In honor of Women’s History Month, we will be featuring a series of remarkable women in our collections. This Wednesday, we’re highlighting Catharine Beecher.
Catharine Beecher was born in 1800 to the well-known Beecher family in New York. When Catharine was 10, the Beechers moved to Connecticut, where she received her first formal education at Sarah Pierce’s Academy for Young Women. Her mother died when she was 16, leaving Catharine to care for her younger siblings, a task she accomplished well. Many of her siblings grew up to be quite influential: preacher and lecturer Henry Ward Beecher, suffragette Isabella Beecher Hooker, abolitionist Edward Beecher, and author and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Catharine herself drew notice as a passionate educator, reformer, and writer. Catharine’s interest in women’s education led her to travel extensively, writing and teaching to stir up interest in the Beecher Plan, which focused on four professions most open to women: teaching, child care, nursing, and “conservation of the domestic state.” After founding Hartford Female Seminary in Connecticut, she moved west to begin the Western Female Institute in Cincinnati. (Side note: Catharine tried to convinced her friend Mary Lyon to teach at Hartford Female Seminary, but Mary declined the position and opened Mount Holyoke Seminary.)
One of the first schools to adopt Catharine’s Beecher Plan was Milwaukee Female Seminary, which opened in 1848. Catharine came to Milwaukee in 1850 and invested in the school, raising funds and working with local leaders to construct a new building for the school on the corner of Juneau Avenue and Milwaukee Street. Correspondence between Catharine and Increase Lapham can be seen above. Milwaukee Female Seminary changed names several times, and in July 1895, the school (then named Milwaukee College) merged with Downer College to become Milwaukee-Downer College.
In addition to her schools and advocacy of teacher-training, Catharine wrote cookbooks, textbooks, advice books, newspaper articles, and essays, one of which is featured above. In 1850, she helped organize the American Women’s Educational Association. Catharine retired to New York and died in 1878, but her contribution to education in Wisconsin lives on through Milwaukee-Downer College, which was absorbed into Lawrence University in 1964.
Photograph of Catharine Beecher from Wikipedia.
