BEECHER, LYMAN ( 1775-1863 ). An Ameri can theologian. He was born in New Haven, Conn., October 12, 1775; (lied in Brooklyn. N. Y., January 10, 1863: descended from one of the New Haven Colony of 1638. He lost his mother when an infant, and was adopted by an Lot Benton; graduated from Yale in 1797. and next year became pastor of the Pres byterian Church at East Hampton, Long Island, where his first wife, Roxana Foote, increased their slender means by teaching a private school. Mr. Beecher's sermon on the death of Alexander Hamilton (killed in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804) gave him immediate fame, which rapidly increased until he was recognized as one of the foremost preachers in the country. In 1810 he went to Litchfield, Conn., where he was pastor of the Congregational Church sixteen years. In 1814 he delivered and printed a series of six sermons against intemperance, which added greatly to his reputation for eloquence and power. He was also foremost in the Unitarian controversy which pervaded eastern New Eng land. In 1826 he became pastor of the Hanover Street Congregational Church, Boston. In 1832 he became president of Lane Theological Semi nary, a new institution near Cincinnati, Ohio, and held the office for twenty years, during the first ten of which he was pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati. In 1835 he
was tried by his Presbytery for teaching false doctrines, but was acquitted then, and again on appeal to the Synod. When the Presbyterian Church separated, he went with the New School branch (1838). In 1852 he returned to Boston, intending to revise and publish his writings, but his mental powers failed, and not very long after wards he retired from public work, removing to Brooklyn, where he lived with his son, Henry Ward Beecher. He was married three times, and had thirteen children. All his sons, seven in number, became clergymen. Dr. Beecher's ser mon's and speeches, though usually delivered extemporaneously, were the result of careful study, and were marked by boldness, convincing argument, shrewd common sense, and irresistible wit. Consult: his Collected Works (3 vols., Bos ton, 1852) ; Autobiography and Correspondence, edited by his son, Charles Beecher (New York, 1865) also James C. White, Personal Reminis cences of Lyman Beecher (New York, 1882).