Ancestry—Beecher—Ward—Foote—The Anvil—The Oak—Courtship and Marriage of Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote—Home at East Hampton, Long Island—Removal to Litchfield, Connecticut.

Henry Ward Beecher used to say that the first thing for a man to do, if he would succeed in life, is to “choose a good father and mother to be born of.” He himself was eminently wise, or fortunate, as the case may be, in this matter.

“My earthly life,” he says, “was given me by two of the best folks that ever lived on earth.” His father, Lyman Beecher, was one of the leading preachers, reformers, and controversialists of his day. Sturdy in body and mind, full of sensibility, aflame with enthusiasm, devoted to the highest aims and utterly unselfish in life, a Christian in whom deep spirituality and strong common sense were happily blended, he was just the man to transmit excellent qualities to his children; a father to be enjoyed while living, and to be remembered with love and reverence after his death.

Of him his son says: “While he was eloquent and among the foremost speakers of his day, I remember particularly that I never heard from him a word of uncharitableness, nor saw a symptom of envy or jealousy, or aught else but the most enthusiastic love of men, and of young men and young ministers; and knowing him in the household, I have yet to know another person that was so devoid of the inferior feelings and so eminent in the topmost feelings of human nature.”

Lyman’s father’s name was David, a well-read, clear-headed man, with decided opinions upon the questions of the day; one with whom Roger Sherman delighted, upon his return from Congress, to talk over the business of the session and discuss public affairs. He kept college students as boarders, that he might enjoy their conversation, and made himself proficient in many of their studies. Of him his son said: “If he had received a regular education he would have been equal to anybody.” He was both blacksmith and farmer, and had the reputation of “raising the nicest rye and making the best hoes in New England.”

Lyman Beecher’s mother was a Lyman, a woman “of a joyous, sparkling, hopeful temperament.” Her grandfather was a Scotchman, thus giving a little Gaelic blood to the veins of her descendants. In his autobiography Lyman Beecher says: “She died of consumption two days after I was born. I was a seven-months child, and when the woman that attended on her saw what a puny thing I was, and that the mother could not live, she thought it useless to attempt to keep me alive. I was actually wrapped up and laid aside. But after a while one of the women thought she would look and see if I were living, and, finding I was, concluded to wash and dress me, saying: ‘It’s a pity he hadn’t died with his mother.’ So you see it was but by a hair’s-breadth I got a foothold in this world.” He was taken in charge by “Aunt Benton” and brought up on his uncle Lot Benton’s farm in North Guilford, where farm-work and farm-fare made him strong.

Their intention was to make a farmer of him; but the intolerable slowness of an ox-team, in ploughing fifteen acres of summer fallow three times over in a single season, so disgusted the lad that he became restless. His uncle saw it, and upon consultation with the father they decided to send him to school to prepare for Yale College, which was accordingly done. He often said, “Oxen sent me to college.”

David’s father’s name was Nathaniel. He was also a blacksmith, and the anvil of both father and son stood upon the stump of that old oak under which John Davenport preached his first sermon to the New Haven Colony. He married a Sperry, “a pious woman,” whose mother was a Roberts from Forlallt, Cardiganshire, Wales. From her, his great great-grandmother, came the fervid Welsh blood with which Henry Ward was always so well pleased.

Joseph was the father of Nathaniel. His father’s name was John, of whom tradition says that he was one of those who in the fall of 1637 accompanied Samuel Eaton in his explorations for a suitable location for the colony of John Davenport, that had just come over and was then staying at Boston; and that he was one of the very few men who lived through the winter in the poor hut that had been built at “Quinnipiack,” New Haven, that they might pre-empt the territory and be in readiness to welcome the colony in the following spring.

He was the only son of Hannah Beecher, whose husband, born in Kent, England, died just before the colony sailed. She was about to abandon the enterprise, but, being a midwife and likely to be of service to the youthful colony, they promised her her husband’s share in the town plot if she would come. They kept their word, and it was in her lot that the historic oak just mentioned stood.

Her business seems not to have been remarkably lucrative, for at her death her estate inventoried only £55 5s. 6d.

One earlier mention of the family was found by Mr. Beecher in the British Museum during his visit to England in 1863, and copied in his diary:

“Visitation of Kent, 16,279 Brit. Museum.

“Henry Beecher, alderman and sheriff of London 1570, ob’t 1571.”

Apparently of more than the average intellectual ability of their class, there was one feature in which the men whom we have described markedly excelled—namely, in their physical strength. The standard of measurement was peculiar to those early times, and may not be as well understood by us; yet it even now conveys the idea of great stalwartness. David, it was said, could lift a barrel of cider and carry it into the cellar; Nathaniel, his father, was not quite as strong, yet he could throw a barrel of cider into a cart; while Joseph exceeded them all, for he could lift the barrel and drink out of the bung-hole. Of Henry, the sheriff, no description has been found.

There was one especial feature of degeneracy in these modern days, compared with the good old times of the fathers, over which Henry Ward, when Mrs. Beecher was just within earshot, moaned and groaned. His grandfather, he said, had five wives, his father had three, but such was the meagreness of these penurious times in which he lived, and the persistence of the Bullard blood, that he saw no chance for himself to have more than one. But afterwards, lest she should feel hurt at his raillery, he writes her with many expressions of affection, in a letter dated March 31, 1872: “It“It has always been a shadow over the future to fear that I should walk alone the few remaining years of my life, for alone I shall be if you go from me. In jest we have often spoken of other connections. But such a thing is the remotest of possibilities. Should you go no one would ever take your place.”

Such was the ancestry selected on the father’s side. Six generations, without question, are known to us, reaching from the hills of Litchfield, in Connecticut, to the chalk-cliffs of Kent, England. For that distance we can trace the family stream up to its sources in the great body of the English common people, in that county most characteristic of England, where the Roman had first struggled with the Briton, where the “free-necked men,” under Hengist and Horsa, had first made a lodgment on English soil, and near which was Hastings and the fields of the Norman conquest, and where, perhaps more than in any other county, mingled those different strains of blood, Briton, Roman, Saxon, Northmen, Scots, and Picts, out of which has come England’s strength and England’s greatness. We find all of them of the yeomanry, all of them honest, useful, God-fearing men, fit to be the progenitors of one who delighted in nothing more than in his common experiences with common people, and valued nothing more highly than their confidence and friendship.

Nor would it be difficult to find in the sturdy independence and quaint humor of these men of the anvil and the plough, the origin of much of that robust and humorous manliness which made Henry Ward Beecher so conspicuous in his day and generation.

His power to strike heavy blows and to hit the nail on the head was partly inherited, and that anvil-ring of the fathers has been often heard in these latter days under his sledge-hammer strokes. If the iron were not hot, he heated it by striking, and sparks flew, and men’s hearts and minds were moulded and welded before he was done.

More than this, there appears in him something of the love of the “shield-game” and the “sword-play” of those earlier generations that were “at heart fighters,” and something also of the sadness and heroism which led them to say, “Each man of us shall abide the end of his life-work; let him that may, work his doomed deeds ere death come.”

On the mother’s side the selection was somewhat different. While we find no more sterling qualities, there is in this line a higher social position, more culture, a broader training in public affairs, both civil and military, and what with some may appear of still greater importance, a coat-of-arms given as a special mark of royal gratitude.

Roxana Foote had gentle blood in her veins. She could trace her genealogy on the father’s side back through Nathaniel Foote, who came into Connecticut with Hooker’s company in 1636, to James Foote, an officer in the English army, who aided King Charles to conceal himself in the “Royal Oak” and was knighted for his loyalty. As the old primer has it:

The tree stood in a field of clover, and the Foote coat-of-arms still bears an oak for its crest and a clover-leaf in its quarterings, with the motto “Loyalty and Truth.”

Her mother, Roxana Ward Foote, was descended from Andrew Ward, who came over with Sir Richard Saltonstall and settled in Watertown, Mass., in 1630.

He afterwards moved to Wethersfield, and was a member of the first General Court, or Legislature, held at Hartford in 1636. Later he moved to Stamford, and represented that colony in the higher branch of the General Court at New Haven.

From him descended Colonel Andrew Ward, who took part in the old French and Indian war and aided in the capture of Louisburg in 1745. Of him it is told that, being a stanch cold-water man, he took money in lieu of his daily rations of grog. With this he bought six silver spoons, on which he had engraved the name “Louisburg.” Some of these spoons are still preserved in the family, witnesses to the virtue and valor of one of its honored ancestors.

His son was General Andrew Ward, of Revolutionary fame, who, at the close of the war, went back to his native town, Guilford, and took up his residence upon a farm of about two hundred acres, called Nutplains. For many years he represented the town in the State Legislature, being nominated, it is said, year after year by some one of the town worthies in this primitive manner: “The meeting is now open, and you will proceed to vote for General Ward and Deacon Burgess for representatives.”

When his daughter, an only child, who had married Eli Foote, was left a widow, he took her with her ten children to his home at Nutplains, and cared for them as if they were his own. Being a great reader, and always bringing home with him from the Legislature his saddle-bags full of books, which were read aloud and discussed in the family, this home became a school that afforded superior advantages for gaining acquaintance with literature, for acquiring such knowledge of science as was accessible at that time, and for exciting thought and interest. In that school Roxana, the second-born of the family, is represented to have been easily first both in intellect and goodness.

Taking her part in the labor of the household at a time when it was expected that the woman portion would not only care for the house, prepare the food, and make the clothes for all the family, but also weave and spin the materials as well, she yet managed to acquire an education of which graduates of our modern schools and colleges might well be proud. “She studied while she spun flax, tying her books to the distaff.” She not only became well read in literature and history, and acquainted with the progress of science, then just beginning to attract the attention of scholars, but learned to write and speak the French language fluently. She gave enough attention to music to be able to accompany her voice on the guitar, and was sufficiently skilled in the use of pencil and brush to paint some very creditable portraits upon ivory, several of which are still in the family. She was an adept in the mysteries of the needle, “in fine embroidery with every variety of lace and cobweb stitch,” and was gifted with great skill and celerity in all manner of handicraft, so that in after-years “neither mantua-maker, tailoress, or milliner ever drew on the family treasury.”

Belonging to a family distinguished in both branches of her ancestry, and residing, while her father lived, in the centre of the village of Guilford, which could boast that more than four-fifths of its original population belonged to families with coats-of-arms in Great Britain, and afterwards taken to the home of her grandfather, General Ward, who was the foremost man of the town and one of the leading men in the State, and who kept open house to all strangers, she enjoyed the best social advantages which the times afforded.

Tall and beautiful in form and feature, with a winning and yet commanding presence, “she was so sensitive and of so great natural timidity that she never spoke in company or before strangers without blushing, and was absolutely unable in after-life to conform to the standard of what was expected of a pastor’s wife and lead the devotions in the weekly female prayer-meeting.”

She was early confirmed in the Episcopal Church; her parents, although both from strictly Puritan families, having joined that denomination upon their marriage. They had held through all the Revolutionary struggle to their loyalty to King George, and this had subjected them to the determined opposition of their neighbors, and stamped the family, perhaps, with something of that independence of character which opposition to a prevailing popular sentiment is adapted to give, and which is so marked a feature in her descendants.

Converted when she was but five years old, and scarcely remembering the time when she did not go with her joys and sorrows to God in prayer, and next to the oldest in a family of ten children, her mother a widow, and all dependent upon the grandfather, she early learned that patience, self-control, efficiency, and unselfishness that characterized her through life and left in her old home at Nutplains, as Mrs. Stowe tells us, traditions like these: “Your mother never spoke an angry word in her life.” “Your mother never told a lie.” And from the husband such a testimony as this: “She experienced resignation, if any one ever did. I never saw the like, so entire, without reservation or shadow of turning. In no exigency was she taken by surprise. She was just there, quiet as an angel from above. I never heard a murmur; and if ever there was a perfect mind as respects submission, it was hers. I never witnessed a movement of the least degree of selfishness; and if there ever was any such thing in the world as disinterestedness, she had it.”

No one reading her history will think that Henry Ward exaggerated when, speaking of her and her influence upon him, he said: “There are few born into this world that are her equals. She was a woman of extraordinary graces and gifts; a woman not demonstrative, with a profound philosophical nature, of a wonderful depth of affection, and with a serenity that was simply charming. From her I received my love of the beautiful, my poetic temperament; from her also I received simplicity and childlike faith in God.”

And again: “My communion with nature arose from the mother in me. Because my mother was an inspired woman, who saw God in nature as really as in the Book, and she bestowed that temperament upon me, and I came gradually to feel that, aside from God as revealed in the past, there was a God with an everlasting present around about me.”

With these elements of a more personal nature also appear certain family traits. As we saw how, from the father’s side, the old anvil was constantly making itself heard in the strong, sturdy qualities of the Beecher stock, so shall we see features from the ancestry on the mother’s side coming to him almost unchanged. The loyalty represented by the oak-tree, and the virtue displayed at Louisburg, will constantly show themselves. Who that has seen him standing, now for the black man in the face of the adverse popular sentiment of his time in obedience to his own convictions of right, now governing his political actions by the same authority, and anon following his religious convictions wherever they led him, can have failed to see, in him, the oak-tree standing in the clover-field with the motto written upon its shield, in letters of light, “Loyalty and Truth”? In his constant advocacy of reform, in his early and strenuous opposition to intemperance, appears “Louisburg” again, written this time, not upon silver, but upon life and character—the Ward and the Foote families showing in him the characteristics they had won.

More than this, probably no lines could better illustrate the New England race-elements, the union of its democracy and its gentry, the sturdy independence of its homes and its native ability in war and peace, its intellectual and its spiritual independence, its quaint humor and its shrewd common sense, than those that united in him from both the parental roots.

He was a natural product of the New England stock, tempered and sweetened by the broader traditions of the more aristocratic blood of the Cavalier, of New England institutions and New England character. And since New England, thus enriched, illustrates the whole land, and by reason of the diffusion of her blood has made her characteristics national, he was a typical American, standing with unusual ability and conscientiousness where every true American feels that he ought to stand—for right and liberty. This, we doubt not, was in part the ground of his national popularity and influence; he was felt to be so thoroughly American. He represented us as do our national colors and our battle-flags, and we were proud of him, grew enthusiastic over him, and men that never saw him loved him. And since these characteristics are but the product of English institutions and the putting forth of Anglo-Saxon tendencies which were always advancing, always protesting against some old abuse, and always seeking the recognition of some right—now at Runnymede among the barons, and now at Westminster among the Commons; now taking up the question of negro-slavery, and now the Irish question; always hopeful, expectant, progressive—and America is but, as he claimed, “the better England transplanted,” and he but “an Englishman from a broader England,” a continental instead of an insular one, he was hailed by all the English-speaking people as belonging to them as do King Alfred and Shakspere.

As we go on we shall find many other influences at work—influences of nature, of books, of college and profession; but thus early we can see that, more than of any and all the rest, Henry Ward Beecher was the product of New England parentage, full-veined with English traditions and race characteristics.

The courtship of Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote took place in 1798. It was marked by the interpenetration of religious sentiment and earthly love, and was a true preparation for home-making, and of such a home as should help to form the remarkable personality of H. W. Beecher.

The letters that passed between them during this year give evidence of the strong love of those who, while having still upon them the dew of their youth, have each found in the other the chosen mate—a love than which earth has no more influential nor beautiful thing to give. They also show us the two akin in intellectual powers and pursuits, and equally enjoying the treasures which the world of letters opened to them. But most prominent of all matters referred to in these letters are religious questions and personal religious experiences. They revolve around “the evidences” and similar subjects with an absorption of interest that must seem almost incomprehensible to modern lovers. In the perfect and unrestrained communion of heart with heart these two speak of the sweet and wonderful experiences that they have enjoyed from the presence of the Lord, share their common hopes and anticipations of the coming glory of the Redeemer’s kingdom, and strive to help one another to a better understanding of the best things of God. Such thoughts and efforts as these undoubtedly went far toward laying the foundation of that “intimacy that existed throughout the whole range of their being,” and for that deep and unswerving regard and confidence which each cherished for the other until death. She rested upon him, and he always looked upon her as intellectually and morally the stronger and better portion of himself. The very differences in their nature and education contributed to this large and beautiful unity and confidence. While resembling each other in many things, in others they were the complements of each other. He was quick and impulsive, she, perfectly serene and self-poised. He was logical, she was intuitive as well. He was of the Independents, she was an Episcopalian. From such a union, so sincere and broad, we may expect a happy home.

Judging from these letters, we should say also that whenever these two shall build their home they will build it strong and high. Not only will love be there, with all its attractions, and intellect with its stimulus and power, but the grand things of heaven will be builded into it. And wherever it shall be established, whether by the sea-shore at East Hampton or among the hills of Litchfield, it will have a broad horizon; it will look out upon something wider and deeper than the sea and higher than the mountains. The high things of God will always be kept in view; His broad, deep, measureless purposes will be held within the range of its contemplation, and His presence will be felt in shaping its policy and in giving vitality to its atmosphere.

From such a home we shall expect children that shall have power in the world.

They were married at Nutplains, September 19, 1799.

“Roxana’s friends were all present and all my folks from New Haven.” ... “Nobody ever married more heart and hand than we.” Then came the packing up; “the candle-stand, bureau, clothing, bedding, linen, and stuffs generally,” and the going over by sloop to Long Island.

Their life in East Hampton, Long Island, was that of two who believed, without one shadow of doubt, in their call of God, and who took up their work, not only with the firm grasp of duty, but with the enthusiasm of devout, self-sacrificing love. Their faith was tested by his long-continued sickness, by the death of one of their children, and by the numerous discouragements of a country minister; but it stood the test, deepening and brightening under trial.

It was a barren place to which they had come, but Lyman Beecher brought such vigorous faith and added to it such enthusiastic labors, now in the home church, now in the school-houses of the surrounding districts, and now among the Indians at Montauk Point, that he made the whole district fruitful. The field was a narrow one, but by the interest awakened by his sermons, especially the one upon duelling called forth by the death of Alexander Hamilton from the pistol of Aaron Burr, he broadened it until his parish stretched across the Atlantic.

The wants of a young family made some effort necessary to eke out the meagre salary of four hundred dollars, and a school for girls was decided upon, to be kept by Mrs. Beecher. It was successful in every respect but financially, and moderately so in that; but it did not bring the relief that was sought, and there came a necessity to change for a field where sufficient salary could be had to support the family without the harassments of other and unpastoral labors.

A marked providence, as it seemed to Mr. Beecher, opened the way to his preaching on trial in Litchfield, Connecticut. He made a good impression; the people were unanimous and eager in their call; the Presbytery gave its consent; and now, without a doubt that it is according to the will of God, the decision is made, and the home which had first been planted within the sound of the ocean surf at East Hampton, Long Island, in 1799, was transplanted to the quiet inland village of Litchfield in 1810.