Home of Calvin Ellis Stowe
This 1816 Federal-style home in South Natick was the childhood home of Calvin Ellis Stowe a biblical scholar and later the husband of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Calvin Stowe became a scholar of Hebrew and biblical literature and met Harriet Beecher at the Lane Seminary in Cincinnati. They married in 1836, and he was instrumental in supporting her when she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin – the novel that changed the course of American history.
Although Harriet never lived in South Natick, she visited the Stowe family home with her husband. In her 1869 novel, “Oldtown Folks”, she transformed South Natick into the fictional “Oldtown”, a New England village rooted in memory. She wrote:
“Oldtown was one of those quiet New England villages where everything has a settled, orderly air; where houses seem to have grown up like the elms, with a certain venerable grace, where the generations have followed one another like the leaves upon the trees” Harriet may not have lived in South Natick, but she absorbed the rhythms of a small town in Massachusetts.
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Natick: The First Praying Indian Town
In 1651, missionary Rev. John Eliot established Natick as the first of the “Praying Indian” towns in Massachusetts. He named the town after the Natick American word Natick, translated as a place of hills or a place of searching. He worked closely with local Massachusett and Nipmic people, teaching them Christianity in their native tongue and translating the Bible […]
Georgia Colonial 1700’s
I love the connection to Colonial America that is still evident on my daily walks around Natick. Here is another example of a Georgian Colonial that dates back to the 1700s. The land was originally purchased from the Praying Indian community of Natick in 1730. South Natick itself was one of the earliest Praying Towns, […]
Horatio Alger’s Gravesite – Natick
This gravesite marks the Alger family plot in Glenwood Cemetery in Natick, the final resting place of Horatio Alger, Jr, one of the most read American authors of the late 19th century. Alger was born in 1832 and grew up in Natick, where his father, Rev. Horatio Alger Sr. served as pastor of the First Congregational […]
