Harriet Beecher Stowe: a biography for girls

by Martha Foote Crow

Dr. Beecher had also another object in view, which was to do some energetic begging for the foundation of the Biblical professorship in the Theological Seminary of which he was about to take charge. Harriet, in writing back to friends in Hartford about it, said casually: “The incumbent of this foundation is to be C. Stowe.” This is the first time that we hear the name of the one who is to bear so large a part in the story of Harriet Beecher’s life.

From New York the Beecher company went by steamboat to Philadelphia. Here they had the great misfortune to lose track of all their baggage. They had to wait for a time in Philadelphia until it could be traced to another wharf. It was finally recovered and brought on, but not till after the ladies of the family, usually the very pink of perfection in their starched and snowy collars and lace edgings, had suffered extreme discomfort because of the limp and dusty condition of their frills. The comfort of the family was at last restored and the mother and Aunt Esther were supplied with fresh caps and ruffles. Great was the joy! Dr. Beecher struck an attitude as the boxes were brought in, swung his hat, and called for three cheers. “So should a man do,” cried Harriet, “whose wife has not had a cap or a ruffle for a week!”

The delay in Philadelphia was not specially unwelcome. Here the party was separated into two sections: the father and mother with Aunt Esther and the baby, went to one friend’s house, and the older children to another. Their hosts were rich, hospitable folks and their visits were full of enjoyment. There was much to be seen by the young people, and the father’s energies were taken up with conferences and preaching and with prayer-meetings held specially for the success of the great missionary object that was calling him into what seemed to them all a very far-away country.

By all this business they were kept so long that Mrs. Beecher and Aunt Esther demurred at the delay. Dr. Beecher told them that they were in the hands of Providence, but they said that they would much prefer to trust Providence by the way!

At last they were all ready to take the plunge into the actual west.

If their journey had but been a few years later, a railroad train would have taken them as far as Columbia, Pennsylvania; then a canal would have carried them along the east bank of the Susquehanna River as far as the entrance to the Juniata. At this point the canal would have crossed that great river by means of an aqueduct and they would have followed the blue Juniata to Hollidaysburg. There the problem how to get over the forbidding mountain ridge that faced them would have been solved by the exciting method of a portage which by means of pulleys drew the cars up to fourteen hundred feet above that town, using three levels for separate short journeys from level to level. The descent to Johnstown on the other side of the ridge would have been made by the same method reversed, and the canal packet boat from that place would have used the Kiskiminetos River along to Pittsburgh, where the great Ohio River would have brought them to Cincinnati. All this could have been done in 1836. But this was 1832; and none of these things were under way at the time, though they were being more or less seriously thought of. The only method of traveling in the year 1832 was by the time-honored daily or tri-weekly stages.

Of these stage-coach lines an elaborate system was at their service; for the largest part of the journey, the family availed themselves of this method, sometimes, however, finding it more economical for so large a party to charter a coach and have it all to themselves.

We may imagine them climbing into a big old-fashioned stage, drawn by four great horses, and starting out for Wheeling, a city that lies right in the line from New York to the southern part of Ohio, if you make the line curve a little bit to the south in order to make the easiest cut through the mountains.

The company included Dr. and Mrs. Beecher and Aunt Esther; and for children, there were Catherine, Harriet, Isabella, George, Thomas and James; some of these names have been added to the list since the Litchfield days. As for this company of young folks, it may be safely said that they enjoyed every inch of the way; no badness of the roads, no threat of tempest, no weariness of unsupported backs, could subdue their skipping spirits. There was plenty of room in the coach with three on a seat. Besides that, George sat with the driver on the box, and as the journey progressed, and new drivers took their places at the points where horses were exchanged, he acquired every little while a new set of stories which he faithfully shouted back to the occupants behind. George was also a great singer, and led the choir of the whole coachful in singing hymns and songs. Whenever they passed through a town or along by a small wayside village, he let loose a packet of tracts and snowed them all along the road for the inhabitants to pick up after the cavalcade had gone by. And woe be to any wayfaring people that came along the road if they did not love tracts, for these snowy batteries were discharged regularly upon the head of each one they met! Harriet called out to him, “George, you are peppering the country with moral influence.”

The first day was full of enjoyment; they had an obliging driver, good roads, good spirits, a good dinner, fine scenery. Harriet pronounced it all good. That day they went about thirty miles and reached Downingtown], Pennsylvania. Here, as Harriet said, they were dropped down like Noah and his wife and his sons and his daughters, with the cattle and creeping things. And here they had the first night’s rest of their real pilgrimage.