Calvin Ellis Stowe was an American Biblical scholar who helped spread public education in the United States, and the husband and literary agent of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the best-seller Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Life and career
Stowe was born in Natick, Massachusetts. His father died in 1808, leaving an impoverished widow with two sons. At the age of twelve, Stowe was apprenticed to a paper maker. Stowe had an insatiable craving for books, and acquired the rudiments of Latin by studying at odd moments during his apprenticeship in the paper mill. His earnest desire and determined efforts to gain an education attracted the attention of benefactors who sent him to an academy in Gorham, Maine. He later entered Bowdoin College, and graduated with honors in 1824. After his graduation from Bowdoin, he remained there for a year as an instructor and librarian. In September 1825, he entered Andover Theological Seminary. There, at the instigation of Moses Stuart, a professor, he completed a scholarly translation of Jahn's Hebrew Commonwealth. He graduated in 1828. In 1829, he became editor of the Boston Recorder, the oldest religious newspaper in the United States. In addition to his editorial labors, in 1829 he published a translation from the Latin, with notes, of Lowth's Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews. In 1830 he was appointed professor of Greek at Dartmouth College. In 1832 he married Eliza Tyler, daughter of Rev. Bennett Tyler, of Portland, Maine, and moved to Walnut Hills, near Cincinnati, Ohio, having been appointed professor of Biblical Literature at the new Lane Theological Seminary. Lyman Beecher was the president of the seminary; Stowe was mocked in the press for being Beecher's "satellite". In August 1834 his wife died childless, and in January 1836 he married Harriet Elizabeth Beecher, daughter of Lyman. They had seven children, four of whom died in Harriet's lifetime. He was an ardent critic of slavery, and the Stowes supported the Underground Railroad, temporarily housing several fugitive slaves in their home. While in Cincinnati, Stowe became an important advocate for the development of public schools in what was then the west of the United States, between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. He was critical in the establishment of the College of Teachers there in 1833. In May 1836 he sailed for England, primarily to purchase a library for the Lane Seminary, but he received at the same time an official appointment from the Ohio State Legislature to visit as agent the public schools of Europe, particularly those of Prussia. On his return he published , which urged Ohio to adopt a state-backed educational system like that of Prussia. The Legislature ordered a copy of the book for each of the state's 8,500 school districts, and more copies were given to other state legislatures. He taught religion at Bowdoin from 1850 to 1852 and at Andover Theological Seminary from 1852 to 1864. While at Bowdoin, Harriet began writing her soon-to-be-acclaimed novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. In 1853 and 1856, he visited Europe with Harriet. In 1864, owing to failing health and increasing infirmities, he resigned his professorship and moved to Hartford, Connecticut. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1865. After Harriet's novel became world-known, Calvin wrote his own best-selling book, Origin and History of the Books of the Bible, both Canonical and Apocryphal, one of the first books to examine the Bible from a historical perspective. He also published Introduction to the Criticism and Interpretation of the Bible ; , a lecture ; and , inaugural address. His childhood stories served as the basis for Harriet's books and Sam Lawson's Old Fireside Stories.
