Harriet Beecher

Biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Beecher Stowe was an author and a social activist, best known as the woman who changed how Americans viewed slavery. Harriet Elizabeth Beecher was born on June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut as the sixth of eleven children. She had achieved the national fame for her anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which had sparked an enormous ruckus before the Civil War. Harriet’s father, Lyman Beecher was a well-known minister. Her mother, Roxana Beecher, died when Stowe was only five years old. Her mother’s death caused her to feel great sympathy for those children who were separated from their mothers under slavery. According to the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Harriet had honored her mother’s talents by pursuing in drawing and painting. In the meantime, Harriet’s older sister, Catharine, had taken on the role as mother to her and her younger siblings. Being in an intelligent and ambitious family, Stowe had received a remarkable education for a girl. Having her father as a minister, religion was a powerful force throughout her life. Lyman Beecher drove his children along the straight path of devotion to God. Stowe has committed herself to memorize twenty-seven hymns and two long chapters in the Bible, (Gerson 36). By the time Stowe was six, her father had entered into his second marriage with Miss Harriet Porter of Portland. She had welcomed Lyman’s children as if they were her own. This new marriage restored feelings in Stowe’s empty heart because of the loss of her mother. At the age of 21, Harriet met Calvin Stowe, a theology professor. They met when Harriet and her family moved to Cincinnati, where her father became President of Lane Theological Seminary. It was there, Beecher and Stowe got married and eventually had seven children. Lyman Beecher taught religion at Sarah Pierce’s Litchfield Female Academy. Stowe began her education at the Academy, where she was one of the first to encourage girls to study

Cited: Coil, Suzanne M. Harriet Beecher Stowe. New York: Franklin Watt, 1993. Print. “Harriet Beecher Stowe.” Women in History. Lakewood Public Library. Web. 13 Jan 2013.