There were many accomplished members of Lyman Beecher's family, and Catharine, the eldest, was no exception.
East Hampton, Long Island
Catharine Esther Beecher was born in East Hampton on September 6, 1800, the first of Lyman Beecher's many children. At the age of ten she moved with her family to Litchfield, Connecticut, where her father had accepted the pastorate of the Congregational church. She was enrolled at Miss Sarah Pierce's School for Young Ladies, where Catharine admitted to doing very little work but having a great deal of fun.
"Occasionally my kind teacher wondered how and when my lessons were learned, and complimented me as the 'busiest of all creatures in doing nothing.' "
Alexander Metcalfe Fisher
Having become the surrogate mother when her own mother Roxana died, Catharine did not take lightly to her father's new wife, Harriet Porter Beecher. However, Catharine soon had more to think about...she was in love with Alexander Metcalfe Fisher, who at the age of twenty-three was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Yale College. Sadly, their relationship was shortened when Metcalfe, on a trip to Europe was drowned when his ship, the Albion, was wrecked off the coast of Ireland. Catharine grieved for many years over the state of his immortal soul, which her father did not help by constantly questioning it with her.
Religious Publications
In 1836 she published her views on religion in "Letters on the Difficulties of Religion," which received a scathing review by the Princeton Review. Catherine asserted that "the control of our emotions is within our power and though we cannot control them by direct volition, as men control the movement of their lives, we have an indirect control that is just as efficient..." She expanded on these views in the 1857 publication "Common Sense Applied to Religion" or "The Bible and The people ." Her next work would be in1864 with "The Religious Training of Children in the School, the Family, and the Church."
Educational Institutions
In 1823, Catharine and her sister Mary (later Mrs. Perkins), started a school on Main Street in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1827 she published "Female Education," and she felt that she was saving souls through education, as Lyman felt he was doing through revivals. She went on to establish the Western Female Seminary in Cincinnati; a school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which ultimately became the Milwaukee-Downer College; even two weeks before she died at the age of seventy-eight, she was planning to consult with heads of Women's institutes to see what ideas she could bring to the subjest of female education.
Emma Willard and Mary Lyon
Two educators of young girls are still well known to us, and the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, stands as a living memorial to Willard's memory. Mary Lyon is often cited as a main force in women's education, but the name of Catharine, a real pioneer in this field, seems to be forgotten today.
Catharine was the first born of Lyman's brood, and deserves to be remembered, along with her more famous siblings, as a force in American education.
Source: Saints, Sinners and Beechers, by Lyman Beecher Stowe, The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, Indianapolis, 1934.
"Love Divine: The Life of Henry Ward Beecher, " by Anya Laurence, iUniverse Puboishing, 2006
For further information about the Beecher family see:
Rev Edward Beecher The Scholar
Who Was Isabella Beecher Hooker?
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