Stowe, Harriet Beecher, House | |
 | |
| Location | Cincinnati, Ohio |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 39°7′58.88″N84°29′15.57″W / 39.1330222°N 84.4876583°W Coordinates: 39°7′58.88″N84°29′15.57″W / 39.1330222°N 84.4876583°W |
| Built | 1832 |
| NRHP reference No. | 70000497 [1] |
| Added to NRHP | November 10, 1970 |
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is a historic home in Cincinnati, Ohio which was once the residence of influential antislavery author Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin . [2]
Rev. Lyman Beecher accepted a job at Lane Theological Seminary in the Walnut Hills area of Cincinnati, founded in 1830. Rev. Beecher was a Congregationalist minister. He had dreamed of moving west to promote his brand of Christianity as early as 1830, when he wrote to his daughter Catharine: "I have thought seriously of going over to Cincinnati, the London of the West, to spend the remnant of my days in that great conflict, and in consecrating all my children to God in that region who are willing to go. If we gain the West, all is safe; if we lose it, all is lost." [3]
In September 1832, 21-year old Harriet Beecher (not yet Mrs. Stowe) moved with her family from Litchfield, Connecticut, to Ohio. The company included her father, her stepmother, her aunt Esther, her siblings Catharine and George, and half-siblings Isabella, Thomas, and James. [4] The extended family previously had not been living together but the various parts of the family from Boston and Hartford met in New York to begin their trip together. [3] Along the way, they traveled through other eastern cities to raise money for the seminary. The journey was long and difficult. Isabella later recalled, "After a week in Philadelphia, we chartered a big, old-fashioned stage, with four great horses, for Wheeling, Virginia, and spent a week or more on the way, crossing the Alleghenies, before ever a railroad was thought of, and enjoyed every minute of the way." [5] They amused themselves by singing hymns while the journey that normally took 48 hours stretched to eight days. [6]
Cincinnati was then an area active in the abolitionist movement. [7] It was also one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation at the time, with its population leaping from 10,000 people in 1820 to 25,000 in 1830. By 1850, thanks to an influx of German and Irish immigrants, it became the sixth-largest city in the United States. [8] Catharine, Harriet's older sister by eleven years, established the Western Female Institute in town. [9]
It was in Cincinnati that Harriet Beecher began her writing career. She published her book The Mayflower: Sketches of Scenes and Character Among the Descendants of the Pilgrims in 1834. [7] It was also while living in Cincinnati that Stowe traveled to Maysville, Kentucky, in 1833 and witnessed a slave auction. The distress she felt was one of several experiences that inspired her book Uncle Tom's Cabin years later. [7]
Harriet lived here for various periods of time from 1833 until her marriage to professor Calvin Ellis Stowe in 1836. Her first two children, twins Eliza and Harriet, were born in the house in 1836. Harriet's brother, Henry Ward Beecher, also resided in the Cincinnati Beecher House. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was an early leader in the women's suffrage movement and a popular Protestant minister.
The 5,000 square foot house was completed in 1833 and was constructed specifically to house the president of the Lane Seminary. [7] The house was provided by the seminary to the Beechers. Harriet and most of her brothers and sisters (11 Beecher children lived to adulthood) lived with their father in this house.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati is owned by the Ohio Historical Society. It is located in the Walnut Hills neighborhood (Martin Luther king exit from Interstate 71) at 2950 Gilbert Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45206 and is operated by volunteers with the Friends of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Inc.
It is open to the public, located in small park, and operated as an historical and cultural site, focusing on Stowe and her family, the Lane Seminary, abolitionists, and the Underground Railroad. The site also presents African-American history.
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the Beecher family, a religious 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 and for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day.
Josiah Henson was an author, abolitionist, and minister. Born into slavery, in Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland, he escaped to Upper Canada in 1830, and founded a settlement and laborer's school for other fugitive slaves at Dawn, near Dresden, in Kent County, Upper Canada, of Ontario. Henson's autobiography, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849), is believed to have inspired the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Following the success of Stowe's novel, Henson issued an expanded version of his memoir in 1858, Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Father Henson's Story of His Own Life. Interest in his life continued, and nearly two decades later, his life story was updated and published as Uncle Tom's Story of His Life: An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (1876).
Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, and the father of 13 children, many of whom became noted figures, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K. Beecher.
Catharine Esther Beecher was an American educator known for her forthright opinions on female education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of kindergarten into children's education. She published the advice manual The American Woman's Home with her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1869. Some sources spell her first name as "Catherine".
Lane Seminary, sometimes called Cincinnati Lane Seminary, and later renamed Lane Theological Seminary, was a Presbyterian theological college that operated from 1829 to 1932 in Walnut Hills, Ohio, today a neighborhood in Cincinnati. Its campus was bounded by today's Gilbert, Yale, Park, and Chapel Streets.
John Rankin was an American Presbyterian minister, educator and abolitionist. Upon moving to Ripley, Ohio, in 1822, he became known as one of Ohio's first and most active "conductors" on the Underground Railroad. Prominent pre-Civil War abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, Henry Ward Beecher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe were influenced by Rankin's writings and work in the anti-slavery movement.
Charles Beecher was an American minister, composer of religious hymns and a prolific author.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is a historic house museum and National Historic Landmark at 73 Forest Street in Hartford, Connecticut that was once the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe lived in this house for the last 23 years of her life. It was her family's second home in Hartford. The 5,000 sq ft cottage-style house is located adjacent to the Mark Twain House and is open to the public. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2013.
Hartford Female Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut was established in 1823, by Catharine Beecher, making it one of the first major educational institutions for women in the United States. By 1826 it had enrolled nearly 100 students. It implemented then-radical programs such as physical education courses for women. Beecher sought the aid of Mary Lyon in the development of the seminary. The Hartford Female Seminary closed towards the later half of the 19th century.
The Coffin House is a National Historic Landmark located in the present-day town of Fountain City in Wayne County, Indiana. The two-story, eight room, brick home was constructed circa 1838–39 in the Federal style. The Coffin home became known as the "Grand Central Station" of the Underground Railroad because of its location where three of the escape routes to the North converged and the number of fleeing slaves who passed through it.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is a historic home and National Historic Landmark at 63 Federal Street in Brunswick, Maine, notable as a short-term home of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Calvin Ellis Stowe and where Harriet wrote her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Earlier, it had been the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as a student. It is today owned by Bowdoin College. A space within the house, called Harriet's Writing Room, is open to the public.
Calvin Ellis Stowe was an American Biblical scholar who helped spread public education in the United States. Over his career, he was a professor of languages and Biblical and sacred literature at Andover Theological Seminary, Dartmouth College, Lane Theological Seminary, and Bowdoin College. He was the husband and literary agent of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the best-seller Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The Cincinnati Riots of 1836 were caused by racial tensions at a time when African Americans, some of whom had escaped from slavery in the Southern United States, were competing with whites for jobs. The racial riots occurred in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States in April and July 1836 by a mob of whites against black residents. These were part of a pattern of violence at that time. A severe riot had occurred in 1829, led by ethnic Irish, and another riot against blacks broke out in 1841. After the Cincinnati riots of 1829, in which many African Americans lost their homes and property, a growing number of whites, such as the "Lane rebels" who withdrew from the Cincinnati Lane Seminary en masse in 1834 over the issue of abolition, became sympathetic to their plight. The anti-abolitionist rioters of 1836, worried about their jobs if they had to compete with more blacks, attacked both the blacks and white supporters.
Hiram Wilson was an anti-slavery abolitionist who worked directly with escaped and former slaves in southwestern Ontario. He attempted to improve their living conditions and help them to be integrated into society by providing education and practical working skills. He established ten schools to educate free blacks in southwestern Ontario. Wilson worked extensively with Josiah Henson to establish the British-American Institute and the Dawn Settlement in 1841. He was a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1843 in London, England. He resigned from the British-American Institute and moved to St. Catharines, Ontario, where his home was a final terminal for the Underground Railroad.
Lewis and Harriet Hayden House was the home of African-American abolitionists who had escaped from slavery in Kentucky; it is located in Beacon Hill, Boston. They maintained the home as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and the Haydens were visited by Harriet Beecher Stowe as research for her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Lewis Hayden was an important leader in the African-American community of Boston; in addition, he lectured as an abolitionist and was a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which resisted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Raymond S. Lane, Jr. was a sculptor known for creating a series of hand-built clay sculptures about Harriet Tubman. The sculptures were first displayed in 2002 in the Children's Learning Center of the Public Library of Hamilton County’s main building, 800 Vine St., in downtown Cincinnati. The clay works depict scenes in the life of Harriet Tubman as the 19th century Underground Railroad heroine. The exhibit was called “Harriet Tubman's Experience in the Underground Railroad.” The sculptures currently are displayed at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Joan Doran Hedrick is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Jack London.
James Bradley was an African slave in the United States who purchased his freedom and became an anti-slavery activist in Ohio.
Sons & Daughters of Thunder is a docudrama that portrays the true story of the Lane Seminary Debates on Slavery of 1834. Based upon a play from the 1970s by Earlene Hawley and Curtis Heeter, the film is the product of Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films of Moline, Illinois. The name Sons & Daughters of Thunder is based upon a bible phrase.
