Tidbits-interesting things about Harriet Beecher Stowe

Her children:

In Ohio, she met Calvin Stowe, a professor of Biblical Literature at Lane and clergyman who fervently opposed slavery. He was nine years her senior and the widower of her dear friend, Eliza Tyler. They married in 1836 and eventually had seven children, four of whom died during her lifetime.

Samuel Charles, "Charley" died at eighteen months from cholera and an older son,

Henry, drowned while a student at Dartmouth College.

Years later, their son Frederick, an alcoholic from the age of sixteen, died, never really recovering from the wounds he sustained at Gettysburg in the Civil War nor being able to cope with his mother's success.

Daughter Georgiana, married to an Episcopal priest and a mother, died in her forties, having lost her health and mind to morphine addiction.

Twin daughters, Eliza and Isabella, and a son, Charles Edward lived and were comforts to their parents.

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2001/stowe.html

Have you read the biography of Harriet's brother, Henry Ward Beecher? It's called The Most Famous Man in America. I recently saw the author, Debby Applegate, on Book TV. Apparently she spent 20 years researching this book and discovered all sorts of interesting stuff about the Beecher family.

Henry Ward Beecher was Harriet's favorite brother, apparently, and a real charmer. He became known as a liberal and very eloquent abolitionist preacher. His sermons were so wildly popular that in his church it was standing room only every Sunday. People arriving in the ferry would ask the way to the Reverend Beecher's church and be told "Just follow the crowd!"

Later on, this famous man was embroiled in a very public scandal. One of his parishioners accused Henry Ward Beecher of having seduced his, the parishioner's, wife. This private quarrel escalated into a very public trial. The lady in question originally confessed to her affair with Henry Ward Beecher only to recant her confession on the witness stand...but years later, she "came clean" and recanted the recantation! So who knows what really happened? Henry himself denied that anything improper had ever taken place. The jury refused to convict him but the author, Ms. Applegate, advances some pretty convincing arguments that Harriet's favorite brother was, indeed, a lady's man!

Henry Beecher is actually credited with bringing the anti-slavery movement to the mainstream. He was a sort of "superstar" of his time.

I am actually closely related to the Beecher family. Harriet Beecher Stowe is my great-great-great Aunt. My mother's middle name is even Stowe. I don't know much about the family, but I am aware of the book you speak of and plan to one day buy it. The author won the Pulitzer shortly after the book was published as well.