Harriet Beecher Stowe House

Harriet Beecher Stowe House Back to Transcendentalism

The author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as well as the neighbor of
Mark Twain, built her house after moving out of her dream
house down the street, which was much bigger and too difficult
to maintain. The corner property in the new upscale
neighborhood development had two additional houses built
upon it: Mark Twain’s Victorian house and Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s cottage home.

Though Harriet Beecher Stowe was not a transcendentalist per se, she was a staunch advocate for
equal rights. It was Harriet’s loss of her first son at such an early age that led her to write the
famous book depicting slave families being separated from one another for the rest of their lives.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was said to be the book written by the little lady who started the Great War.
Later, two other sons would fall to tragedy; one just vanishing after moving to San Francisco and
suffering from shrapnel in the jaw received in the Civil War, and the other having drowned at 19
years of age.

Though Harriet came from a very religious family (her father
and all of her brothers were preachers), she later sought to
contact her lost sons by a mediums when the Spiritualist
Movement and Transcendentalism became prominent.
Certainly, her husband’s description of seeing people come
out of the walls most likely further inspired her to seek contact
with the dead. Her husband told her that he would talk with
them often when they would come into his room, and that he
could no longer tell the difference between the spirits and
people still in bodies. To Harriet’s husband, ghosts were as
real as people in the flesh. Do the walls of Harriet Beecher
Stowe's cottage still contain ghosts and spirits?

Left:
Photo of the Harriet Beecher Stowe cottage house. The
question remains, "Is it haunted?" One has to wonder after
the spirits spoken of by her husband and Harriet's attempts at
contacting the dead, due to the tragedies befallen her sons.
Her twin daughters remained with her at the residence, even
as adults, and travelled with the world-famous woman, who
opened the eyes of thousands to the evils of slavery.

Watch the short video about the Harriet Beecher Stowe House: