Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

View Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in a larger map

Visit our Tour Destination: Connecticut page to see the entire tour of the state’s Save America’s Treasures sites.

Harriet Beecher Stowe House, south front view.
Photo courtesy of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

77 Forest Street

Hartford, CT 06105

Website:  Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

The Treasure:  Harriet Beecher Stowe, the celebrated author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, lived in this brick Victorian Gothic cottage-style house on Forest Street in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1873 to her death in 1896.

Accessibility:  The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center is open Tuesday through Friday from 9:30 to 4:30, Saturdays from 9:30 to 5:30, and Sundays are from noon to 5:30.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, M. A. Donohue edition.
Photo courtesy of the Harriet Beecher
Stowe Center.

Background:   Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) is best known as the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one of the most powerful works of American anti-slavery literature ever published. Her combined passion for writing and combating injustice drove her to publish a total of more than thirty different books, many of them dealing with the most controversial topics of her day. In her works, she tackled topics such as slavery, religious reform and gender roles. Her informal style of writing allowed her to reach a broad audience and challenge her society—at a time when women had very limited opportunities for influencing public discourse.

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut, as the sixth of eleven children. Her mother Roxanna Beecher died when she was five. Her father Rev. Lyman Beecher remarried to Harriet Porter Beecher, and he and his second wife raised their children to be intelligent and active members of their community. Their father was both a strong voice in the anti-slavery preaching movement and a teacher of religion at Sarah Pierce’s Litchfield Female Academy. He honed his children’s debate skills both through his own efforts and by taking in boarders from a local law school. Apparently his efforts were not in vain: All seven of her brothers became ministers, her sister Catharine became a pioneer for women’s education, her youngest sister Isabella was a founder of the National Women’s Suffrage Association, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 51-year legacy of published and influential writing speaks for itself.

Stowe’s most famous work, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, follows the adventures of a small family of enslaved African Americans desperately trying to escape their bondage. The first serialized installment was published on June 5, 1851 in the anti-slavery newspaper The National Era. When issued in book form, the work was a literal runaway success, selling over 1.5 million copies in its first year. It became a potent tool in the effort to win the hearts and minds of mainstream Americans for the abolitionist movement as the country headed toward Civil War.

The Hartford house was occupied by Stowe, her husband Calvin Stowe, and their two oldest and unmarried daughters, the twins Eliza and Hattie (Harriet), from 1873 until her death. While Stowe’s most famous work was behind her while living in Hartford, she continued to write and to enjoy great popularity. The Stowes made an effort to live up to the ideals they preached. For 15 years following the Civil War, they maintained a winter residence in Mandarin, Florida, where they supported a school to educate newly emancipated slaves.

The kitchen at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House.
Photo by Michael McAndrews, courtesy of the
Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.

Notes from the Editor:  June is a month of anniversaries for the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, and this post is being published between two of them: June 5 marks the 161st-year anniversary of the first installment to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, while June 14 is Stowe’s 201st birthday.

Women of the United Kingdom presented this petition to
Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Its 26 volumes contain 563,818
signatures of women opposed to slavery in the United States.
Photo courtesy of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.

Very few writers can claim to have influenced the course of history to the degree that Stowe’s work did. Her clear and articulate calls for justice still resonate:

“I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and broken-hearted with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity—because as a lover of my county, I trembled at the coming day of wrath.”

“It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.”

“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center maintains Stowe’s commitment to social justice and positive change as an essential part of its mission. They recognize that Stowe’s 19th century causes continue to echo in modern debates about race relations, class and gender issues, economic justice, and education equity. In the tradition of Stowe’s activism, their programs ask visitors: “What will you do to make a difference in your world?”

Other Recommended Sites:  While neither Stowe’s birthplace in Litchfield, Connecticut, nor the school she attended (Litchfield Academy) are open to the public, the Litchfield Historical Society preserves much of the flavor of the small town as it was in the days when Stowe was growing up. When she turned 21, her father took a job in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the large family took up residence. Their Cincinnati house, Stowe House, is maintained by the Ohio Historical Society and is open to the public.

Front parlor at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House.
Photo by Michael McAndrews, courtesy of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.

Guest author for this entry:  Terry Price

Tour America's History Itinerary

Friday’s destination:  Florence Griswold Museum

© 2012 Lee and Terry Price