Harriet Beecher Stowe Facts

Known for: author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book which helped build anti-slavery sentiment in America and abroad
Occupation: writer, teacher, reformer
Dates: June 14, 1811 - July 1, 1896
Also known as: Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, Harriet Stowe, Christopher Crowfield

More: Harriet Beecher Stowe Biography

• Father: Lyman Beecher (famous Congregationalist minister; president, Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio)
• Mother: Roxana Foote Beecher (granddaughter of General Andrew Ward; "mill girl" before marriage; died when Harriet was four)
• brothers William Beecher, Edward Beecher, George Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher and half-brothers Thomas Beecher and James Beecher (five became ministers)
• sisters Catherine Beecher and Mary Beecher, half-sister Isabella Beecher Hooker

• Ma'am Kilbourne's School
• Litchfield Academy
• Hartford Female Seminary (run by Catherine Beecher)

• husband: Calvin Ellis Stowe (married January 1836; biblical scholar)
• seven children:
  • Eliza and Harriet (twin daughters, born September 1837)
  • Henry (drowned 1857)
  • Frederick (served as cotton plantation manager at Stowe's plantation in Florida; lost at sea in 1871)
  • Georgiana
  • Samuel Charles (died 1849, 18 months old, of cholera)
  • Charles

Religion: Congregationalist; later, Episcopalian, spiritualist

Harriet Beecher Stowe is best known for writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which she expresses her moral outrage at the institution of slavery and its destructive effects on both whites and blacks. She portrays the evils of slavery as especially damaging to maternal bonds, as mothers dread the sale of their children. Written and published in installments between 1851 and 1852, publication in book form brought financial success.

Publishing nearly a book a year between 1862 and 1884, Harriet Beecher Stowe moved from her early focus on slavery in such works as Uncle Tom's Cabin and another novel, Dred, to deal with religious faith, domesticity, and family life.

When Stowe met President Lincoln in 1862, he is said to have exclaimed, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

• Harriet Beecher Stowe - detailed biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe
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• Harriet Beecher Stowe Picture - adapted from an 1852 photograph of Harriet Beecher Stowe, first published in a biography written by her son and grandson
• Harriet Beecher Stowe Picture -- from 1862, a formal full-length pose with Stowe standing by a chair
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