ABSTRACT
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811, the seventh child of Lyman Beecher and his first wife Roxanna Foote, Harriet Beecher spent her early years, and for that matter most of her life, in an environment dominated by ministers and educators. Besides her father’s later involvement with education as president of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, Harriet’s older sister pioneered the movement for women’s education in the country. In Cincinnati in 1836, Harriet married Calvin Stowe, minister and professor at Lane Theological Seminary and widower of a friend. In 1850, when Calvin Stowe accepted a position at Bowdoin College in Maine, Harriet, nearing the end of her seventh pregnancy, made the long journey to Brunswick, Maine, by railroad and steamboat. Black Hoss, Miry Elderkin’s father and a figure that may be based on Stowe’s own father, represents the stern, authoritative New England figure.
