“The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin” with author Susanna Ashton

"The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin"

with author Susanna Ashton

October 16, 2024

6:00 – 7:00 PM
FREE

Join us for a presentation from Susanna Ashton on her new book, A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin!

A Plausible Man is a historical detective story that draws on extensive records for evidence of Jackson’s remarkable flight from slavery to freedom, his quest to liberate his enslaved family, and his emergence as an international advocate for abolition. This tale takes us through the Civil War and Reconstruction —where we last glimpse Jackson losing his freedom again on a Southern chain gang.

In December of 1850, a faculty wife in Brunswick, Maine, named Harriet Beecher Stowe hid a freedom seeker in her house. While John Andrew Jackson stayed for only one night, he made a lasting impression: drawing from this experience, Stowe began to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one of the most consequential books in American history and the novel that helped inspire the overthrow of slavery in the United States.

Registration requested for attendance tracking, but not required.

Susanna Ashton is a professor of English at Clemson University. An expert on the history of enslavement and freedom narratives, she was a Du Bois fellow at Harvard’s Hutchins Center, a fellow with Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center, and a Fullbright scholar. The author of Collaborators in Literary America, 1870-1920 and A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin (The New Press), she lives in Clemson, South Carolina.

Location Katharine Seymour Day House

Doors Open

Program 6:00 - 7:00 PM

School Group Interest Form

School Group Interest Form 2024

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

School name:

Please suggest three dates and times when your group would like to visit. (Note: the Stowe Center is closed on Sunday and Tuesday.)

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Adult Group Interest Form

Group Tour Interest Form 2022

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

Group Name:

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What date would you like to visit? (The Stowe Center typically books group tours for Thursday through Sunday visits.)

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Please indicate the number of adults, seniors, and children expected in your group:

Are there special accommodations that can help us serve you best?

Are you interested in a joint visit with our neighbor, The Mark Twain House and Museum?

Yes, please.

No, thank you.

If yes, have you already contacted The Mark Twain House?

Yes

Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.