Stowe was simply the wife of Calvin Stowe, an eccentric and poor theologian at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine; an overworked housewife with a large brood of children; and a minor writer specializing in short, vernacular New England tales and didactic writings. Like most of the Beechers, she saw life in terms of moral commitments, but she had been a helper in Catharine Beecher’s missions for feminine education and a sympathizer with her father’s and brothers’ various crusades rather than an active organizer herself.
