Happy Saturday! Finally made it! I am putting this awesome day to good use as Sunday's forecast calls for a moderate chance of severe thunderstorms. There's just so much going through my head with my to-do list: buy groceries, housework, and studying my tour script for a possible tour guide job, and rest before volunteering at the visitor center tomorrow and taking on more adventures of the day. Before all of that, I decided to stop in the Harriet Beecher Stowe House.
This house is steeped in very robust history. Looking at the house itself, given the prominent location on a steep hill, this is a stalwart Cincinnati icon as Cincinnati was a pivotal location on the Underground Railroad.
The house was built on the campus of Lane Theological Seminary, where the Beecher family lived while Lyman Beecher was president of the seminary, and where Harriet herself lived during her literary career, most notably Uncle Tom's Cabin (published in Brunswick, Maine), until her marriage to Calvin Stowe. What's interesting was that Uncle Tom's Cabin was written in installments in the abolitionist publication The National Era, and she followed up with her book of sources called A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1853. The book itself was in response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
The first floor is very exquisite, from Lyman's former study to the room where Harriet possibly married Calvin Stowe.
The second floor was very interesting as well, including an exhibit called Rethinking Porkopolis about Cincinnati's pork producing heritage and its connection to the American South.
Looking through this house, I could picture Harriet in all of her literary glory, as if she herself were in the house speaking to Cincinnati today. Even at this very moment, I can still picture her at work.
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