A Guide to 

Harriet Beecher Stowe
Letter Transcriptions


Below is an alphabetical listing of information about people, events, terms, etc. found in the Harriet Beecher Stowe letters
transcribed by students from His229 "Women in America" (Fall 2015), taught by Sarah McNair Vosmeier. 

 

 


Beecher, Charles
HBS's younger brother Charles served as a Presbyterian minister in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during the 1840s.  See more from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.


Beecher, Henry Ward
In the 1840s, HBS's brother Henry was a struggling minister living with his family in Indianapolis.  By the 1850s, he would become nearly as famous as she was.  He was the celebrity pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York, from 1847 to 1887.  Then in 1872 he gained even more national attention for the "Great Beecher-Tilton Scandal," when Victoria Woodhull (a woman's rights advocate and the first female presidential candidate) accused him of committing adultery.  See more at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.



Beecher, Lydia Jackson
Lydia Jackson Beecher was HBS's father's third wife.  See more from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and in the Finding Aid for the Beecher-Stowe Family Papers.


Indianapolis
HBS's  brother Henry Ward Beecher and his family lived in Indianapolis in the 1840s.  See more from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.


New York Evangelist
HBS published essays in this magazine.  See more at Chronicling America.



Smith, Anna
Anna Smith formed a close relationship with HBS while working in the Stowe household, caring for the children and managing much of the domestic work. She also taught in two schools organized by the HBS and her sister Catharine.  She died in 1860.  See more in HBS's 1853 letter to Eliza Cabot Follen, and in Joan Hedrick's Harriet Beecher Stowe:  A Life.


Stowe, Eliza Tyler
HBS's two oldest children were twins: Harriet (1836-1907) and Eliza (1836-1912).  See more from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.


Stowe, Frederick William
HBS's fourth child was Frederick  (1840-1870?).  See more from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.


Stowe, Georgiana May
HBS's fifth child was Georgie (1843-1890). See more from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.


Stowe, Harriet Beecher (II)
HBS's two oldest children were twins: Harriet (1836-1907) and Eliza (1836-1912).  See more from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.



Stowe, Henry Ellis
HBS's third child was Henry (1838-1857). See more from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.




Stowe, Samuel Charles
HBS's sixth child was called Charley (1848-1849).  In a 1852 letter, she said that his death from cholera helped her imagine "what a poor slave mother may feel when her child is torn away from her." After his death, the Stowes called their next child (Charles Edward Stowe) Charley as well.  See more from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. 




Stowe, Charles Edward
HBS's last (seventh) child was Charles (1850-1934).  Thus the Stowes used the same name for this child that they had used for the son who had died the previous year.  See more from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. 



water cure
Many nineteenth-century Americans believed that a treatment of "cold water, exercise, a proper diet, and pure air" could cure disease and even "give men the age of 150 or 200 years." See more in Robert Wesselhoeft et al., The Water Cure in America: Two Hundred and Twenty Cases of Various Diseases Treated with Water (1848).




Wesselhoeft, Robert
Dr. Wesselhoeft ran a "water cure establishment" in Brattleboro, Vermont, where patients followed a rigorous routine of cold baths and long walks. See transcriptions of 1847 newspaper articles describing one patient's experiences (from Brattleboro History).







Hanover Historical Texts Project
  Hanover College Department of History