Henry Ward Beecher
Henry Ward Beecher [1]
an eminent Congregational minister, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, June 24, 1813. Graduating from Amherst College in 1834, he then studied theology at Lane Seminary, of which his father was president. He married in 1837 and settled as a Presbyterian minister in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. In 1839 he removed to Indianapolis, and in 1847 accepted the call to become pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, where he remained until his death, March 8, 1887. After 1859 his sermons were published weekly. During his theological course in 1831 he was editor of the Cincinnati Journal, a religious weekly. While pastor at Indianapolis he edited the Farmer and Gardener. He was one of the founders, and for twenty years an editorial contributor, of the N.Y. Independent. In the summer of 1874 Theodore Tilton, formerly his associate in the editorship of that journal, charged him with criminal commerce with Mrs. Tilton. A committee of the Plymouth Church reported the charges to be without foundation; but Mr. Tilton brought a suit against Mr. Beecher, placing his damages at $100,000. The trial lasted six months. The jury failed to agree three standing for the plaintiff and nine for the defendant. Mr. Beecher was prominent as a public speaker. In April 1865, he delivered an address at Fort Sumter on the anniversary of its fall. In 1878 he was elected chaplain of the Thirteenth Regiment, N.G.S.N.Y. He delivered the first three annual courses of lectures in the Yale Divinity School, "Lyman Beecher Lectureship." He was very prolific as a writer, and a list of his works will be found in Appletons' Cyclopcedia of American Biography. See also the Congregational Year-book, 1888, page 19.
