A rare, hitherto unpublished, earlier to mid 1863, ‘half-plate’ tintype portrait offers the profile of the author Harriet Beecher Stowe facing son Charles Edward Stowe. Standing in uniform is brother James Chaplin Beecher. The three standing ladies are believed to be daughter Georgiana, sister Mary Beecher Perkins and the author’s twin daughters Eliza and Hatty. Not unlike a modern day family the blessing of fame and fortune came with it’s challenges for the Stowe siblings. Daughter Georgiana fought a morphine addiction all of her adult life. Son ‘Charlie’ ran away to sea sometime after this group portrait was done. Of her wayward son Harriet wrote a lady friend ‘ Unfortunate is the hen who hatches a duck, but one must make the best of it.’ Much later Charles would gratify his mother’s patience by becoming a Calvinist minister pastoring a Saco, Maine perish. (Another son, Frederick William Stowe, will be addressed further on.) Brother James Chaplin Beecher is shown here earlier in the Civil War in a foot officer uniform as a member of the Field and Staff, 67th New York Infantry. He would later be commissioned to serve with the 141st N.Y. Vols. and after that with the Staff of the 35th U.S. Colored Infantry (Corps deAfrique ). Before his discharge more than a year after the war’s close, Beecher would rise through the officer ranks to Lt. Colonel, Colonel and on March 13, 1865, to Brevet Brig. General.