Collections : [Harriet Beecher Stowe Center]

These group letters were written by and circulated among the Beecher Family as a way to keep its far-flung members, spouses, relations, and friends abreast of family news and activities. The letters provide insight into family members' ideas and opinions on public issues of the day, including slavery, politics, and religion. They also give a picture of the Old Northwest (Ohio, Illinois, Indiana) and New England in the early 19th century.

The Foote Collection contains correspondence, miscellaneous written and printed material, photographs, and works of art produced by multiple generations of the families of Eli Foote (1747-1792) and Samuel Edmund Foote (1787-1858) and their friends and associates. The Foote Family is important in the history of Connecticut because its members were among the founders of Wethersfield, New Haven and Guilford. The family is connected by marriage to the Beechers.

Correspondence written to publisher John R. Howard and his father, John T. Howard, from authors Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Calvin Ellis Stowe, Edward Bok, and Maria Chapman, and to Harriet Beecher Stowe from author and prominent minister, Austin Phelps.

The Katharine Seymour Day Collection is the largest single collection of papers in the Stowe Center s collections. It comprises the extensive correspondence between Katharine Seymour Day (1870-1964), founder of the Stowe Center, and family members, numerous friends, and associates. Included are extensive materials compiled when she was a student, notebooks, themes, and drafts of a masters thesis. Other materials reflect her wide ranging interests in social and political reform, art, historic preservation, and gardening.

Letters, autographs, mottos, and other material written by and relating to Harriet Beecher Stowe - her philosophy and her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Includes photocopy of a bill of sale documenting Abraham Lincoln's 1840 purchase of an enslaved woman.

Most of the documents in the Higginson Collection are letters written or forwarded to Thomas Wentworth Higginson during a single week in April 1861, just after the start of the Civil War. These documents (1) concern recruitment and provision of financial or other kinds of support for an ultimately unsuccessful plan for an abolitionist guerrilla force to operate in western Maryland and Virginia; (2) secret service and espionage activities against the Confederate states; and (3) plans to free enslaved people and promote the early abolition of slavery. There are also five letters to Higginson dating from 1848 and 1850, including from authors Charles Francis Adams and Richard Henry Dana and botanist Edward Tuckerman.