LIFE AND LETTERS OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE CHAPTER I ANCESTRY AND EARLY CHILDHOOD THERE were generations of character and fine development behind the life of Mrs. Stowe. John Beecher and his mother, the first of the race who came to this country, eighteen years after the arrival of the Mayflower, were of the company of Davenport, a distinguished clergyman of London, under whose leadership came a rich and able body of men and women with the serious intention of founding a new colony. Mrs. Beecher was a good woman, and useful to the company, therefore they gave her a lot of land in New Haven, whither they soon betook themselves. The equivalent of this land had been promised to her husband before his death, which occurred on the eve of their departure. Their first religious service was held under a large oak upon this place, and there later the house was built, called latterly the old Beecher house. It is impossible to understand the development of genius unless we regard the root from which it springs. We wonder at the beauty of the rose, but we think little of the bush which bore it until we find no other rose to equal it, and then we say, Whence came this wonder! The Beecher race may justly be considered a nòble one, as we trace it from this beginning; strong in spirit as well as in body, always readers and thinkers, always animated with love of the public good, and holding it predominant above private good. The grandfather of Mrs. Stowe was "one of the best read men in New England; well versed in astronomy, geography, and history, and in the interests of the Protestant reformation. Old Squire Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, used to say that he always calculated to see Mr. Beecher as soon as he got home from Congress to talk over the particulars." Surely it is not often that one discovers such persistence of traits and habits as in this family. One would seem to be reading of Mrs. Stowe's father rather than her grandfather, as the history continues: "He always kept a number of college students and of representatives to the Legislature as boarders, being fond of their conversation. He often kept pace with his student boarders in their studies, frequently spending his evenings in their rooms. He had a tenacious memory for what he read, but was entirely forgetful and careless as to his dress, hat, tools, etc." This grandfather was not a preacher, nor a college-bred man. He was a farmer and blacksmith and maker of tools, employing a man to do the ordinary work of the shop. Dr. Beecher used to say he himself was so like his father that when his sister Esther grew old she often called him "father" by mistake, instead of “brother.” The same strange absent-mindedness which we shall find in Mrs. Stowe is spoken of as a trait in her grandfather's character. "Your Aunt Esther," says Dr. Beecher, "has known him at least twelve times to come in from the barn and sit down on a coat pocket full of eggs, jump up and say, 'Oh, wife!' 'Why, my dear,' she would reply, 'I do wonder you can put eggs in your pocket after you have |