Stowe in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, F

[Stowe in Cincinnati, 1832–1836]

M [25] [Stowe in Cincinnati, 1832–1836] Charles Edward Stowe Cincinnati, 1832–1836. In 1832, after having been settled for six years over the Hanover Street Church in Boston, Dr. Beecher received and finally accepted a most urgent call to become President of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. This institution had been chartered in 1829, and in 1831 funds to the amount of In 1832, Lyman Beecher accepted a position as the president of Lane Theological Seminary and moved his family from Hartford, Connecticut, to Cincinnati , Ohio, a booming river town of nearly 47,000 people. Stowe, who had been a student and then a teacher at her sister Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary, went with the family, as did her sister. Catharine Beecher established the Western Female Institute, where Stowe served as a teacher and her assistant. For the next eighteen years, Cincinnati was Stowe’s home. There, she began writing, and she published a textbook, Primary Geography for Children, on an Improved Plan with Eleven Maps and Numerous Engravings (1833). Stowe joined the Semi-Colon Club, an informal group of young people who met to read and discuss their writing, and she won a prize for her first published story, “A New England Sketch,” later retitled “Uncle Lot.” She met Calvin Stowe, a professor at Lane, and, after the death of his first wife, the two were married in 1836. During the Cincinnati years, Stowe gave birth to six of her seven children and continued to write when she could, publishing short articles and stories in Godey’s Lady’s Book and the New-York Evangelist. Her first book, The Mayflower, a collection of stories and sketches, was published in 1843. Living just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, a slave state, and the South, Stowe and her family became increasingly involved in the antislavery movement. The following account of Stowe’s early years in Cincinnati is a chapter of Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1889) written by her son Charles Edward Stowe. Stowe helped him prepare the biography by giving him her journals and asking friends and family members to send him her letters. This chapter narrates Stowe’s life as she adjusted to a new home, formed her early impressions of slavery, and began her first efforts at writing. stowe in her own time [26] nearly $70,000 had been promised to it provided that Dr. Beecher accepted the presidency. It was hard for this New England family to sever the ties of a lifetime and enter on so long a journey to the far distant West of those days; but being fully persuaded that their duty lay in this direction, they undertook to perform it cheerfully and willingly. With Dr. Beecher and his wife were to go Miss Catharine Beecher, who had conceived the scheme of founding in Cincinnati, then considered the capital of the West, a female college, and Harriet, who was to act as her principal assistant. In the party were also George, who was to enter Lane as a student, Isabella, James, the youngest son, and Miss Esther Beecher, the “Aunt Esther” of the children. Before making his final decision, Dr. Beecher, accompanied by his daughter Catharine, visited Cincinnati to take a general survey of their proposed battlefield, and their impressions of the city are given in the following letter written by the latter to Harriet in Boston:— Here we are at last at our journey’s end, alive and well. We are staying with Uncle Samuel (Foote), whose establishment I will try and sketch for you. It is on a height in the upper part of the city, and commands a fine view of the whole of the lower town. The city does not impress me as being so very new. It is true everything looks neat and clean, but it is compact, and many of the houses Lyman Beecher house, Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, Ohio. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, Connecticut. Charles Edward Stowe [27] are of brick and very handsomely built. The streets run at right angles to each other, and are wide and well paved. We reached here in three days from Wheeling , and soon felt ourselves at home. The next day father and I, with three gentlemen , walked out to Walnut Hills. The country around the city consists of a constant succession and variety of hills of all shapes and sizes, forming an extensive amphitheatre. The site of the seminary is very beautiful and picturesque , though...