She was married on the 6th of January 1836 to one of the professors in the seminary, Calvin Ellis Stowe.
Mrs Stowe passed eighteen years in Cincinnati under conditions which constantly thrust the problem of human slavery upon her attention.
Slaves were continually escaping from their masters, and were harboured, on their way to Canada, by the circle in which Mrs Stowe lived.
When, therefore, in 1850, Mr Stowe was elected to a professorship in Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and removed his family thither, Mrs Stowe was prepared for the great work which came to her, bit by bit, as a religious message which she must deliver.
Mrs Stowe used the reputation thus won in promoting a moral and religious enmity to slavery.