Stowe is famous for Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

It is the birthday of writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811), whose best-selling anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin brought her international fame and financial security. The book helped fire up the abolitionist movement and, some historians say, helped set the stage for the Civil War. It was first published in serial form in the abolitionist newspaper National Era, starting in June 1851. She expected to write only a few installments but response was so great that she ended up writing 40 episodes. It was published as a book in March 1852. Stowe, the daughter of a minister and educator, was taught early to debate issues of the day and make her case forcefully. She began writing at age 7,  winning a school essay contest. She continued to write all her life, completing more than 30 books, including novels, text books, advice books and biographies. With her sister, Catherine, she wrote The American Home, a homemaking advice book. She married a professor, Calvin Ellis Stowe, and they had seven children. Her husband taught at a seminary in Cincinnati. Later he taught at Bowdoin College in Maine, and she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin there. Still later the family settled in Hartford, Connecticut. With her earnings from Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe bought a cottage and orange grove on the banks of the St. Johns River in Mandarin, south of Jacksonville in 1872. Her family wintered there for 17 years until Calvin was too ill to travel from their home in Hartford. Well known by then, Stowe charged 75 cents each to tourists who came by steamboats to meet her and visit her home. Stowe wrote Palmetto Leaves,  a book extolling the virtues of Florida as an idyllic playground for tourists seeking to escape the chilly northland.

Eunice Beecher stood by her man

Life at the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe in Mandarin often included knitting and card games on the porch.

Henry Ward Beecher

In the 1860s, Henry Ward Beecher was the era’s equivalent of a rock star. He was a fiery preacher and a vehement abolitionist, who wrote newspaper columns and made impassioned speeches around the country.

In the 1870s, a close associate and protégé accused him of having an affair with the associate’s wife. The subsequent investigations and trial became a drawn-out soap opera, every salacious tidbit covered in detail in The New York Times. Throught it all, Beecher’s wife, Eunice, in the grand Tammy Wynette-style tradition, stood by her man, visiting her dour expression upon the proceeding as she attended court sessions every day.

Beecher was eventually found to be not guilty of adultery, although public sentiment at the time was similar to the public sentiment in recent well publicized murder trials.