Harriet Beecher-Stowe 1811- 1896

BIRTHPLACE: Litchfield, CT

EDUCATION: Educated at and subsequently taught at the Hartford Female Academy, founded by her sister Catherine Beecher in 1823. She also taught at the Western Female Institute in Cincinnati, established by Catherine in 1832.

Domestic Goddess Harriet Beecher-Stowe(1) is most famous for her controversial anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe was born in 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut, the seventh of nine children. Her father was the well-known Congregational minister Lyman Beecher and his wife was Roxana Foote Beecher. Roxana Beecher died when her daughter was five years old, causing Beecher to feel great empathy, she felt, for slave mothers and children who were separated under slavery.

The Crocus

Beneath the sunny autumn sky,
With gold leaves dropping round,
We sought, my little friend and I,
The consecrated ground,
Where, calm beneath the holy cross,

O'ershadowed by sweet skies,
Sleeps tranquilly that youthful form,
Those blue unclouded eyes.
Around the soft, green swelling mound

We scooped the earth away,
And buried deep the crocus-bulbs
Against a coming day.
"These roots are dry, and brown, and sere;

Why plant them here?" he said,
"To leave them, all the winter log,
So desolate and dead." "Dear child,
thin each sere dead form There sleeps a living flower,

And angel-like it shall arise In spring's returning hour."
Ah, deeper down cold, dark, and chill We buried our heart's flower,
But angel-like shall he arise In spring's immortal hour.
In blue and yellow from its grave Springs up the crocus fair,

And God shall raise those bright blue eyes,
Those sunny waves of hair.
Not for a fading summer's morn,
Not for a fleeting hour,
But for an endless age of bliss,
Shall rise our heart's dear flower