Charles Beecher

Younger Charles Beecher

   Charles Beecher was the one son of Lyman Beecher who suffered desperately from agnosticism and despair after digesting the works of theologian Jonathan Edwards. He did not have the faith to become another Beecher minister, although his father tried mightily to push him in that direction. Instead, Charles was a lover of music and tried his hand at that profession, studying in Boston with Lowell Mason, the foremost church musician in America.

   Born in 1815, Beecher received his education at the Boston Latin School, Lawrence Academy at Groton, Massachusetts, and finally at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati where he studied  theology with his father. However, his disgusted father said of him,”Charles has founded his determination on feeling, his plans on hopes andhis arguments on obstinacy.”*

   After teaching music for several years in Cincinnati, Charles traveled to New Orleans, where he taught and served as organist in a Presbyterian church. While there Charles met and married Sarah Leland Coffin and collected information on slavery which he later passed on to sister Harriet, who made use of it in her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His brother Henry Ward, concerned about Charles’ lack of faith, invited him to Indianapolis to oversee the music and also teach a Sunday School class in Henry’s church

   In a sermon entitled “The Duty of Disobedience to Wicked Laws,” he brought down the wrath of his fellow minsters, who expelled him from the ministeral brotherhood of the city. Unlike his father who had also been accused years before and judged innocent, Charles was convicted. He went from the Georgetown church to Wysox, Pennsylvania, but later returned to Georgetown where he died in 1900, the last of Lyman Beecher’s sons to go. He and Sarah had 7 children.

   Anya Laurence has been acquainted, for many years, with Charles’ gggrandson Judge (Ret) James K. Shaw.

*Saints, Sinners and Beechers, by Lyman Beecher Stowe.