| Harriet Beecher Stowe-1st Person Bio Essay, Research Paper
I was born June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut. I’m the seventh child of Lyman Beecher. He was a famous Protestant preacher. My mother, Roxana Foote Beecher, died 1816 of Tuberculosis when I was only five years old. I began writing at a very young age. I won a prize for a composition I wrote in school at age 13.
In 1832, I moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to become president of Lane Theological Seminary. It was a school where I met Calvin Stowe. We fell in love and go married in 1836. Calvin had to teach at Bowdoin so we moved to Maine in 1850.
I was an Abolitionist and a writer. I believed slavery was wrong and that they shouldn’t be judged by the color of their skin. I wrote my ideas of this whole slavery issue on the National Era, an Abolitionist journal.
I had seven kids but my seventh, and only son died because of a cholera epidemic. Calvin made only $1000 a year and it wasn’t enough to support my six children. We went through some tough times.
Another struggle I had to face was writing about slavery. I would face harsh criticism and I would have a high risk of ruining my reputation.
March 20, 1852 my book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was published for the first time. It was about slavery and I got ideas from my imagination and research. My book made a radical statement concerning the dignity and courage of blacks. Uncle Tom’s Cabin fanned the flames of the slavery conflict and left me as an international celebrity. It left the Northerners “Crying and sobbing over the sorrows.”
I died of old age on July 1, 1896. I was 85 years old and I was buried in the family plot in Andover, Massachusetts. Friends and family sang this hymn at my gravesite:
“It lies around us like a cloud,
A world we do not see
Yet the sweet closing of an eye
May bring us there to be.”
Eighth grades should know about me because I won my first composition award when I was about your age and that proves that anyone can be a writer. Uncle Tom’s Cabin touched the hearts of millions and I enjoyed writing that book.
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