(June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896)

President Abraham Lincoln supposedly said of Harriet Beecher Stowe, “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”  From uncertain research, she could have been our great-, great-, great-, great-grandmother, Harriet Palmer’s aunt’s cousin.  Being that our family treasures its literary and political roots, we have gladly accepted her into our clan.

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the seventh of 13 children born to outspoken Calvinist preacher Lyman Beecher and Roxana (Foote), a deeply religious woman who died when Stowe was only five years old. Roxana’s maternal grandfather was General Andrew Ward of the Revolutionary War. Her notable siblings included a sister, Catharine Beecher, who became an educator and author, as well as brothers who became ministers: including Henry Ward Beecher, who became a famous preacher and abolitionist, Charles Beecher, and Edward Beecher.

Harriet enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary run by her older sister Catharine, where she received a traditional academic education usually reserved for males at the time with a focus in the classics, including study of languages and mathematics. Among her classmates was Sarah P. Willis, who later wrote under the pseudonym Fanny Fern.

In 1832, at the age of 21, Harriet Beecher moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to join her father, who had become the president of Lane Theological Seminary. There, she also joined the Semi-Colon Club, a literary salon and social club whose members in addition to the Beecher sisters included, Caroline Lee Hentz, Salmon P. Chase (future governor of the state and Secretary of Treasury under President Lincoln), Emily Blackwell, and others. Cincinnati’s trade and shipping business on the Ohio River was booming, drawing numerous migrants from different parts of the country, including many free blacks, as well as Irish immigrants who worked on the state’s canals and railroads. Areas of the city had been wrecked in the Cincinnati riots of 1829, when ethnic Irish attacked blacks, trying to push competitors out of the city. Beecher met a number of African Americans who had suffered in those attacks, and their experience contributed to her later writing about slavery. Riots took place again in 1836 and 1841, driven also by native-born anti-abolitionists.

It was in the literary club that she met Calvin Ellis Stowe, a widower who was a professor at the seminary. The two married on January 6, 1836. He was an ardent critic of slavery, and the Stowes supported the Underground Railroad, temporarily housing several fugitive slaves in their home. Most slaves continued north to secure freedom in Canada. The Stowes had seven children together, including twin daughters.

Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, and infamously declared, “So this is the little lady who started this great war.”

(the above information has been liberally replicated from Wikipedia)

Books

Ms. Stowe wrote many magazine articles, short stories and essays, but her best known work was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was published in 1852