Teacher

An Evangelical Childhood.

Born in 1800 as the eldest child of Lyman Beecher, Catharine Beecher enjoyed a special relationship with her high-spirited father when he was a young, dynamic minister first on Long Island and then in Litchfield, Connecticut. Raised on a New England farm, Lyman Beecher played pranks on his eleven children, joined them in chopping wood and hoeing the garden, and participated with gusto in their rural tramps and games. He also taught them his robust Calvinism, badgering them with reminders of sin and a vividly imagined hell. Yet Catharine also was influenced by her genteel mother, Roxana Foote Beecher, as well as the education she received from age ten in the works of eighteenth-century British authors, admonitions to female virtue, and the genteel accomplishments at Sarah Pierce's Litchfield Female Academy. A lively and intelligent child, Catharine excelled in social situations and participated...