Young Lyman Beecher

Lyman Beecher

Lyman Beecher

Lyman was born in 1775, the son of David Beecher and his third wife Esther Lyman. He was so weak that the nurse spent all her time tending to his tubercular mother, who died in 2 days. The weak little baby lived eight-eight years, dying in January, 1863. He was raised by an aunt and uncle, the Lot Bentons, on their farm at Guilford, Connecticut, and very soon learned that he would be useless as a farmer. He entered Yale, which was but a primitive high school in 1793.

He met his wife, Roxana Foote, while on a trip to General Ward’s farm at Nutplains with a classmate, and he fell in love at first sight with this beautiful and gifted granddaughter of the General. After graduation from Yale, Lyman spent a year at the Divinity School, studying under Doctor Dwight, a Calvinist of the Edwardian School of thought, whom he revered.

   At this time Lyman was asked to preach as a candidate for the Presbyterian Church at East Hampton, Long Island, and he was accepted at a salary of three hundred dollars a year. He and Roxana were married in 1799 and she joined him at his new pastorate. Children began to make their entrances very quickly, and while living at East Hampton Roxana produced Catharine (1800), William Henry (1802), Edward (1803), Mary Foote (1805), George (1807), Harriet (1811), Henry Ward (1813), Charles (1815). There was another child who died, also named Harriet. Roxana died of consumption in 1816.

   Beecher held pastorates in East Hampton (1798-1810) and Litchfield (1810-1826), as well as Boston (1826-1832) and became president of Lane Seminary, in Cincinnati, Ohio. This is where his second wife, the well-born Harriet Porter, whom he married in 1817, gave birth to Isabella (1822), Thomas Kinnicutt (1824 ) and James, born in 1828. There was another child, Frederick who died very young. While president of Lane ( and also the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church) Lyman made a trip east to recruit more young men for the ministry. In his absence,Theodore Weld, a radical abolitionist, gathered together a group of fifty Lane students and persuaded them to leave Lane for Oberlin College citing Lyman’s refusal to publicly deny slavery. This, on top of a heresy charge he had fought and won, was the last straw. Lyman tried to keep the seminary afloat but it proved to be too much. His second wife Harriet had died in 1838.

Lyman suffered a stroke at the age of 80 and was buried in Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, 8 years later.

There is a house in Cincinnati at 2950 Gilbert Street which is called the Harriet Beecher Stowe house, although she spent very little time there. It is open to the public, and many of the original furnishings are there. One of Lyman’s hand-written sermons sits atop a desk in one of the rooms. It is titled “Total Depravity,” which gives one a clear idea of what was preached in his day.

Although Lyman was noted as a preacher in his lifetime he was gradually overshadowed by his son Henry Ward and his daughter Harriet Stowe. As for being the “father of more brains than any other man in America” I believe that his first two wives just might have had something to do with that.

See companion article in this issue..."The Three Wives of Rev. Lyman Beecher."