Harriet Beecher was born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her father was Lyman Beecher, one of the most famous Americans of his time. He was a religious minister who preached a strict Puritan view of Christianity; he pressed his sons to become ministers, too, and he lamented having daughters, who at the time were not allowed to preach because to do so was thought to be unladylike. From her Aunt Mary, Stowe heard harrowing tales of how slaves were mistreated in Jamaica.

Aunt Mary had been married to a Jamaican planter but she fled him and Jamaica because she could not tolerate his abuse of slaves.

In 1816, her mother died; in 1818 her father remarried. Her stepmother remained cold and distant from Lyman Beecher's children, but she was an efficient manager of his household. At age fourteen, in 1825, Stowe begins teaching in her eldest sister Catherine's school. Her move...