The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

For my project, I took a look at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, and while I did do an overview of how the Center works and how they manage their collections, I tried to focus on how the Center uses information, how they make it available to the public, and how they encourage use and access in the community.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center is a historic house museum and National Historic Landmark located in Hartford, CT. During her lifetime, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote and published over 30 books, her publications varying in topics from domestic advice books, to children’s text books, to biographies and religious studies. She is most famous for the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which became incredibly popular worldwide and made Stowe a household name. Since its publication, however, the way that the novel has been perceived has changed; And so, the mission of the Stowe Center is to “preserve and interpret Stowe’s Hartford home and the Center’s historic collections, promote vibrant discussion of her life and work, and inspire commitment to social justice and positive change” (https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/about/index.shtml#mission). Essentially, the Center’s mission takes Stowe’s work and uses it as a jumping off point to discuss social justice and modern issues that our society faces.

The site consists of three buildings: The Harriet Beecher Stowe House, the Katharine Seymour Day House, and the Visitor’s Center, which occupies an 1873 carriage house located on the property. The Stowe House was the second Hartford home that Stowe occupied, and it was where she spent the last 20 years of her life. The Stowe House is also where Stowe passed away in 1896. Following Stowe’s death, the house and the surrounding property, including the future visitor’s center and the Day house, were sold out by the family. It did not remain out of family hands for long, however, as in 1924, Katharine Seymour Day, Stowe’s grandnice purchased the house and property. Day is the founder of the Stowe Center, as while it did not open in her lifetime, she bequeathed the house and property to a foundation dedicated to Stowe’s legacy. The Day House, which houses administrative offices, bears Katharine Seymour Day’s name in her honor. The Center opened to the public in 1968.

When I visited the Stowe Center, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House was closed to the public, as it is undergoing its first major renovations since 1968. This is to correct major problems in the preservation and disaster planning systems in the House; namely, the lack of a fire suppression system and temperature controls. The House is also undergoing its first major cleaning since it opened to the public. In the meantime, objects that are typically show in the house have been moved into storage, and the tours that traditionally go through the House have been rerouted to go through the Day House, which has been opened to the public during renovations.

The objects that are on display in the Stowe House and the Day house make up a small fraction of the collection of the objects that are housed by the Stowe Center. There are about 225,000 LAM materials held in the Stow Center, including books, manuscripts, photographs, letters, documents, and materials related to the Nook Farm area that the Stowe House (and the Mark Twain House) are located in. The Center offers free research appointments to those who call ahead, and many of their materials are primary sources housed on-sight on what is referred to as ‘The Vault’. These days, the Center does a lot less collecting of materials, and instead is focused mainly on preserving what they have and creating an interactive experience for guests to the Center. About 10% of visitors are international, and 50% are from in state. Most of the spring visitors are student groups, and visitation tends to peak in the spring and summer. Tours of the Center are not simply a walkthrough of Stowe’s life and work, but instead involve discussion groups at the beginning and end of the tours, and focus on continuing dialogs about social justice and change. The tours were changed to meet the guidelines set by the Center’s mission statement. The tours do not shy away from the more negative legacy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin or the stereotypes it helped to create and popularize; it instead uses this to discuss author intent versus the intent of stage and minstrel shows that came about following the book’s popularity (shows that were not made with the input of Stowe herself), and how Jim Crowe and the Reconstruction South also changed how the book was viewed. Uncle Tom’s place in race culture is discussed, and tour guides are given intense training on how to lead discussions on race, not just in the context of Stowe’s work, but in today’s society.

As mentioned previously, the Stowe Center does a great deal to make their information available to the community. The Center hosts salon discussions in the visitors center that are free and open to the public. These salons discuss various topics that relate to the mission statement of the Stowe Center, usually modern social justice issues. For example, when I was visiting the Center, the salon topic of the day was race and portrayals of race in Hollywood. The Center also hosts other events, such as guest speakers; for example, the Center sponsored a discussion with MSNBC political analyst Steve Kornacki which, while hosted offsight, was organized through the Center. A marathon reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was hosted at the Center in March of this year, guest authors are hosted at the Center for events, and free days and open houses throughout the year. The Stowe Prize is, an award given to a US author “who’s written work makes a demonstrable impact on a critical social justice issue in the tradition of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’ Cabin” (https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/worxcms_published/programs.items_page867.shtml), and at the awarding of the Stowe Prize (which also has a student Prize, awarded every alternating year), there is a jubilee held at the Center for the public, which supports Stowe Center education programs and raises awareness of the Center in the eyes of the public. The Center also collaborates on a regular basis with the Mark Twain House, which is located on the same property, and is involved in school programs and after school classes.

In addition to the many programs run by the Center, the Center has an active online presence, with a Facebook page, a Twitter, a Blogger focused exclusively on the salons, and a WordPress site.  The Facebook page updates regularly, with posts discussing activities at the Center and various news related to the Center and its mission statement. Most of their online materials are geared to be more relevant to public interests and the mission.

In addition to being active in the community and doing a great deal to make sure information is accessible to the public through outreach and programs, the Stowe Center does a lot of collaboration with other LAMs. As previously mentioned, the Mark Twain House is located on the same property, and the two sites regularly team up for events and programs. It is a member of the Connecticut Historic Gardens Group, and is a partner with the University of Virginia, which hosts its own Stowe multimedia archive, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture” (http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/). Some of the manuscripts hosted by the Stowe Center are unique and cannot be found anywhere else, and this is a possible collaborative project that could be explored in the future. The materials I found particularly interesting during my tour were related to Uncle Tom and contemporary popular culture. They had fanart (including beautifully done paintings of two characters), toys, games, assorted merchandise, and has a section specially dedicated to various adaptations, which were used to show how the work changed when it was out of Stowe's control. There was a display of many of the international editions throughout the years, giving visitors an idea of how widespread the popularity of this book was. I also liked that the Center had made copies of various primary sources, including the initial serialized version of Uncle Tom's Cabin that appeared in newspapers, so that visitors could interact with various primary sources without damaging any actual materials. The houses themselves are beautiful, and also house some still life paintings done by Stowe, who I did not know painted until my tour there.

Overall, the Stowe Center faces most of the same problems any old house museum does. They’ve been fortunate so far to not have any major disasters yet, and with the renovations happening to Stowe’s house, they are taking major steps to up their disaster readiness. The Vault is in better shape than the house itself, having been created and updated via a grant in 2011, so it has modern climate control and fire suppressants installed, as well as compact shelving. I was told by Beth Burgess, the collection manager at the Center, that all of the materials are kept a safe level above the ground, so there are considerations being taken in case of floods. Because they are not focusing on collecting at the moment, due to having the materials they need to tell the story they want, they are more concerned with keeping these materials in good conditions. Their focus is not so much in collecting, but in taking what they have and making an entertaining, educational experience that stays with their visitors and sparks conversations relevant in today’s world. They’ve taken the necessary steps to keep their materials and houses safe, and have an active online presence, in addition to being active in reaching out to the community.  I would love it if their website showed off more of the materials that they have in storage, and if they had public finding aids, but overall, given the size of the museum, they’re doing a great job. I genuinely enjoyed my visit there, and look forward to going back in the future.

Resources:

Interview with Elizabeth Burgess, Collections Manager of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/ - University of Virginia, Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture

https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/about/faqs.shtml - Stowe Center FAQs

https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/about/index.shtml#mission - Stowe Center Mission Statement

https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/ - Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Website

https://www.facebook.com/HarrietBeecherStowe/ - Stowe Center on Facebook

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe - Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe_House_(Hartford,_Connecticut) - Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Wikipedia

http://harrietbeecherstowe.org/worxcms_published/programs.items_page867.shtml - The Stowe Prize

...and personal experience through two tours of the museum, albeit during its limited renovation period. Special thanks to the dosents and tour guides who answered my initial questions, as well as all the staff of the Stowe Center for doing a wonderful job running this amazing place.