Harriet Beecher Stowe House

Sometimes you live in a place for nearly 20 years and don’t visit the local attractions, and it takes coming back as a tourist to get you there…that’s us and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Hartford, CT. Stowe, her husband, and their adult twin daughters lived at the house in Hartford for the last 23 years of Stowe’s life, and in one of those astounding facts of life, her next-door neighbor was Mark Twain. Two authors who have stood the test of time just happened to be neighbors – amazing!

Harriet’s father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, looks down upon the dining room table.

Stowe wrote in her bedroom on any surface…apparently there were papers everywhere!

Thanks to the work of Stowe’s grandniece Katharine Seymour Day, the house is about 85% original or Stowe-family pieces. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) had been a runaway success, allowing the family the means to purchase this cottage-style 5,000 square foot home. The tour covers the dining room, parlours, sitting room, bedroom, and kitchen. Stowe died here in 1896 at the age of 85.

Due to the success of **Uncle Tom’s Cabin**, Stowe was a very wealthy woman, and the household furnishing reflected that.

There’s also an exhibit on “interpretations” (especially in the South) of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which made it hard not to think about race relations in America 170 years later.