Harriet Beecher Stowe

Born:  June 14, 1811, Litchfield, Connecticut

Died:  July 1, 1896, Hartford, Connecticut

Resting Place:  Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts

Brief History:  Harriet enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary run by her older sister Catharine, where she received a traditional academic education, rather uncommon for women at the time, with a focus in the Classics, languages, and mathematics. The result was a mass exodus of the Lane students, together with a supportive trustee and a professor, who moved as a group to the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute after its trustees agreed, by a close and acrimonious vote, to accept students regardless of "race", and to allow discussions of any topic. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, prohibiting assistance to fugitives and strengthening sanctions even in free states. Shortly after in June 1851, when she was 40, the first installment of Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in serial form in the newspaper The National Era.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book form on March 20, 1852, by John P. Jewett with an initial print run of 5,000 copies. After the start of the Civil War, Stowe traveled to the capital, Washington, D.C., where she met President Abraham Lincoln on November 25, 1862. Stowe purchased property near Jacksonville, Florida. In response to a newspaper article in 1873, she wrote, "I came to Florida the year after the war and held property in Duval County ever since. In all this time I have not received even an incivility from any native Floridian." In 1868, Stowe became one of the first editors of Hearth and Home magazine, one of several new publications appealing to women; she departed after a year. m