Harriet Beecher Stowe House

At a glance

Overview

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House at 2950 Gilbert Avenue in Cincinnati's Walnut Hills is the brick house Lane Theological Seminary built for its president, Lyman Beecher, who arrived from Boston with his family in 1832. Lane was chartered in 1829 on land given by the Kemper family, and in February 1834 its students, led by Theodore Weld and joined by the formerly enslaved James Bradley, held eighteen evenings of public argument over slavery that converted nearly all of them to immediate abolition; when the trustees banned the subject that fall, most of the students walked out and many went on to Oberlin. Harriet Beecher lived in the house until her 1836 marriage to Lane professor Calvin Stowe, and the Cincinnati years, including the debates and the story of Eliza heard at the Rankins' in Ripley, fed the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). After the Beechers the house was a private home, then in the 1930s and 1940s the Edgemont Inn, an African American boarding house and tavern listed in the Green Book; a citizens' association bought it in 1943 and it opened as a state historic site in 1949. Lane closed in 1932 and the rest of its campus was gone by 1956; the house, owned by the Ohio History Connection and run by the Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House, completed a full restoration in 2024.

The name

The house carries the name of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who lived in it with her father's family before her 1836 marriage. Lane Seminary took its name from Ebenezer Lane, a Maine-born New Orleans merchant who with his brother William pledged $4,000 over four years, plus a quarter of their later income, on condition the school be run on the manual labor plan. (source)

Native American history

Nothing Native American is recorded at the house site itself. In 1815 Daniel Drake described the ancient earthworks then still visible in the river basin below the hills: an elliptical embankment about 800 by 660 feet near Fifth and Race streets, long parallel banks, a circular enclosure and four mounds, the largest 27 feet high after Gen. Anthony Wayne's troops cut about eight feet off its top in 1794 to post a sentinel; the mound at Third and Main held stone, copper and human remains. Drake did not assign the works to any people, and archaeologists have not tied them to this site. The historic nations that used and contested southwest Ohio included the Shawnee, Miami and Delaware (Lenape); the Treaty of Greenville, signed August 3, 1795, by the Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, Miami and others, confined Indian country to northwestern Ohio and ended their claim to the Cincinnati region. The Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House acknowledge the land as the traditional territory of the Chippewa, Delaware, Kickapoo, Miami, Osage, Ottawa, Peoria, Potawatomi, Shawnee and Wyandot.

• Cincinnati basin earthworks (elliptical enclosure near Fifth and Race): earthwork, Downtown Cincinnati river basin, below Walnut Hills, Prehistoric; described 1815, since destroyed
• Mound at Third and Main streets: mound, Downtown Cincinnati; leveled by the grading of Main Street, Prehistoric
• Treaty of Greenville: treaty, Signed at Fort Greenville; covered southern and eastern Ohio including the Cincinnati region, 1795

Stories

Eighteen nights at Lane

In February 1834 the Lane students announced two questions for debate: whether the slaveholding states ought to abolish slavery immediately, and whether the American Colonization Society deserved Christian support. Each was argued two and a half hours a night for nine nights, and no one spoke for slavery or for colonization, so the 'debates' worked more like a revival. Theodore Weld had spent months persuading students one by one; eleven participants had grown up in slave states and seven were slaveholders' sons. The most remembered speaker was James Bradley, the only Black participant, who had been enslaved and had bought his freedom. A student reported that Bradley spoke nearly two hours, answering the claim that freed people could not support themselves by pointing out that they already supported themselves and their masters too. Harriet Beecher, the president's daughter, was in attendance, as was John Rankin of Ripley. (source)

The Lane Rebels walk out

After the debates the students formed an antislavery society and opened schools, a lyceum and a library for Cincinnati's Black residents. That summer, with anti-abolition riots in the news and Lyman Beecher away raising money in the East, the trustees' executive committee ordered the society disbanded, barred student meetings and even talk at meals on the subject, and dismissed professor John Morgan for siding with the students. Most withdrew on October 21; trustee Asa Mahan resigned with them. About a dozen kept up a seminary of their own in an empty brick tavern at Cumminsville, teaching in Black schools, before most enrolled at Oberlin in 1835. In December they published a 28-page pamphlet, written by Weld, giving their reasons. Lane was left with a handful of students and, by one account, never recovered. (source)

A seminary on the manual labor plan

Lane began with a merchant's wish. Ebenezer Lane of New Orleans had wanted an education in his youth and could not afford one, and the manual labor plan, in which students paid their way by working three or four hours a day at farming or a trade, struck him as the answer. He and his brother offered $1,000 a year for four years and a fourth of their income after that, first hoping Baptists and Presbyterians would share the school, then giving it to the Presbyterians. The Kemper family of Walnut Hills gave 60 acres of their farm on the Montgomery Road, with a deed providing that if the seminary failed, the land would be divided among four national religious and benevolent societies. The trustees then needed a famous name to draw Eastern money, and Eastern advisers named Lyman Beecher of Boston, and Arthur Tappan pledged $20,000 toward his salary on condition that he accept the presidency. (source)

The Edgemont Inn

After the Monfort family left in the late 1920s, the old president's house entered a second life. By the 1930s Walnut Hills was a busy African American business district, and the house had become a boarding house and tavern called the Edgemont Inn, home to 19 residents newly arrived in Cincinnati in the Great Migration. Its proprietor, Irene Bacon, kept one of only a few Cincinnati taverns listed as safe for Black travelers in Victor Hugo Green's Negro Motorist Green Book, where the Edgemont appeared in every edition from 1939 through the 1940s. The restoration completed in 2024 returned parts of the house to 1940 so that this period is told alongside the Beechers'. (source)

'A lighthouse symbolizing good will'

From 1943 to 1949 the Harriet Beecher Stowe Home Memorial Association worked to buy and restore the house as a museum and community center. Its members acted out of concern for race relations and civil rights, and from fear that the house would lose its historic character. The association drew Black residents and leaders from Walnut Hills and across the city together with white allies, working through churches, fraternal groups, civil rights organizations, lawyers, politicians and women's clubs, and won support from the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society. It had raised the purchase price by the end of 1943, the Ohio House of Representatives added money for renovation, and in 1949 the house opened as an Ohio historic site whose museum centered on Black history. (source)

Timeline

• 1794: Gen. Anthony Wayne's men cut about eight feet off the largest ancient mound in the Cincinnati basin to post a sentinel on it. (source)
• 1795: On August 3 the Treaty of Greenville confined Indian country to northwestern Ohio, ending Native claims to the Cincinnati region. (source)
• 1804: Rev. James Kemper built a two-story double-pen log house on Kemper Lane in Walnut Hills; his family lived in it until 1897. (source)
• 1828: On October 27 a board of 23 trustees organized to found a manual labor seminary with the gift of the New Orleans merchants Ebenezer and William Lane. (source)
• 1829: On January 1 Elnathan Kemper offered 60 acres of the family farm on Walnut Hills as a site, conveyed by a Kemper family deed on December 9. (source)
• 1829: The Ohio legislature chartered the seminary on February 11, making manual labor its 'fundamental principle.' (source)
• 1830: Lane's board offered its presidency to Boston's Lyman Beecher after fire damaged his Hanover Street Church; he turned it down, accepting a second offer in 1832. (source)
• 1832: In September Harriet Beecher, 21, came west from Litchfield, Connecticut, with her father's household. (source)
• 1832: Lyman Beecher began as president of Lane on December 26, the point from which the seminary is counted as actually operating. (source)
• 1833: The president's house, built by the seminary for the Beecher family, was completed. (source)
• 1833: Theodore Weld and other former Oneida Institute students arrived in June; the fall theological class of about 40 was the largest yet gathered in America. (source)
• 1834: In February Lane students held eighteen evenings of debate on immediate abolition and colonization, attended by Harriet Beecher and John Rankin, with James Bradley speaking for nearly two hours. (source)
• 1834: Students opened day, evening and Sabbath schools, a lyceum and a library for Cincinnati's Black residents. (source)
• 1834: With Beecher away in the East, the trustees ordered the antislavery society disbanded and adopted restrictive standing rules on October 13, and dismissed professor John Morgan. (source)
• 1834: Most students withdrew on October 21; in December 51 of them signed a published Statement of their reasons. (source)
• 1835: After a winter running their own seminary in exile at Cumminsville, most of the Lane Rebels enrolled at Oberlin with trustee Asa Mahan as its president. (source)
• 1836: Harriet Beecher married Lane professor Calvin Ellis Stowe at the seminary on January 6; the couple would have seven children, including twin daughters. (source)
• 1838: During a church synod at Ripley, the Rankins told Lyman Beecher and the Stowes the story of the woman who crossed the frozen Ohio with her child, later the Eliza of Uncle Tom's Cabin. (source)
• 1850: The Stowes left Ohio for Brunswick, Maine, where Calvin Stowe had a post at Bowdoin College. (source)
• 1852: Uncle Tom's Cabin, serialized in The National Era from June 5, 1851, came out as a book on March 20, 1852, and sold 300,000 copies in less than a year. (source)
• 1852: Lyman Beecher ended twenty years as Lane's president and returned east. (source)
• 1865: Joseph G. Monfort bought the house; it stayed with his family until Mary Monfort moved out in the late 1920s. (source)
• 1908: A major remodeling replaced the original staircase with the present grand staircase and added new mantels and oak floors. (source)
• 1932: Lane Seminary suspended operations and sent its faculty, library and students to McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. (source)
• 1939: The house, now the Edgemont Inn run by Irene Bacon, appeared in the Negro Motorist Green Book, listed in every edition from 1939 through the 1940s. (source)
• 1943: The interracial Harriet Beecher Stowe Home Memorial Association raised enough money by year's end to buy the house. (source)
• 1949: The house opened to the public as an Ohio historic site, with a museum focused on Black history. (source)
• 1956: The last remnants of the Lane campus, except the president's house, were destroyed; a marker at 2820 Gilbert Avenue now marks the site. (source)
• 1970: The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 10. (source)
• 1977: In October the Ohio Historical Society and the Citizen's Committee on Youth began a three-year rehabilitation using youth workers aged 16 to 19. (source)
• 2024: A full interior and exterior restoration was completed, returning parts of the house to 1840 (the Beecher home) and parts to 1940 (the Edgemont Inn). (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: Harriet Beecher Stowe House (Cincinnati, Ohio)
• en.wikipedia.org: Lane Seminary
• en.wikipedia.org: Harriet Beecher Stowe
• en.wikipedia.org: Lyman Beecher
• en.wikipedia.org: James Bradley (former slave)
• en.wikipedia.org: Walnut Hills, Cincinnati
• en.wikipedia.org: Kemper Log House
• en.wikipedia.org: Treaty of Greenville
• archive.org: MN41980ucmf 3
• archive.org: ASPC0001868700 djvu.txt
• archive.org: naturalstatistic00drak djvu.txt
• nps.gov: oh1
• stowehousecincy.org: discover the history
• stowehousecincy.org: the 20th century history of the house
• stowehousecincy.org: meet the beecher family
• stowehousecincy.org: restoration
• npgallery.nps.gov: 70000485 text