Harriet Beecher Stowe came from a family of ministers. Her famous novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852, sold over 300,000 copies in its first year and made her rich and famous. She went to court to stop an unauthorized German translation of her book. She visited President Abraham Lincoln at the White House in 1862 to discuss emancipation. Stowe lived in the neighborhood of Nook Farm in Hartford, Connecticut, where she was neighbors with Mark Twain. She outlived four of her seven children, who faced various tragic fates. There are three houses related to Harriet Beecher Stowe that can still be visited today.

1. 7 Things You May Not Know About
Harriet Beecher Stowe

2. HER FATHER AND ALL
SEVEN OF HER
BROTHERS WERE
MINISTERS.
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was
born on June 14, 1811, in
Litchfield, Connecticut. Her
mother, Roxana Beecher, died
five years later. Her father,
Calvinist preacher Lyman
Beecher, had 13 children, 11 of
whom survived into adulthood.
He preached loudly against
slavery. All seven of his sons
followed him into the ministry.
The women of the Beecher family were also
encouraged to rise to positions of influence and rally
against injustice. Eldest child Catharine Beecher co-
founded the Hartford Female Seminary and Isabella
Beecher Hooker was a prominent suffragist.

3. UNCLE TOM’S CABIN MADE HER RICH
AND FAMOUS.
According to Henry Louis Gate Jr.’s introduction
to the annotated edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin,
The National Era paid Stowe $300 for 43
chapters. Before the serial’s completion, Stowe
signed a contract with John P. Jewett and Co. to
publish a two-volume bound book edition, and
that’s when it really took off. Released on March
20, 1852, the book sold 10,000 copies in the
U.S. in its first week and 300,000 in the first
year. Stowe was paid 10 cents for each one
sold. According to a London Times article
published six months after the book’s release,
she had already amassed $10,000 in royalties.
Some publishers claim the book edition is the
second best-selling title of the 19th century,
after the Bible.

4. Immediately after Uncle
Tom’s Cabin became a
literary sensation, a
Philadelphia-based
German-language paper,
Die Freie Presse, began
publishing an unauthorized
translation. Stowe took the
publisher, F.W. Thomas, to
court. American copyright
laws were notoriously weak
at the time .
As someone who overnight
became America’s favorite
author, Stowe had much at
stake testing them.
SHE WENT TO COURT TO STOP
AN UNAUTHORIZED TRANSLATION

5. SHE VISITED ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Though Stowe had criticized what she saw as his
slowness in emancipation and willingness to seek
compromise to prevent succession, Stowe visited
President Abraham Lincoln at the White House in
1862, during the early days of the Civil War.
Reportedly, Lincoln greeted her with, “So this is the
little woman who brought on this big Civil War,” but
scholars have dismissed the quote as Stowe family
legend spread after her death.Details of their
conversation are limited to vague entries in their
respective diaries. Lincoln may have bantered with
her over his love of open fires (“I always had one to
home,” he reportedly said), while Stowe got down to
business and quizzed him: “Mr. Lincoln, I want to ask
you about your views on emancipation.”

6. SHE AND MARK TWAIN WERE NEIGHBORS.
The Stowes’ primary residence, starting
in 1864, was a villa in the Nook Farm
section of Hartford, Connecticut, a
neighborhood populated by prominent
citizens, including Mark Twain. The
homes of Nook Farm had few fences,
and doors stayed open in sunny
weather, creating an air of gentility. That
did not prevent Twain from writing a
somewhat unflattering portrait of Stowe,
as she gave way to what was probably
Alzheimer’s disease, in his
autobiography:
“Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe who was a
near neighbor of ours in Hartford, with
no fence between. In those days she
made as much use of our grounds as of

7. While continuing a lucrative and
prolific writing career, Stowe birthed
and cared for seven children. When
she passed away in 85 in 1896, she
had outlived four of them, as bad
fortune seemed to follow their
offspring.Their third, Henry, drowned in
a swimming accident in 1857. The
fourth, Frederick, mysteriously
disappeared en route to California in
1870. The fifth, Georgiana, died from
septicemia, probably related to
morphine in 1890. (She was an
addict.) The sixth, Samuel, died from
cholera in infancy in 1849. These
losses informed several of Stowe’s
works.
SHE OUTLIVED FOUR OF HER SEVEN
CHILDREN.

8. THERE ARE THREE HARRIET
BEECHER STOWE HOUSES YOU CAN
VISIT.
1. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House
of Cincinnati is where she lived
after following her father to Lane.
2. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House
on the campus of Bowdoin in
Brunswick, Maine, is where she
wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It
became a restaurant from 1946 to
1998 and is now a faculty office
building, but one room is open to
the public and dedicated to Stowe.
3. The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center
preserves her home in Hartford.
Her home in Florida is gone but is
marked by a plaque.