Harriet Elizabeth Beecher

Female

June 14, 1811

1896

Litchfield, CT

Hartford, CT
Cincinnati, OH

Calvin Stowe (January 1836)

Harriet Beecher Stowe, daughter of the Reverend Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote, attended the Litchfield Female Academy from 1820 until 1824. In 1836 she married Calvin Stowe, a minister and teacher and they had seven children together. Harriet taught at the Hartford Female Seminary which had been founded by her sister Catharine Beecher and after moving to Cincinnati in 1834, taught at the Western Female Institute which had also been founded by her sister.

While she wrote at least ten adult novels, Harriet Beecher Stowe is predominantly known for her first, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Begun as a serial for the Washington anti-slavery weekly, The National Era, it focused public interest on the issue of slavery, and was deeply controversial. In writing the book, Stowe drew ...on her personal experience. She was familiar with slavery, the antislavery movement, and the underground railroad because Kentucky -- across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio, where Stowe had lived -- was a slave state. Following publication of the book, she became a celebrity, speaking against slavery both in America and Europe. She wrote A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) extensively documenting the realities on which the book was based, to refute critics who tried to argue that it was inauthentic; and published a second anti-slavery novel, Dred in 1856. In 1862, when she visited President Lincoln, legend claims that he greeted her as "the little lady who made this big war": the war between the states. Uncle Tom's Cabin went on to be published in twenty different languages and sold over 500,000 copies in the first five years of publication.

Around 1860 she and her husband purchased land in Florida and began vacationing there. In 1872, Harriet published a book entitled, Palmetto Leaves, which was a collection of writings and drawings from vacations in Florida.

The Stowes ended up settling in Hartford, Connecticut in a home known as "Oakholm" (This house, which is now a public museum called the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, was Harriet's dream farm but was sold in 1870 because of the high maintenance cost). The family eventually purchased a home on Forest Street where she lived for 23 more years.
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"[E]ach young man chose out his maiden and asked the pleasure of seeing her home; and in the clear frosty night and under the silent stars many a word was said that could not be said by candle-light indoors: -- whereof in time came life-long results."
Regarding evening parties

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives (1878) p. 137.

"The walls were hung with paper imported from France and ornamented with family portraits by Copley. In the fireplace, the high brass andirons sustained a magnificent fire, snapping and sparkling and blazing in a manner gorgeous to behold. Soon Cato came in with on a waiter, followed by Venus, his wife, who with a high white turban on her head and a clear-starched white apron in front, bore after him a tray laden ...with delicate rolls, sandwiches, and multiplied and tempting varieties of cake. Dolly spread her handkerchief in her little lap, and comported herself as nearly as possible as she saw the grand ladies doing, who, in satin and velvet and point lace, were making themselves agreeable, and taking their tea with elegant ease."

Regarding the tea parties at the "Davenports" (really the Tallmadges in Litchfield).
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives (1878) pp. 90.

Teas began at 6pm and ended with the "nine o'clock bell" which caused "an immediate rustle of dresses, and rising, and shaking of hands, and cutting short of stories, and uttering of last words..."

"For though not exactly backed by the arbitrary power which enforced the celebrated curfew, yet the nine o'clock bell was one of the authoritative institutions of New England; and as its sound all obediently set their faces homeward, to rake up house-fires, put out candles, and say their prayers before going to rest."

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives (1878) pp. 94.

Stowe recalled "domestic concerts."

"The tea parties of Poganuc were not wanting in subjects for conversation. It was a rule to discuss the current literature of the day, which at that time came from across the water -- the last articles in the Edinburgh Review, the latest Waverly novel, the poetry of Moore, Byron, Southey, and Wadsworth -- all came under review and had a place of consideration."

Regarding the intellectual aspect of social life.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives (1878)

"In those days, when newspapers were few and scanty, when places were isolated and travel was tedious and uncertain, the intellectual life of cultivated people was intense. A book was an event in Poganuc. It was heard of first across the ocean, and watched for, as one watches for the rising of a new planet. While the English packet was slowly laboring over, bearing it to our shores, expectation was rising, and when the book was to be found in the city book stores an early copy generally found its way to the elite circle of Poganuc.

Regarding the intellectual aspect of social life.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives (1878)

"Never in this day -- generation of jaded and sated literary appetite -- will any one know the fresh and eager joy, the vivid sensation of delight with which a poem like 'The Lady of the Lake,' a novel like 'Ivanhoe,' was received in lonely mountain towns by a people eager for a new mental excitement."

Regarding the intellectual aspect of social life.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives (1878)

Beecher referred to a Judge Belcher of Tapping Reeve as "an authority in literary criticism," who would "hold the ear of the drawing-room while he ran a parallel between the dramatic handling of Scott's characters as compared with those of Shakespeare, or gave an analysis of the principles of the Lake School of Poetry."

"[The Litchfield youth] had their reading circles and their literary personalities -- some being partisans of Byron, some of Scott, etc. -- and there was much innocent spouting of poetry."

At a party in August 1814, John Pierce Brace, Harriet Tallmadge, and Henry Sheldon debated "upon the merits of some modern novels."

At a party in 1814 at Sarah Pierce's house, John Pierce Brace and other law students debated some of the Litchfield Female Academy students in "a warm dispute upon the question whether highly immoral poetry could possess practical merit." John Pierce Brace and Edward King took the "affirmative," joined by the girls, while Sarah and Mary Pierce and law student Andrew Dewitt Bruyn argued the negative."

At a party in 1814 at Sarah Pierce's house, law student Edward King read Hamlet aloud.

Beecher said young people were deeply influenced by the romantic poetry and novels of Byron, Scott, etc.

"There were promising youths who tied their open shirt collars with a black ribbon, and professed disgust at the hollow state of human happiness in general, and there were compassionate young ladies who considered the said young men all the more interesting for this state of mysterious desolation, and often succeeded in the work of consoling them."

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives (1878) p. 132.

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1820-1821,1823-1824

Educator; Arts

1820 Litchfield Female Academy Winter Session Catalogue (Vanderpoel, Emily Noyes. More Chronicles of A Pioneer School From 1792 to 1833. Cambridge, MA: The University Press, 1927).

1821 Litchfield Female Academy Catalog Winter Session (Vanderpoel, Emily Noyes. More Chronicles of A Pioneer School From 1792 to 1833. Cambridge, MA: The University Press, 1927).

1823 Litchfield Female Academy Summer Session Catalogue (Vanderpoel, Emily Noyes. More Chronicles of A Pioneer School From 1792 to 1833. Cambridge, MA: The University Press, 1927).

1823 Litchfield Female Academy Winter Session Catalogue (Vanderpoel, Emily Noyes. More Chronicles of A Pioneer School From 1792 to 1833. Cambridge, MA: The University Press, 1927).

1824 Litchfield ...Female Academy Winter Session Catalogue (Vanderpoel, Emily Noyes. More Chronicles of A Pioneer School From 1792 to 1833. Cambridge, MA: The University Press, 1927).
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