Difficult Childhood.

Henry Ward Beecher overcame several obstacles in his early life to become one of the best-known preachers in American history. He did miserably in school and he stuttered, an inauspicious sign in someone whose father wanted him to join the ministry. (His father was the famous conservative Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher.) Nevertheless, after receiving a bachelor's degree from Amherst College, he received a divinity degree from his father's Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. He then obtained a license to preach from the Cincinnati presbytery in 1837, where he developed such a popular preaching style that he soon attracted offers from prestigious churches.

Permanent Home.

Brooklyn was gaining a reputation as a "city of churches." People purchased lots, erected brownstones, and created the institutions that supported middle-class nuclear family life. Two of these people were Henry C. Bowen and John T. Howard, Republican...