Advocate For Women's Education

Activist Family

. The oldest child of Lyman Beecher, the nation's most prominent evangelical preacher of the 1820s and 1830s, and the sister of Henry Ward Beecher (the "Shakespeare of the pulpit," as he came to be known) and Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852), Catharine grew up in a home actively engaged in saving souls and reforming society. Born in isolated and rural East Hampton, Long Island, at the age of nine she moved with her family to fashionable and class-conscious Litchfield, Connecticut. Although in East Hampton, Catharine's parents taught her at home, when her family relocated, she began attending a private girls' school. At sixteen the death of her mother forced Catharine to take charge of the Beecher household. It was then that she decided to go into teaching so that she could contribute to the family...