Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut. She was the seventh child of Lyman and Roxana Beecher. Harriet was an author, philanthropist, and an abolitionist. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was a Calvinist, and pastor of the Congregational Church. Her mother, Roxana Foote, had eight children, and was the minister's first wife. However, she died when Harriet was only four years old. At this point Harriet's oldest sister Catherine assumed a mother's role in the family. Harriet paid many long visits to her mother's house in Nutplains, Connecticut where her Aunt Harriet Foote would often reprimand her. Within approximately two years the Beecher children had a new mother named Harriet Porter Beecher, and she bore three more children for Lyman.
Harriet attended school at the Pierce Academy in Litchfield from 1819 to 1824, and for three years after that she attended her sister Catherine Beecher's Hartford Female Seminary.
Harriet Beecher-Stowe, American abolitionist and a...
Portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe Deutsch: Die Sch...
English: An engraving of Harriet Beecher Stowe fro...However, from 1827 until 1832 Stowe taught at Catherine's school. Lyman Beecher became the president of Lane Theological Seminary in 1832, and he moved to Cincinnati with his family. There Catherine founded another school called the Western Female Institute and Harriet taught in the school, and wrote a geography book for children, the first of which was sold under Catherine's name. In January of 1836, Harriet married Calvin E. Stowe, a professor of Biblical literature at Lane, and a friend of the family
Calvin E. Stowe was a plain man with many eccentricities who was often depressed. Orphaned at the age of six, Stowe was an apprentice in a paper mill, but he still managed to put himself through college at Bowdoin College and Andover Theological Seminary. Calvin was distinguished in his own way, and he had been valedictorian of his class at Bowdoin, and a...