Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, and the father of 13 children, many of whom became noted figures, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K Beecher.
22 Facts About Lyman Beecher
2.
Lyman Beecher's 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.
3.
Lyman Beecher was fitted for college by the Rev Thomas W Bray, and at the age of eighteen entered Yale College, graduating in 1797.
4.
Lyman Beecher spent much of 1798 at Yale under the tutelage of his mentor Timothy Dwight.
5.
Lyman Beecher's salary was $300 a year plus firewood, after five years increased to $400, with a dilapidated parsonage.
6.
Lyman Beecher purchased the home built by Elijah Wadsworth and reared a large family.
7.
Heavy drinking occurred even at some formal meetings of clergy, and Lyman Beecher resolved to take a stand against it.
8.
In 1826 Lyman Beecher was called to Boston's Hanover Church, where he began preaching against the Unitarianism which was then sweeping the area.
9.
Lyman Beecher served as a pastor for the first ten years of his Lane presidency.
10.
Lyman Beecher was notorious for his anti-Catholicism, and soon after his arrival in Cincinnati authored the nativist tract "A Plea for the West".
11.
Nevertheless, the convent was burned, and just at the season when Lyman Beecher was alerting Massachusetts to danger from the "despotic character and hostile designs of popery".
12.
Furthermore, Lyman Beecher spoke at upper-class churches which the workers would not have attended.
13.
Lyman Beecher is reported to have reacted positively to an announcement of the planned debates on that topic at Lane.
14.
Slaveholders from Kentucky came in and incited mob violence, and for several weeks Lyman Beecher lived in a turmoil, not knowing whether rioters might destroy the seminary and the houses of the professors.
15.
The Board of Trustees interfered during the absence of Lyman Beecher, and allayed the excitement of the mob by forbidding all further discussion of slavery in the seminary, even at meals, whereupon the students withdrew en masse.
16.
Lyman Beecher was neither aware of nor interested in Lane's key role in publicizing abolitionism.
17.
The trial took place in his own church, and Lyman Beecher defended himself, while burdened with the cares of his seminary, his church, and his wife at home on her deathbed.
18.
The great project of their lives was defeated, and they returned to the East, where Lyman Beecher went to live with his son Henry in Brooklyn, New York, in 1852.
19.
Lyman Beecher wished to devote himself mainly to the revision and publication of his works.
20.
Lyman Beecher was proverbially absent-minded, and after having been wrought up by the excitement of preaching was accustomed to relax his mind by playing "Auld Lang Syne" on the violin, or dancing the "double shuffle" in his parlor.
21.
In 1799, Lyman Beecher married Roxana Foote, the daughter of Eli and Roxana Foote.
22.
Lyman Beecher was the author of a great number of printed sermons and addresses.