Catharine Beecher was born in East Hampton, New York, to a family of social reformers. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was a minister, and her brother Henry Ward Beecher was a minister and antislavery activist. Her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Catharine Beecher became a teacher. She founded the Hartford Female Seminary in 1823 and the Western Female Institute in 1832. Beecher was also an active writer. In The Duty of American Women to Their Country in 1835, Beecher argued that women should have financial independence but not political influence. For Beecher, a woman’s place was in the home, raising educated, moral children. This idea formed the basis of her most widely read book, A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841), which defines all aspects of women’s work in the home. Beecher wrote that if a woman could not have a family she should become a teacher. In 1852 she founded the American Women’s Educational Association, which started schools in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois. She later returned to New York and died of a stroke in 1878.
