Did you know???

Pearls melt in vinegar.

(I would say try it... but it seems like an expensive science experiment)

Q - When was child labor banned in the US?

Answer:

In the United States it took many years to outlaw child labor. Connecticut passed a law in 1813 saying that working children must have some schooling. By 1899 a total of 28 states had passed laws regulating child labor.

 

Many efforts were made to pass a national child labor law. The U.S. Congress passed two laws, in 1918 and 1922, but the Supreme Court declared both unconstitutional. In 1924, Congress proposed a constitutional amendment prohibiting child labor, but the states did not ratify it. Then, in 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. It fixed minimum ages of 16 for work during school hours, 14 for certain jobs after school, and 18 for dangerous work.

 

Today all the states and the U.S. Government have laws regulating child labor. These laws have cured the worst evils of children's working in factories. But some kinds of work are not regulated. Children of migrant workers, for example, have no legal protection. Farmers may legally employ them outside of school hours. The children pick crops in the fields and move from place to place, so they get little schooling.

  

Child labor has been less of a problem in Canada because industry there did not develop until the 1900's. The Canadian provinces today have child labor laws similar to those in the United States. Most other countries have laws regulating child labor, too. But the laws are not always enforced, and child labor remains a problem.

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_was_child_labor_banned_in_the_US#ixzz21MyYL3vz

Child Labor in U.S. History - Aren't you glad you don't have to do this???

Breaker Boys

Hughestown Borough Pa. Coal Co.
Pittston, Pa.
Photo: Lewis Hine

Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American history. As industrialization moved workers from farms and home workshops into urban areas and factory work, children were often preferred, because factory owners viewed them as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike. Growing opposition to child labor in the North caused many factories to move to the South. By 1900, states varied considerably in whether they had child labor standards and in their content and degree of enforcement. By then, American children worked in large numbers in mines, glass factories, textiles, agriculture, canneries, home industries, and as newsboys, messengers, bootblacks, and peddlers.

Spinning Room

Cornell Mill
Fall River, Mass.
Photo: Lewis Hine

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the numbers of child laborers in the U.S. peaked. Child labor began to decline as the labor and reform movements grew and labor standards in general began improving, increasing the political power of working people and other social reformers to demand legislation regulating child labor. Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined, and common initiatives were conducted by organizations led by working women and middle class consumers, such as state Consumers’ Leagues and Working Women’s Societies. These organizations generated the National Consumers’ League in 1899 and the National Child Labor Committee in 1904, which shared goals of challenging child labor, including through anti-sweatshop campaigns and labeling programs. The National Child Labor Committee’s work to end child labor was combined with efforts to provide free, compulsory education for all children, and culminated in the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor.

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Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938:
Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage
By Jonathan Grossman
When he felt the time was ripe,
President Roosevelt asked
Secretary of Labor Perkins,
'What happened to that
nice unconstitutional bill
you had tucked away?'

On Saturday, June 25, 1938, to avoid pocket vetoes 9 days after Congress had adjourned, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed 121 bills. Among these bills was a landmark law in the Nation's social and economic development -- Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). Against a history of judicial opposition, the depression-born FLSA had survived, not unscathed, more than a year of Congressional altercation. In its final form, the act applied to industries whose combined employment represented only about one-fifth of the labor force. In these industries, it banned oppressive child labor and set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, and the maximum workweek at 44 hours.¹ 

Forty years later, a distinguished news commentator asked incredulously: "My God! 25 cents an hour! Why all the fuss?" President Roosevelt expressed a similar sentiment in a "fireside chat" the night before the signing. He warned: "Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, ...tell you...that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry."² In light of the social legislation of 1978, Americans today may be astonished that a law with such moderate standards could have been thought so revolutionary.

Did you know???

The 20th president of the United States, James Garfield, was able to write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other at the same time.
 

Summer is here!!

Today in History!! Wilma Rudolph ... American hero

She was born today - June 23, 1940

Wilma Rudolph

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Olympic medalist
Medal record
Women's athletics
Gold	1960 Rome	100 m
Gold	1960 Rome	200 m
Gold	1960 Rome	4 x 100 m relay
Bronze	1956 Melbourne	4 x 100 m relay

Wilma Glodean Rudolph (June 23, 1940 – November 12, 1994) was an American athlete. Rudolph was considered the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and competed in two Olympic Games, in 1956 and in 1960.

In the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games.^[1] A track and field champion, she elevated women's track to a major presence in the United States. She is also regarded as a civil rights and women's rights pioneer. Along with other 1960 Olympic athletes such as Cassius Clay, who later became Muhammad Ali, Rudolph became an international star due to the first international television coverage of the Olympics that year.^[2]
The powerful sprinter emerged from the 1960 Rome Olympics as "The Tornado," the fastest woman on earth.^[3] The Italians nicknamed her La Gazzella Negra ("The Black Gazelle"); to the French she was La Perle Noire ("The Black Pearl").^[4][5] She is one of the most famous Tennessee State University Tigerbelles, the name of the TSU women's track and field program.

Biography

 

Wilma Rudolph was born prematurely at 4.5 lbs., the 20th of 22 siblings; her father Ed was a railway porter and her mother Blanche a maid.^[6] Rudolph contracted infantile paralysis (caused by the polio virus) at age four. She recovered, but wore a brace on her left leg and foot (which had become twisted as a result) until she was nine. She was required to wear an orthopaedic shoe for support of her foot for another two years. Her family travelled regularly from segregated Clarksville, Tennessee, to Fisk University's black medical college hospital in Nashville, Tennessee for treatments for her twisted leg. In addition, by the time she was twelve years old she had also survived bouts of scarlet fever, whooping cough, chickenpox, and measles. ^[6]

Wilma Rudolph at the finish line during 50 yard dash at track meet in Madison Square Garden, 1961

 

In 1952, 12-year-old Rudolph finally achieved her dream of shedding her handicap and becoming like other children. Her older sister was on a basketball team, and Wilma vowed to follow in her footsteps. While in high school, Rudolph was on the basketball team when she was spotted by Tennessee State track and field coach Ed Temple. Being discovered by Temple was a major break for a young athlete. The day he saw the tenth grader for the first time, he knew he had found a natural athlete. Rudolph had already gained some track experience on Burt High School's track team two years before, mostly as a way to keep busy between basketball seasons.^[7]

While attending Burt High School, Rudolph became a basketball star setting state records for scoring and leading her team to the state championship. She also joined Temple's summer program at Tennessee State and trained regularly and raced with his Tigerbelles for two years.^[6] By the time she was 16, she earned a berth on the U.S. Olympic track and field team and came home from the 1956 Melbourne Games with an Olympic bronze medal in the 4 x 100 m relay to show her high school classmates.^[6]

At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome she won three Olympic titles: the 100 m, 200 m and the 4 x 100 m relay. As the temperature climbed toward 110 degrees, 80,000 spectators jammed the Stadio Olimpico. Rudolph ran the 100-meter dash in an impressive 11 seconds flat. However the time was not credited as a world record, because it was wind-aided. She also won the 200-meter dash in 23.2 seconds, a new Olympic record. After these wins, she was being hailed throughout the world as "the fastest woman in history". Finally, on September 11, 1960, she combined with Tennessee State teammates Martha Hudson, Lucinda Williams and Barbara Jones to win the 400-meter relay in 44.5 seconds, setting a world record.^[6] Rudolph had a special, personal reason to hope for victory—to pay tribute to Jesse Owens, the celebrated American athlete who had been her inspiration, also the star of the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin, Germany.^[8]
Following post-games European tour by the American team Rudolph returned home to Clarksville. At her wishes, her homecoming parade and banquet were the first fully integrated municipal events in the city's history. ^[6]

 
Rudolph retired from track competition in 1962 at age 22 after winning two races at a U.S.–Soviet meet.
In 1963, Wilma married her high school sweetheart, Robert Eldridge, with whom she had four children: Yolanda (1958), Djuanna (1964), Robert Jr. (1965), and Xurry (1971). They later divorced.

Awards and honors

Rudolph was United Press Athlete of the Year 1960 and Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year for 1960 and 1961. Also in 1961, the year of her father's death, Rudolph won the James E. Sullivan Award, an award for the top amateur athlete in the United States, and visited President John F. Kennedy.^[9]
She was voted into the National Black Sports and Entertainment Hall of Fame in 1973^[10] and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974.^[11]

 
She was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983, honored with the National Sports Award in 1993, and inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.^[12]

In 1994, the portion of U. S. Route 79 in Clarksville, Tennessee between the Interstate 24 exit 4 in Clarksville to the Red River (Lynnwood-Tarpley) bridge near the Kraft Street intersection was renamed to honor Wilma Rudolph.

Career and family

In 1963, Rudolph was granted a full scholarship to Tennessee State University where she received her bachelor's degree in elementary education. After her athletic career, Rudolph worked as a teacher at Cobb Elementary School, coaching track at Burt High School, and became a sports commentator on national television.

She married her high school sweetheart Robert Eldridge in 1963, and had four children: Yolanda (b. 1958), Djuanna (b. 1964), Robert Jr. (b. 1965) and Xurry (b. 1971). Rudolph and Eldridge later divorced.

Death

In July 1994, shortly after her mother’s death, Rudolph was diagnosed with brain cancer. On November 12, 1994, at age 54, she died of cancer in her home in Nashville. At the time of her death, she had four children, eight grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews.^[13] Thousands of mourners filled Tennessee State University's Kean Hall on November 17, 1994, for the memorial service in her honor. Others attended the funeral at Clarksville's First Baptist Church. Across Tennessee, the state flag flew at half-mast.
Nine months after Rudolph's death, Tennessee State University, on August 11, 1995, dedicated its new six-story dormitory the "Wilma G. Rudolph Residence Center." A black marble marker was placed on her grave in Clarksville's Foster Memorial Garden Cemetery by the Wilma Rudolph Memorial Commission on November 21, 1995. In 1997, Governor Don Sundquist proclaimed that June 23 be known as "Wilma Rudolph Day" in Tennessee.^[14]
 

Legacy

In 1994, Wilma Rudolph Boulevard was the name given to the portion of U.S. Route 79 in Clarksville, Tennessee.

The Woman's Sports Foundation Wilma Rudolph Courage Award is presented to a female athlete who exhibits extraordinary courage in her athletic performance, demonstrates the ability to overcome adversity, makes significant contributions to sports and serves as an inspiration and role model to those who face challenges, overcomes them and strives for success at all levels. This award was first given in 1996 to Jackie Joyner-Kersee.^[15]

A life-size bronze statue of Rudolph stands at the southern end of the Cumberland River Walk at the base of the Pedestrian Overpass, College Street and Riverside Drive, in Clarksville.^[16]

In 2000 Sports Illustrated magazine ranked Rudolph as number one in its listing of the top fifty greatest sports figures in twentieth-century Tennessee.^[17]

Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Berlin in 1994, Berlin American High School (BAHS) was turned over to the people of Berlin and became the "Gesamtschule Am Hegewinkel." The school was renamed the "Wilma Rudolph Oberschule" in her honor in the summer 2000.^[18]

On July 14, 2004, the United States Postal Service issued a 23 cent Distinguished Americans series postage stamp in recognition of her accomplishments.
 


In 1977 a made-for-TV docudrama titled Wilma (also known as The Story of Wilma Rudolph) was produced by Bud Greenspan; it starred Shirley Jo Finney, Cicely Tyson, Jason Bernard and Denzel Washington in one of his first roles.

Making pizza healthier

Diabetes sucks and Si's mama has it .. so we have to make lots of regular meals super healthy. Hence this pizza covered in loads of fresh veggies, beans, lean meats and a smidge of cheese on a flatbread whole wheat crush and homemade sauce. Delicious looking.. yes?

Did you know???

Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone.

Ouch!!

Learning the Big Bang (lesson activity)

 It took days to tape all these index cards together to create a representative model for Silas, Shelby and Lucas as to how old the Earth is - and where human history was in the development of the universe. My daughter Shannan stands clear at the end of the cards - way back in the blue... clear down the road past the fella in red. Unfortunately, we didn't think about the wind and it broke the cards. But still.. the kids got to see it before it snapped.

 Then we filled a balloon full of sand, lentils, etc and had the kids close their eyes. We talked about empty space and then about the beginning of the planets.. having them hold together their hands - generating heat in their palms - keeping their eyes closed the entire time. Just then, the balloon was popped and the debri went all over the table. It was amazing and such a great visual of the Big Bang.

Did you know???

Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star.

Something that made me chuckle today...

Did you know???

By donating just one pint of blood, four lives can be saved.

The homeschool classroom is getting done!! Yay!!

The Five Worst Healthy Fast Food Meals for Kids

By Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine | Parenting – Wed, Jun 13, 2012 6:59 PM EDT

Which five healthy fast food kids meals aren't really that healthy?Calling them contributors to the childhood obesity epidemic, a non-profit advocacy group made up of nutritionists and physicians has named the five worst "healthy" fast-food meals for kids -- and some longtime favorites are on the list.

For the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) study, dietitians took a look at the calories, fat, sodium, sugar, and cholesterol content using data from the fast-food restaurants' websites. They focused on many of the 53 large and small chain restaurants that participate in Kids Live Well, a program aimed at increasing the "healthful" options on their menus. (McDonald's ubiquitous Happy Meal was also included in the study, even though the chain isn't part of the Live Well campaign.)


"Frankly, passing off these meals as 'healthy' ought to be a crime at a time when 16.9 million American children and adolescents are obese," PCRM president Dr. Neal Barnard wrote in a blog post this week. "The focus on junk food targeted to kids is important, given how miserably the fast-food industry has failed to live up to its promise of self-regulation."

"Fast-food chains usually do little more than throw a few apple slices into kids meals in order to label them as 'healthy'," he added.

• Number one on their worst-for-kids list is a "healthier" option from Chick-Fil-A: The Grilled Nuggets Kids' Meal, which comes with six chunks of grilled chicken, waffle potato fries, and low-fat chocolate milk. When you include fat content from the fries and the milk, the entire meal has 570 calories, 19 grams of fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 75 milligrams of cholesterol, 1,150 milligrams of sodium, and 23 grams of sugar.
• In second place: McDonald's Cheeseburger Happy Meal. The combination of cheeseburger, fries, apple slices, and low-fat white milk (plus a toy) contains 520 calories, 20 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 920 milligrams of sodium, and 22 grams of sugar.
• Sonic's Kids' Jr. Burger Meal, with a burger, apple juice, and apple slices with fat-free caramel dipping sauce came in third with 550 calories, 17 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 715 milligrams of sodium, and a whopping 42 grams of sugar, thanks to that caramel sauce. "This meal contains more sugar than two Twinkies," the report points out.
• Burger King's Hamburger Kids Meal, with fat-free milk and apple slices, has 380 calories, 10 grams of fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 40 milligrams of cholesterol, 615 milligrams of sodium, and 24 grams of sugar, making it one of the best of the bunch. Still, 40 milligrams of cholesterol, the PCRM points out, is equal to 6 slices of fatty pork bacon.
• Even family-style restaurants caught criticism for their so-called healthy options. Denny's Build Your Own Jr. Grand Slam -- egg whites, two slices of turkey bacon, hash browns, and orange juice -- has 332 calories, 11 grams of fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 40 milligrams of cholesterol, 570 milligrams of sodium, and 30 grams of sugar, and the PCRM takes issue with the fact that turkey bacon, while lower in fat than traditional bacon, is a processed food.

The recommended daily allowances for a child age 4 or older is 2,000 calories, 65 grams of fat, 20 grams of saturated fat, 300 milligrams of cholesterol, 2,400 milligrams of sodium (sugar is not a daily nutritional requirement). All five of these meals fall well within that range, though it's easy to see how eating several fast-food meals each week could really add up.


PCRM is a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to good nutrition, preventive medicine, and higher ethical standards in research. But it also has a long-held pro-vegetarian/vegan mission and has argued that eating meat is a major reason why so many people are obese in the United States. (PCRM's director of nutrition education, Susan Levin, told the Washington Post in 2010 that when it comes to added fat, salt, and sugar in non-vegetarian foods, "You might as well just put heroin in it.") And the PCRM report seems to indicate that one reason they consider these particular kids' meals unhealthy is because all of them contain meat and dairy products.

"Kids are still getting cholesterol-laden chicken, artery-clogging cheeseburgers, and cancer-promoting processed meats," the report says. "Reduced-fat and fat-free plain or chocolate milk is often offered as a 'healthier' beverage option, but it still contributes to a meal's overall cholesterol and sugar counts."

Switching from fried to grilled doesn't make the meal healthier, either, as far as PCRM is concerned. Chick-fil-A's four-piece Kids Grilled Chicken Nuggets may have less fat (1 gram, per its website's meal calculator) than the six-piece fried version (9 grams), but "Grilled chicken is the largest source of PhIP, a potent carcinogen that may play a role in the development of breast, prostate, and other cancers," the report points out.

"PCRM does single out cholesterol on two occasions -- and I think that's a stretch," Dr. David Katz, the director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University, told The Huffington Post. "Dietary cholesterol is not a significant factor in cardiovascular health. So that's the one instance where their general opposition to animal foods shows through."



Copyright © 2012 Yahoo Inc.

This day in history

Washington takes command of Continental Army 237 years ago

June 14, 2012
By U.S. Army Center of Military History

Gen. George Washington, first commander of the Continental Army often stopped and talked with citizens to personally explain his vision for American freedom during the American Revolution.

WASHINGTON (June 15, 2012) -- Before the American colonies even made their declaration of independence, the Second Continental Congress gathered together in Philadelphia 237 years ago to formally create a standing Army.

The next day, June 15, 1775, Congress chose George Washington, a Virginian, to be commander in chief. Washington's military experience was perhaps greater than that of any other American, and he came from the largest and arguably the most important of the southern colonies. His impressive appearance, quiet and confident manner, and good work in the military committees of Congress had impressed his compatriots.

Washington himself recognized, when he accepted the command, that he lacked the requisite experience and knowledge in handling large groups of men. His entire military experience had been in frontier warfare during the French and Indian War, though he had commanded a brigade of troops from several colonies during the capture of Fort Duquesne. He was the only native-born American up to that time to command a force that size. Experience gained as a political leader in his native Virginia and in directing the business affairs of his large plantation at Mount Vernon also stood him in good stead.

Washington brought to command traits of character and abilities as a leader that in the end more than compensated for his lack of European military experience. Among these qualities were a determination and a steadfastness of purpose rooted in an unshakable conviction of the righteousness of the American cause, a scrupulous sense of honor and duty, and a dignity that inspired respect and confidence in those around him. Conscious of his own defects, he was always willing to profit by experience.

The Army of which Washington formally took command on July 3, 1775, he described as "a mixed multitude of people under very little discipline, order or government." Out of this mixed multitude, Washington set out to create an Army shaped in large part on the British image. Basing his observations on his experience with British regulars during the French and Indian War, he wrote: "Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak and esteem to all."

Washington and his staff made strenuous efforts to halt the random comings and goings of officers and men and to institute regular roll calls and strength returns. Suspicious of the "leveling" tendencies of the New Englanders, Washington made the distinction between officers and enlisted men more rigid. He introduced various punishments such as the lash, pillory, wooden horse, and drumming out of camp along with courts-martials.

While establishing discipline in the existing army, Washington had at the same time to form a new one enlisted directly in the Continental service. Out of conferences with a congressional committee that visited camp in September 1775 emerged a plan for such an army, composed of 26 regiments of infantry of 728 men each, plus one regiment of riflemen and one of artillerymen. In all, 20,372 men became uniformly paid, supplied, and administered by the Continental Congress and enlisted to the end of the year 1776. The general by his choice received no pay throughout the Revolution.

It was a decent plan on paper; but Washington soon found he could not carry it out. Both officers and men resisted a reorganization that cut across the lines of the locally organized units in which they were accustomed to serve. The men saw as their first obligation their families and farms at home, and they were reluctant to re-enlist for another year's service.

Washington also had to maintain the siege of Boston and overcome his deficiencies in supply. In these efforts he was more successful. Congress and the individual colonies sponsored voyages to the West Indies, where the French and Dutch had conveniently exported quantities of war materials. Washington put some of his troops on board ship and with an improvised navy succeeded in capturing numerous British supply ships.

He sent Col. Henry Knox, later to be his chief of Artillery, to Forts Ticonderoga; and Knox in the winter of 1775-1776. Knox brought some 50 pieces of captured cannon to Cambridge, Mass., over poor or nonexistent roads in icebound New York and New England. By March 1776, despite deficiencies in the number of continentals, Washington was ready to close in on Boston.

On March 4, 1776, he moved onto Dorchester Heights and emplaced his newly acquired artillery in position to menace the city; a few days later he fortified Nook's Hill, standing still closer in. On March 17 the British moved out.

Maj. Gen. William Howe, who succeeded Maj. Gen. Thomas Gage in command, had concluded long since that Boston was a poor strategic base and intended to stay only until the transports arrived to take his army to Halifax in Nova Scotia to regroup and await reinforcements.

Nevertheless, Washington's maneuvers hastened his departure, and the reoccupation of Boston was an important psychological victory for the Americans, balancing the disappointments of the Canadian campaign. The stores of cannon and ammunition the British were forced to leave behind were a welcome addition to the meager American arsenal and helped win the revolution.

 http://www.army.mil/article/40819/

Literature Fact

Did Mark Twain (1835-1910) ever borrow a cup of sugar from "Uncle Tom's Cabin" author Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)? Possibly, because they owned adjacent homes in the Nook Farm section of Hartford, Conn. Twain lived in his huge Hartford house from 1874 to 1891, during which time he wrote classic novels such as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." Stowe's impressive home was also no cabin! The Stowe and Twain dwellings remain today, and are open to the public. One highlight of a Twain tour is seeing footage of the author filmed by Thomas Edison in 1909 (the clip can also be viewed on YouTube). Watch it in a well-ventilated room, because Twain is smoking his ever-present cigar.

 Harriet was born today - June 14, 1811






"The object of these sketches is to awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race, as they exist among us; to show their wrongs and sorrows, under a system so necessarily cruel and unjust as to defeat and do away the good effects of all that can be attempted for them, by their best friends, under it.

--Harriet Beecher Stowe
Author's preface from Uncle Tom's Cabin

---

 
 You don't have to drive out East to see her house... well, one of her houses! She lived right here in Ohio and you can take a tour! Information is below this article.





The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is operated as an historical and cultural site, focusing on Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The site also includes a look into the family, friends, and colleagues of the Beecher-Stowe family, Lane Seminary, and the abolitionist, womens rights and Underground Railroad movements in which these historical figures participated in the 1830's to 1860's, as well as African-American history related to these movements

The house was home to Harriet Beecher Stowe prior to her marriage and to her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, and his large family, a prolific group of religious leaders, educators, writers, and antislavery and womens rights advocates. The Beecher family includes Harriet's sister, Catherine Beecher, an early female educator and writer who helped found numerous high schools and colleges for women; brother Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, a leader of the womens suffrage movement and considered by some to be the most eloquent minister of his time; General James Beecher, a Civil War general who commanded the first African-American troops in the Union Army recruited from the South; and sister Isabella Beecher Hooker, a womens rights advocate.

The Beechers lived in Cincinnati for nearly 20 years, from 1832 to the early 1850's, before returning East. Shortly after leaving Cincinnati and basing her writing on her experiences in Cincinnati, in 1851-1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe authored the best-selling book of its time, Uncle Tom's Cabin, a fictionalized popular account of the pain slavery imposed on its victims and of the difficult struggles of slaves to escape and travel, on the Underground Railroad, to freedom in the northern states or Canada. Published just after the draconian fugitive slave laws were enacted by the US Congress in 1850, the book made Harriet Beecher Stowe's name a household word in the United States. Uncle Tom's Cabin has been published in over 75 languages and is still an important text used in schools all over the world. Written at a time when women did not vote, have legal rights, or even speak in public meetings, Uncle Tom's Cabin became an important part of the social fabric and thought that eventually caused the Civil War to break out and the southern slaves to be emancipated by President Abraham Lincoln, effective in 1863. Uncle Tom's Cabin is a remarkable example of how one person can make a huge impact to improve the lives of millions of people.

When Harriet Beecher Stowe met President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he is said to have exclaimed, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

The Stowe House offers cultural events and programming and the House and grounds are available to groups for rental for meetings and special events.

The adjoining grounds are maintained by the Cincinnati Park Board.

The site is operated by experienced volunteers. We are also seeking new volunteers to assist in a wide variety of activities at the Stowe House. Training is available. Please contact the volunteer coordinator if you are interested in helping to preserve the Stowe House and its heritage for future generations.

 __________________________________________________________________________

 Tour the house!

Visitor Hours: May 1 - Labor Day

Tuesday	10 a.m - 2 p.m
Wednesday	10 a.m - 2 p.m
Thursday	10 a.m - 2 p.m
Saturday	10 a.m - 2 p.m
Federal Holidays	CLOSED
Other Hours	By appointment or chance

Hours: Labor Day - Thanksgiving

Thursday	10 a.m - 1 p.m
Saturday	10 a.m - 1 p.m
Federal Holidays	CLOSED
Other Hours	By appointment or chance

Hours: Thanksgiving - January 31:Closed
Hours: February 1 - April 30

Thursday	10 a.m - 1 p.m.
Saturday	10 a.m - 1 p.m
Other Hours	By appointment or chance

Hours: Year-Round

Last Sunday of the month a Cultural or Arts program will be offered. Call for details or to confirm time.

4 - 6 p.m.

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Admission

FREE	School and tour groups welcome. Groups of 10 or more will be requested to make a contribution of $ 25 or more, depending on size of the group and the scheduling of the visit.

Location View Larger Map Stowe House is located at 2950 Gilbert Avenue at the corner of Martin Luther King Drive and Gilbert Avenue (State Route 3 and US Route 22) in in the historic Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati, in Hamilton County. It is accessible from I-71. There is additional off-street parking across the street at Gilbert & Beecher, at the African-American Chamber of Commerce. Cincinnati Metro Bus Route 1 stops in front of the House and also stops at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Zoo, and downtown attractions (Fare is $ 1 for adults). General Information Harriet Beecher Stowe House 2950 Gilbert Avenue Cincinnati, OH 45206 Phone: 513.751.0651 (House) or, if no answer, 513.324.2218 (B. Furr) Contact: B. Furr, Volunteer Coordinator, Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Inc. E.Mail: stowehouse@zoomtown.com Thank you for your interest in the Ohio Historical Society!   ------------------------------