Orson Squire Fowler

Orson Squire Fowler was a phrenologist and lecturer. He also popularized the octagon house in the middle of the nineteenth century. Orson edited and published the American Phrenological Journal from 1838 to 1842. He was a partner with Fowler & Wells, publishers, New York, from 1846 to 1854.

The town of Fowler, Colorado is named for Fowler. He is remembered as a man of universal reform who preached for education, temperance, and equality. Orson, like his sister-in-law Lydia Fowler, held forth for the equality for women at a time when women had virtually no legal rights in the United States. Orson stood for children's rights when child labor was quite acceptable in the burgeoning industrial factories of his country. Fowler as a book seller and publisher was crucial in the original publication of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and other works.

Source: Wikipedia