Catharine Esther Beecher

Catharine Esther Beecher 1800-1878, American educator, b. East Hampton, N.Y.; daughter of Lyman Beecher. She first taught in New London, Conn., and in 1824 founded a girls' school in Hartford. Later she organized the Western Female Institute in Cincinnati (1832) and similar institutions in Quincy, Ill., Milwaukee, and Burlington, Iowa. Author of works on religion, health, and domestic science (which she introduced in her schools), Beecher was indefatigable in the promotion of liberal education for women, although she opposed woman suffrage.

Bibliography: See biographies by M. E. Harveson (1932, repr. 1969) and K. K. Sklar (1973).

Beecher, Catharine E[sther] (1800–1878), daughter of Lyman Beecher and sister of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her work as an educator and reformer included the founding of schools for young ladies at Hartford (1824) and Cincinnati, and main responsibility for the founding of women's colleges in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Her writings include An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism (1837); The Evils Suffered by American Women and …Children (1846); Women Suffrage (1871), on a movement she opposed; and Educational Reminiscences and Suggestions (1874).