Beecher, Catharine Esther, 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.
See biographies by M. E. Harveson (1932, repr. 1969) and K. K. Sklar (1973).
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