Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American writer and social activist, known mainly for writing the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. She was the daughter of a Congregationalist pastor born in Hartford, Connecticut. From 1832 she worked as a teacher in Cincinnati. Observing slave life in Kentucky (near home) and the abolitionist sentiment at the seminary where she studied had a significant impact on her, in addition to the abolitionist ideals that were defended by her father and the religion she professed. In 1850 she moved to Maine, where she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel about the fate of a noble and heroic African American slave, Uncle Tom, which contributed to the growth of abolitionist ideas in the United States.
