1908.
They had three children.
[Biog.
material in own books, ante; Memories and Appreciations of Wm. Augustus Mowry, ed.
by R. M. Brown (1918); Hist.
Cat.
of Brown Univ. (1914); Whitman College Pioneer, May 1902; Providence Daily Journal, May 23, 1917. ]
Connections
His parents were both members of the Society of Friends, but he became a member of the Congregational Church.
His comprehension of the needs of school children and teachers was gained from ample experience.
married:
Caroline
On Apr. 29, 1858, he married Caroline E. Aldrich of Woonsocket, R. I, who died in January 1897.
married:
M.
On Nov. 15, 1849, he married Rufina M. E. Weaver, of Slatersville, R. I, who died four months later.
