Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1811, the seventh child of a well-known Congregational minister, Lyman Beecher. The family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where she met and married Calvin Stowe, a professor of theology, in 1836. Living just across the Ohio River from the slave-holding state of Kentucky, and becoming aware of the plight of escaping slaves, led her to writeUncle Tom’s Cabin, published in book form in 1852. She wrote the novel amidst the difficulties of bringing up a large family of six children. The runaway success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin made its author a well-known public figure. Stowe died in 1896.