Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/275

 BEECHER.

BEECHER.

1873, and then in Brooklyn in 1881-'82. Dviring these years his health had gradually given way to mental disorder. It was hoped a course of the water-cure treatment would be of benefit, but it failed, his sufferings increased, and he ended his own life at Elmira, N. Y., Aug. 25, 1886.

BEECHER, Lyman, clergyman, was born in New Haven, Conn., Oct. 12, 1775; son of David Beecher. The Beecher family came to Connecti- cut in 1638, and settled at Quinnipiac, naming it New Haven. The first American-born ancestor was Joseph Beecher. His son Nathaniel was a blacksmith, and his anvil stood on the stvunp of the old oak from which Master John Davenport gave the first Connecticut sermon. Then came David, also a blacksmith and farmer, who was connected with the patriot army near the close of the revolutionary war. His third wife was the mother of Lyman. She dying soon after his birth, the motherless child was adopted by, and passed the first sixteen years of his life with his uncle. Lot Benton, of Guilford, Conn. Lyman entered Yale college in 1793, a healthy, stout, farmer's boy, eighteen years old. On entering college, Beecher was undecided whether to study law or theology. In his second college year he became interested in personal religion, but was so depressed in spirits as to be hypochondriacal, and was a long time deciding whether he would ever preach or not. Dr. Timothy Dwight was president, and had great influence on yoimg Beecher, which he acknowledged twenty-five years later, to the joy of the good old doctor. He gained no honors as a student; had little taste for mathematics, but could talk, and was chosen by his class to deliver the valedictory address on presentation day, six weeks before commencement, in 1797, when he was graduated. During his college course he had made the acquaintance of Roxana Foote, who became his wife shortly after his ordination. Beecher, after being examined and licensed, was called to the Presbyterian church, East Hampton, N. Y., at a salary of three hvmdred dollars, with a kind of parsonage -right, after five years increased to four hundred dollars. His first sermon that attracted public attention was on "Duelling," delivered after the death of Alexander Hamilton. It was reprinted as a campaign docimient during the candidacy of Henry Clay for the presidency. He remained in East Hampton over eleven years, eking out his income by conducting a boarding- school for young ladies, in which enterprise he was assisted by his wife. His increasing family necessitated a change of locality, and he removed to Litchfield, Conn., in 1810, and became pastor of the Congregational church. His salary was eight hundred dollars per year. Soon after he was established he took up the cause of temper- ance, being especially moved to do so by what he

deemed the disgraceful scenes he witnessed at the meetings of ministerial associations, where the reverend gentlemen were in the habit of freely using intoxicating liquors. Out of his efforts in behalf of temperance came the Massachusetts temperance society, formed in 1813. Then came his volume, "Six Sermons on Intemperance," which was very effective and popular. Six years after he had taken up his residence in Litchfield his wife Roxana died. At the close of the year 1817 he took for his second wife Harriet Porter of Portland, Maine, the union lasting almost twenty years. After her death, in Cincinnati, in 1835, he married as a third wife Mrs. Lydia Jackson of Boston, Mass., who survived him. At the end of sixteen years' labor in Litchfield, Mr. Beecher found himself in sore distress on account of pecimiary difficulties, and resigned. He received a call from the Hanover street church, Boston, Mass., where for six years he labored, preaching, lecturing and advising in the care of the chvirches. At this time the contest between the Puritan theology and Unitarianism was at its height. He threw himself into it with charac- teristic zeal ; his ovsm church sustaining him, and his clerical brethren approving and assisting. He claimed that Unitarianism had seized Harvard college ; tliat funds donated for the promulgation of a Puritan faith were devoted to a system of faith that antagonized Puritanism ; that a fund for maintaining an annual sermon on the Trinity was paid for lectures controverting the doctrine of the Trinity ; that the Hollis professorship of divinity at Cambridge was employed for the furnishing of a class of ministers whose sole dis- tinctive idea was declared warfare with the ideas and intentions of the donor. This theological controversy was at times most bitter. Some in- dication of the trend of popular feeling is given in an incident connected with the burning of Hanover street church, four years after his set- tlement over it. It is said the firemen would make no effort to extinguish the flames, refused to work the engines, and, parodying Watts's hymns, sang: —

" While Beecher's church holds out to burn, The vilest sinner may return." Events, however, proved the fruitfulness of the vine he had so carefully and patiently nurtured ; for from this church sprang foxir others; mem- bers from it founded Salem street church at the North End, and Pine street church at the South End— the latter became afterwards the Berkeley street church ; other members helped to organize a church in Cambridgeport, and after the burning of the church edifice on Hanover street, another of stone was built on Bowdoin street, which building was afterwards purchased by the P. E. church, and became the Church