Catharine beecher accomplishments
- •
Beecher, Catharine Esther, 1800-1878
Catharine E. Beecher was born in East Hampton, New York, the daughter of Roxana Foote and Reverend Lyman Beecher, the prominent Calvinist minister and pastor of the East Hampton Congregational church. The eldest of nine, and stepsister to four, Catharine was a member of an American family that achieved remarkable influence and success in the areas of literature, social reform, religion and education. Her sister (and co-author) Harriet Beecher Stowe, eleven years her junior, wrote the famous antislavery narrative Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Her brother Henry Ward Beecher, minister and author, was renowned as the greatest orator of his day. Nearly all Catharine’s siblings were active in public life, as clergymen or crusaders for social change.
It is certain that Catharine’s father was a great influence in the girls’ education. Lyman considered education a religious duty, indicative of a soul’s worthiness. Catharine was educated at home in her early years. When she was ten, her family moved to Litchfield, Connecticut -- back to the “mainland” of C
- •
Catharine Beecher
Edited by Debra Michals, PhD | 2015
A member of a prominent activist and religious family, Catharine Esther Beecher was a nineteenth century teacher and writer who promoted equal access to education for women and advocated for their roles as teachers and mothers. Embracing traits associated with femininity such as nurturance, Beecher argued that women were uniquely suited to the moral and intellectual development of children, either as mothers or as educators.
Born in East Hampton, New York on September 6, 1800, Catharine was the eldest of nine children of Roxana Foote and Lyman Beecher, a renowned Presbyterian minister and evangelist. When Beecher was nine years old, the family moved to Litchfield, Connecticut, where she attended the Litchfield Female Academy.
Beecher was 16 years old when her mother died and she began managing the household. A year later, her father married Harriet Porter and the couple had three sons and a daughter—Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the best-selling antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Catharine’s other fa
- •
Catharine Beecher (1800-1878)
About Catharine Beecher
A family of advocates: Catharine Beecher was born in East Hampton, New York, to a family of religious leaders, social reformers, and abolitionists. Her father, Lyman Beecher, and her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, were celebrated clergymen, and her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Training women to become teachers: In 1832, she moved with her father to Cincinnati, where she launched her successful campaign to recruit and train women to be elementary school teachers. Prior to this time, elementary school teaching had been a predominantly male occupation. Emphasizing the domestic ideology of the period, Beecher reasoned that teaching children would allow young, single women to earn a living while practicing the nurturing skills they would later put to use as wives and mothers. With that philosophy in mind, she and her father founded Cincinnati’s Western Female Academy, one of several schools Beecher would establish to train women teachers in Ohio and other midwestern states. Am
Copyright ©bilders.pages.dev 2025