Lyman Beecher

Lyman Beecher (October 12, 1775 – January 10, 1863) was an American Presbyterian minister and abolitionist. He fathered 13 children, over half of whom became writers or ministers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K. Beecher.

According to his son Henry, Beecher was "largely engaged during his life-time in controversy". However, "he was also the most respected religious voice of his era. ...[H]e seemed also to embody all of the nation's moral ideals, in representing the established clergy, who looked to him for leadership."

Beecher was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to David Beecher, a blacksmith, and Esther Hawley Lyman. His mother died shortly after his birth, and he was committed to the care of his uncle Lot Benton, by whom he was adopted as a son, and with whom his early life was spent blacksmithing and farming. But it was soon found that he preferred study. He was fitted for college by the Rev. Thomas W. Bray, and at the age of eighteen entered Yale College, graduating in 1797. He spent much of 1798 at Yale under the tutelage of his mentor Timothy Dwight.

In September 1798, he was licensed to preach by the New Haven West Association, and entered upon his clerical duties by supplying the pulpit in the Presbyterian church at East Hampton, Long Island, and was ordained in 1799. Here he married his first wife, Roxana Foote. His salary was $300 a year plus firewood, after five years increased to $400 (equivalent to $9,000 in 2025), with a dilapidated parsonage. To eke out his scanty income, his wife opened a private school, in which he was an instructor. Following Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton's 1804 duel, Beecher gained popular recognition when he gave a sermon before the Presbytery of Long Island which was promptly published as The Remedy for Duelling in 1806.

Finding his salary wholly inadequate to support his growing family, he resigned the charge at East Hampton, and in 1810 moved to Litchfield, Connecticut, where he was minister for 16 years at First Congregational Church of Litchfield, the town's Congregational church. There he started to preach Calvinism. He purchased the home built by Elijah Wadsworth and reared a large family.

Alcohol intoxication or drunkenness, known as intemperance at the time, was a source of concern in New England as well as in other areas of the United States. Heavy drinking occurred even at some formal meetings of clergy, and Beecher resolved to take a stand against it. In 1826 he delivered and published “Six Sermons on Intemperance”. They were sent throughout the United States, ran rapidly through many editions in England, and were translated into several languages in Europe, enjoying large sales even 50 years later.

During Beecher's residence in Litchfield, the Unitarian controversy arose, and he took a prominent part. Litchfield was at this time the seat of the famous Litchfield Law School (1784–1833) and several other institutions of learning, and Beecher (now a doctor of divinity) and his wife undertook to supervise the training of several young women, who were received into their family. But here, too, he found his annual salary of $800 inadequate.

The rapid and extensive defection of the Congregational churches in Boston and vicinity, under the lead of William Ellery Channing and others in sympathy with him, had excited much anxiety throughout New England. In 1826 Beecher was called to Boston's Hanover Church, where he began preaching against the Unitarianism which was then sweeping the area.