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Stay tuned for additional posts answering questions posed by the participants of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House Community Connection Facebook group. CLICK HERE to join the group and submit your own questions to our volunteer team! Today's question is answered by youth docent Emmett Looman.  Harriet Beecher Stowe began writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851. By that time, she had already written several stories and published books. Writing was definitely not new to her. By the time Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published she had already published two other books, not counting the many articles she had already written for magazines and newspapers. I was interested in how Harriet learned to write a novel, let alone one as widely known as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, so I explored the basis for her writing career. Harriet was educated at her older sister Catharine’s school, the Hartford Female Seminary. The Hartford Seminary was a rarity at the time, as it educated women. While at the Hartford Seminary, she wrote long essays. Harriet even taught there after her education. When Harriet moved to Cincinnati in 1832, she taught at Catharine’s new school, the Western Female Institute. There, she published her first book, which was a geography textbook. While there, she also began to write short stories. It was around this time that Harriet joined the Semi-Colon Club, you may have heard of it. The Semi-Colon Club was a literary group in Cincinnati that wrote stories and shared them anonymously. It was through the Semi-Colon Club that Harriet learned and grew as a writer. The Semi-Colon club became crucial in her life, as she met her good friend Eliza and future husband, Calvin Stowe. In the perspective of writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet already had the writing skills necessary. However, in order to write a book like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she needed another skill. This skill was firsthand experiences of slavery. In 1851, Harriet already had these experiences. Throughout her eighteen years in Cincinnati, she had heard stories, taken trips, and even had important life events that helped her write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet became an abolitionist in Cincinnati because of what she heard and who she met there. On trips to friends, she heard harrowing tales of slaves escaping across the Ohio River. Harriet even traveled to Kentucky during a cholera epidemic and witnessed a slave auction. In 1849, Harriet lost her son, Samuel Charles, to a cholera epidemic in Cincinnati. She later wrote that that the loss of her son helped her to understand how slave mothers felt losing their children at auctions. All of these experiences were used to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. After writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet went on to write even more books. In 1853, she wrote A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was essentially a list of all of her sources for the novel. Harriet then continued to write and publish thirteen more books, ending with Poganuac People in 1878. My favorite fact that I discovered was that of the origin of the name "Semi-Colon." Note that it is spelled with a hyphen, not as one word, which hints at its meaning. Christopher Columbus was also called Colon. As an extension based upon the theory that “he who provides a new pleasure is entitled to half the praise accorded to a discoverer of a new continent,” the group was entitled to half the praise of Columbus, or Colon, because of the stories they created together (Centennial History of Cincinnati).
In conclusion, while in Cincinnati between the years of 1832 and 1850, Harriet gained the writing skills and experiences necessary to write such an influential book as Uncle Tom’s Cabin. About the author: Emmett Looman is a Youth Docent at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati. He enjoys history and is always happy to learn new interesting facts about the past. Sources:
For those interested in the complete list of books (taken from the Volunteer Handbook):
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