Ohio is full of fascinating stories of courage and conviction--and many of them are connected to each other. Many thanks to Steve Preston from Heritage Village Museum for sharing about Senator Thomas Morris, a US Senator who represented Ohio during the early years the Beechers lived in Cincinnati. Morris also ran for President on a ticket with Cincinnati abolitionist newspaper editor James Birney, whose work and activism influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe on her path to becoming an abolitionist author.

Thomas Morris is a forgotten titan of Ohio politics. Serving only one term as a United States Senator from Ohio, 1833-1839, Morris left his mark on national politics because of slavery.
 Voted in on the coattails of the Jackson presidency, Morris stood strong with the president on the issues of the banking system and ‘nullification.” As time went on, he became an early opponent of slavery; this put him at odds with the Jacksonian Machine that got him elected.

Born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, January 3, 1776, Morris was the fifth child of a Baptist minister and his wife. They soon moved to Clarksburg, Virginia, now West Virginia. Tradition holds that his anti-slavery beliefs were a result of his mother’s views. His mother, Ruth, was the daughter of a Virginia planter. Seeing the hardships of her father’s slaves had an impact on her to the point of not accepting four slaves as part of her inheritance. It should be noted, however, that she also did not free them. If indeed this was where the seeds were sown for his anti-slavery beliefs, they would not surface until his time as a United States Senator.

About the author:
Steve Preston has been Education Director at Heritage Village Museum in Sharonville, OH since 2012. He is responsible for creating quality educational programming and uses his historical research to bring historical figures to life through first-person interpretation. He holds bachelor’s degrees in history and education from Manchester College and a master’s degree in public history from Northern Kentucky University. He is a frequent contributing columnist to the Northern Kentucky Tribune’s “Our Rich History” section. When he’s not sharing his love of history, he’s playing catch with his son or taking in a Cincinnati Reds game. He also enjoys music and taking trips with his family.

About Heritage Village Museum:
Heritage Village Museum is open for outside only self-guided tours Wed. – Fri.: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Adults: $2, Children 5-11 $1, Children under 4 and members are free. Visitors will receive a booklet with information about the buildings in the Village. Face masks are suggested. 
 
Heritage Village Museum and Educational Center is located inside Sharon Woods Park, behind Sharon Center at 11450 Lebanon Rd. Sharonville, Ohio 45241. A Great Parks of Hamilton County parking permit may be required. Heritage Village Museum also has events throughout the year. Visit HeritageVillageCincinnati.org to learn more.

“Harriet Beecher Stowe in Florida, 1867-1884” by Olav Thulesius (2001)
 
This short (170 pages) work answers the questions: Why did Harriet go to Florida, why did she settle in Mandarin, and how was she received?  The book’s great virtue, as the author says, is that he “let the writer of Palmetto Leaves speak for herself, painting a picture of Florida….”  In the preface the author writes that he became interested in the subject while writing his “Edison in Florida” (1997).  In addition to exploring Harriet’s role as “Florida’s most eminent promoter,” Thulesius shows “that she also sounded an early voice for the protection of the environment.”
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The book begins with brief background material on both the state of Florida and the life of Harriet, with a special emphasis on her health issues and her attraction to hydropathy, or the water-cure movement.  Florida attracted Harriet not only for its reputation for healing, but also as an escape or refuge from the pressures of her fame, the turmoil of her brother Henry’s adultery trial, and cost of keeping up Oakholm, her impractical Hartford mansion.
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We learn of her first foray to Florida, the less-than-successful attempt to set-up her son Frederic with the Laurel Grove cotton plantation.  The story moves on to her falling in love with the area known as Mandarin for its orange cultivation, and her purchase of a cabin along the St. Johns river. The author investigates Harriet’s project of establishing a school to educate formerly enslaved persons, and its connection to an earlier pledge she had made to Frederick Douglass.
After chapters about Harriet’s house, and the school and the church that she helped establish, we learn how her collection of writings about Florida, Palmetto Leaves, came to be published.  The book includes reports of Harriet’s explorations in Florida, providing a view of her love of animals and of nature.

Harriet recruited her brother Charles to move to Florida, and the author details his role as plantation owner, clergyman, and Florida’s second Superintendent of public instruction.  In her later years Harriet was forced to give up her Southern idyll, first because of her husband Calvin’s health and later her own infirmities.  The book concludes with the story of the only trace that remains in Mandarin, a Tiffany window in the church, which sadly was destroyed in 1964 by Hurricane Dora.
Thulesius’s writing is sometimes less than lyrical but always concise and informative, and there are many helpful illustrations.  It is a rewarding read.