Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

 

Salons at Stowe: Women and Democratic Citizenship Save the Date:  January 27, 7 pm. Virtual event Our Common Purpose and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center proudly present Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs, author of The Three Mothers, in conversation with Janée Woods Weber, Executive Director of Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund (CWEALF). Dr. Tubbs’s extensive research on activist mothers from the civil rights movement and beyond adds scope and dimension to CWEALF’s longstanding advocacy for women's rights and opportunities in Connecticut.   A relaxed format discussion centered on the empowerment of women and girls, especially those who are underserved or marginalized, our third salon program informs and inspires and will encourage audience participation.   Anna Malaika Tubbs (above) is a multidisciplinary expert on current and historical understandings of race, gender, and equity. After graduating from Stanford University with a BA in anthropology, Anna earned her MA in gender studies and her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Cambridge as a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar.   Anna is joined by Janée Woods Weber (above, right), an activist, advocate, facilitator and trainer for social justice issues, and the Executive Director of CWEALF. She previously served as Program Director at Everyday Democracy, a national nonprofit in Hartford that helps communities across the country create action around important issues such as food security, community prosperity, immigration, education, and undoing racism.   The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center presents this third salon in a series intended to explore the ways in which the Telling Our Nation’s Story initiative can engage communities throughout the country in direct, open-ended, and inclusive conversations about the complex and always evolving American story. Jon D. Cohen will introduce the program and the broader implications and recommendations of Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century.   This is a free, virtual event. Registration is open.   To view previous salons in this series, please visit our Multimedia Gallery. Thank you to the George A. & Grace L. Long Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Co-Trustee, for helping to make this program possible. Virtual School Programs The Stowe Center is delighted to offer virtual school programs for the 2022 school year! Bring the Stowe House directly to the classroom while our excellent interpretive staff help create an educational experience that bridges the past and the present. Can't wait to get back on the bus? We are also currently booking on-site school groups for 2022. Check out our many options for grades K-12. We can't wait to see you! New to Our Collections In 2021, the Stowe Center received many donations of historic items for its collections, including two gifts from Beecher descendants: the Norman and Nancy B. Beecher trusts, and sisters Isabel Hooker and Mary Crary. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s older brother George Beecher (1809-1843) was a passionate, musically-inclined minister who served  in Ohio and New York. We thank the Beecher trust for 22 books from the personal library of their ancestors, George and Sarah S. Buckingham Beecher. This collection of books dates between 1813 and 1891, highlighting popular poetry and novels as well as religious titles read by the young Reverend. The earliest volumes include George’s personal bookplate in the flyleaf (pictured above), and a Greek and Latin Bible New Testament edition also signed by father “Lyman Beecher, 1823”  (below). These works, along with other Beecher family-owned books in the Center’s collection, build our understanding of the foundational texts that shaped the family’s 19th-century reform work and publications. In addition, sisters Isabel Hooker and Mary Crary have entrusted the Stowe Center with a set of 10 Harriet Beecher Stowe books inscribed by Stowe to her sister Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822-1907). Publishers Houghton, Mifflin and Company produced this beautiful full set of green cloth-bound works in 1887. As she was wont to do, Stowe asked her publisher for several complimentary sets which she gave as holiday gifts to family and friends that year. The flyleaf of each volume is inscribed: “Isabella Beecher Hooker/From her loving Sister/Harriet Beecher Stowe/Christmas 1887”. The Center is grateful to both the Norman and Nancy B. Beecher trusts and Isabel Hooker and Mary Crary for their most recent generous donations. New Projects for a New Year!   We are excited and grateful to have received a number of grants at the end of 2021 that will support important operations and capital work, as well as visitor experience, throughout 2022.        For the next several weeks, the Stowe Center will highlight our generous grantors and the projects they make possible. (Image: Katharine Seymour Day House. Photo by Julian Parker-Burns) This Saturday: January 15, 3 pm Virtual program Registration for our upcoming Sewing & Learning Workshop is still open for local folks! If you are able to pick up your materials on site on January 13, 14, or 15, then by all means, join us! Features three expert speakers and detailed how-to instructions.  Pricing is flexible.    Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Politics of Pocket Purses offers an opportunity to learn about the complex race, gender, and political history of these objects as you sew, decorate, and discuss a replica of a reticule, a kind of 19th-century pocket purse. (Image: Above left, hand-painted reticule [purse], early 1800s. Bequest of Katharine Seymour Day, Stowe Center.)  ADA, Site & Structural Improvements  Capital Project Update        Our latest multi-year capital project to improve public access and use around the historic campus will begin this spring. Upgrades include widening site walkways; repaving the driveways and parking lot; adding an ADA accessible bathroom in the Visitor Center; Visitor Center and Day House exterior building restorations; and installing ADA-compliant building entrance ramps. Crosskey Architects, LLC has begun work on project schematic designs and audience evaluation surveys and focus groups are planned for the first quarter.