Harriet Beecher Stowe was the foremost American woman author of the 19th century. She wrote "Uncle Tom’s Cabin," the anti-slavery novel that sold second only to the Bible in that century.

The novel was a catalyst to the abolition movement that helped to end slavery.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s last home was in Connecticut. News 12 photojournalist Lori Golias takes us to Hartford in this week’s Road Trip Close to Home.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center is the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s last home. It’s a historic house and now a national historic landmark.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, who was the foremost Calvinist minister of the 19th century. Stowe was raised with her sisters and her brothers understanding that they had to make a difference and a moral good in society.

Stowe first witnessed enslavement at a slave auction in Kentucky in 1833. That visual of a mother and child being separated never left her.

Beth Burgess, director of collections and research at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, says "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" was the greatest abolition work if its time because it really humanized enslaved people in a way that a white audience could understand what it was like to live through enslavement, and to understand what it was like to be separated from your family forever in a lot of cases.

Burgess says the Stowe house has reinterpreted in the last five or six years so that it’s more of a dialogic tour where visitors can have a conversation with a tour guide and the other people on the tour.

She says it’s a safe place to talk about tough subjects such as racism, injustice and insecurities.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center also features an exhibit dedicated to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in which visitors can see the story's legacy as a book, as film and as memorabilia - as well as to examine how that legacy has had positive and negative connotations.

The Stowe Center offers both public tours and virtual events. For more information, click here.