Description: Reverse reads "Edgemont Inn, Cincinnati, Ohio." Located at 2950 Gilbert Avenue, at the corner of Foraker Avenue in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Edgemont Inn, formerly the Old Home Seminary, is now known as the Harriet Beecher Stowe House. The two story, gray painted brick home with wooden front porch was home to Harriet Beecher Stowe prior to her marriage, and to her father, Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher, and his large family, a prolific group of religious leaders, educators, writers, and antislavery and women's rights advocates. The Beecher family includes Harriet's sister Catherine, an early female educator and writer who helped found numerous high schools and colleges for women; brother Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, a leader of the women's suffrage movement and considered by some to be the most eloquent minister of his time; General James Beecher, a Civil War general who commanded the first African American troops in the Union Army recruited from the South; and sister Isabella Beecher Hooker, a women's rights advocate. The Beechers lived in Cincinnati for nearly 20 years, from 1832 to the early 1850s, before returning East. Shortly after leaving Cincinnati and basing her writing on her experiences in Cincinnati, in 1851-1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe authored the best-selling book of its time, Uncle Tom's Cabin, a fictionalized popular account of the pain slavery imposed on its victims and of the difficult struggles of slaves to escape and travel, on the Underground Railroad, to freedom in the northern states or Canada. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and is now a site of the Ohio History Connection. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B03F05_024_001
Subjects: Architecture; Hotels; Cincinnati (Ohio)--Buildings, structures, etc.; Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896; Beecher, Lyman, 1775-1863; Underground Railroad
Places: Cincinnati (Ohio); Hamilton County (Ohio)
 

Description: The Edgemont Inn is a 2-story gray painted brick building on the corner of Gilbert and Foraker Ave. This former Beecher Homestead was the home of Rev. Dr Lyman Beecher (1775-1863). His family included Harriet Beecher Stowe and it is reasonable to assume that she received some of her anti-slavery sentiments in this house where prominent abolitionists came to visit. Among them was Levi Coffin, "President" of The Underground Railroad, whose residence was around the corner on 3131 Wehrman Ave. This structure was completed in 1833 to house the president of Lane Seminary, founded in 1830. Dr. Beecher was the first president of the seminary. Harriet Beecher Stowe's first two children, twins Eliza and Harriet, were born in the house in 1836. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B03F05_041
Subjects: Architecture; Hotels; Cincinnati (Ohio)--Buildings, structures, etc.; Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896; Beecher, Lyman, 1775-1863; Underground Railroad
Places: Cincinnati (Ohio); Hamilton County (Ohio)