Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) - Find a Grave Memorial

Religious Figure, Social Reformer. The father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher and Isabella (Beecher) Hooker. Lyman Beecher went to Yale College at the age of 18 and graduated in 1797. He spent 1798 in Yale Divinity School and was ordained pastor of the Presbyterian Church at East Hampton, Long Island in 1799. He gained popular recognition in 1806, after giving a sermon concerning the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. He was called to a Congregationalist parish in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1810 and started preaching Calvinism which stressed the evils of intemperance and slavery. Here he delivered six successive sermons on intemperance, which were published and widely read in the United States and Britain. He resigned his Litchfield post in January of 1826 and, shortly after, was invited by Boston's Hanover Church to be their minister. He organized revivals in Boston and preached vehement sermons on intemperance. In 1832, he moved his family to Cincinnati where he accepted a position as pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Cincinnati and became the first president of Lane Theological Seminary. At Lane, Beecher worked to educate future ministers, wanting them to spread across the American West and save people from their sinful ways. Within a few years of its founding, the seminary was divided over the issue of slavery. The school's board of directors tried, against Beecher's wishes, to prohibit students from supporting abolitionism in 1834. Beecher's years there were controversial and, in 1835, Joshua Lacy Wilson, pastor of First Presbyterian, charged him with heresy. The case was in the church courts and councils for three years before he was finally exonerated. Many church members openly complained about Beecher's fiery oratory and, tired of the constant bickering, he resigned his position in 1850. He returned to Boston for a short while, but the last ten years of his life were spent living with his son Henry in Brooklyn.

Bio by: GravRidr