Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (/stoʊ/; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and became best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans. The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and in Great Britain, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day. Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811 born to outspoken Calvinist preacher Lyman Beecher. Her mother was his first wife, 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. Harriet's 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.[3]

Harriet enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary run by her older sister Catharine, where she received a traditional academic education—rather uncommon for women at the time—with a focus in the Classics, languages, and mathematics 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. Harriet was also influenced by the Lane Debates on Slavery. It was in the literary club at Lane that she met Rev. Calvin Ellis Stowe, a widower who was a professor of Biblical Literature at the seminary.[7] The two married at the Seminary on January 6, 1836.[8] The Stowes had seven children together, including twin daughters. Stowe had moved with her family to Brunswick, Maine, where her husband was now teaching at Bowdoin College. Their home near the campus is protected as a National Historic Landmark.[9] The Stowes were ardent critics of slavery and supported the Underground Railroad, temporarily housing several fugitive slaves in their home. One fugitive from slavery, John Andrew Jackson, wrote of hiding with Stowe in her house in Brunswick as he fled to Canada in his narrative titled "The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina" (London: Passmore & Albaster, 1862).[10] Shortly after in June 1851, when she was 40, the first installment of Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in serial form in the newspaper The National Era. She originally used the subtitle "The Man That Was a Thing", but it was soon changed to "Life Among the Lowly".[1] Installments were published weekly from June 5, 1851, to April 1, 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe died on July 1, 1896, in Hartford, Connecticut, 17 days after her 85th birthday. She is buried in the historic cemetery at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts,[36] along with her husband and their son Henry Ellis.