Calvin Ellis Stowe

Life

Stowe was born in Natick, Massachusetts. His father died in 1808, leaving the family impoverished, and he was raised in the home of his maternal grandparents. At twelve he was apprenticed to a papermaker, and he is said to have loved books so much that he learned Latin in his spare moments at work. With the help of benefactors, he entered the academy at Gorham, Maine, in 1820. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1824 and remained there for a year as librarian and instructor. In 1825 he entered Andover Theological Seminary, graduating in 1828.

In 1829 he served as editor of the religious newspaper the Boston Recorder, and the following year he began teaching Greek at Dartmouth College. In 1832 he married Eliza, daughter of the theologian Bennet Tyler, and at about the same time he became professor of biblical literature at Lane Theological Seminary near Cincinnati, Ohio (some sources give the year of his appointment as 1833). The president of Lane Seminary was Lyman Beecher. His wife died in 1834, and in 1836 he married Beecher's daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe. He taught at Bowdoin College from 1850 to 1852 and at Andover Theological Seminary from 1852 to 1864. Failing health led him to resign his professorship in 1864 and move to Hartford, Connecticut, where he died in 1886. Some sources give his birthday as April 26 and his place of death as Florida, but several biographical dictionaries give April 6 and Hartford.

Ministry and Achievements

Biblical scholarship: While a seminary student, at the suggestion of his teacher Moses Stuart, he translated Johann Jahn's Hebrew Commonwealth (1828). In 1829 he published an annotated English translation of Robert Lowth's Latin lectures on Hebrew poetry. He also published an introduction to biblical interpretation (1835), The Religious Element in Education (1844), and The Right Interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures (1853). In 1867 he published Origin and History of the Books of the Bible, which treated both the canon (the list of books recognized by the church as Scripture) and the Apocrypha (writings excluded from the canon).

Public education movement: While in Cincinnati, he worked to improve the public elementary schools and played a major role in founding the College of Teachers, an association of teachers, in 1833. In 1836 he traveled to Europe to study the school systems of Prussia and other countries. The following year he submitted his Report on Elementary Public Instruction in Europe to the Ohio legislature; the report is regarded as having influenced the development of public education in the United States.

Lane Seminary library: He also served as librarian and built up the collection. By 1837 the library held 10,000 volumes and was reportedly the largest college library west of the Allegheny Mountains at the time.

Support of his wife's literary work: He also acted as a publishing agent, assisting Harriet Beecher Stowe in her writing career.

Influence on the Korean Church

No record has been found of any direct connection between Stowe and the Korean church or missions to Korea. In Korea he is known chiefly as the husband of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Assessment

Stowe is regarded as a biblical scholar who overcame poverty to pursue a life of learning and as an educator who helped lay the foundations of public education on the American western frontier. During his years at Lane Seminary, the press mocked him as a mere "satellite" of President Lyman Beecher. Lane Seminary was a Presbyterian institution. When the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America split into the Old School and New School in 1837, the faculty sided with the New School; the Old School faction attempted to gain control of the seminary through litigation but failed.