The earnest seeker and hopeful discoverer of this new world always haunts the outskirts of his or her time. Our history is written in the lives of such individuals.
We find the Beechers at Litchfield, Connecticut, where most of the Beechers grew up. Lyman Beecher's reputation, based on his published sermons, had secured him this prestigious position, and he did not slack in his determination to save souls. An indefatigable revivalist, he seemed to have an inexhaustible source of energy. But he never allowed his workload to interfere with the time that he spent with his famkily, which continued to grow larger. Lyman and Roxana Beecher arrived in Litchfield from East Hampton in 1810 with five children. The Beechers’ sixth child, Harriet Elizabeth, was born one year after they arrived, Henry Ward two years later, and Charles three years after that.

CATHARINE : The first five years of father’s Litchfield ministry, I think, were probably a period of more unalloyed happiness than any in his whole life. Mother enjoyed perfect health, and sympathized thoroughly with him in all his tastes and employments. The children were full of health and spirits, under a wise and happy family government. Aunt Mary spent much of her time with us, and some of mother’s favorite pupils, who had come to attend Miss Pierce’s school, sought a home in our family. Betsy Burr, an orphan cousin, lived with us like an adopted daughter till her marriage, which took place at our house.  
The kitchen department was under the care of the good and affectionate Zillah and Rachel, who came with us from Long Island, and completed the home circle.
Mother was of that easy and gentle temperament that could never very strictly enforce any rules; while father, you know, was never celebrated for his habits of system and order. Of course there was a free and easy way of living, more congenial to liberty and sociality than to conventional rules. As I look back to those days, there is an impression of sunshine, love, and busy activity, without any memory of a jar or cloud.

CHARLES : The Litchfield residence consisted at first of a square house with a hipped roof and an L, constituting the back part of the structure. After three or four years an enlargement was thought desirable, and a portion with a gable roof was added.
There was no boarding house connected with Miss Sarah Pierce’s school, and as it brought many young ladies into the place, they were obliged to be distributed in the families of the town. It was ever a great object with Miss Pierce to secure places for her pupils in the best families, who should have a good influence in forming their characters. Mrs. Beecher was already celebrated for her success in this respect; her scholars at East Hampton were perfectly under her influence through life. Some of them had even followed her to Litchfield. This, with the hope of increasing somewhat the yearly income, led to the enlargement of the premises.

CATHARINE : Miss Sarah Pierce was a woman of more than ordinary talent, sprightly in conversation, social, and full of benevolent activity. She was an earnest Christian, and, being at the head of a large school of young ladies, found frequent occasions for seeking counsel and aid from her pastor. In return, she gave gratuitous schooling to as many of our children as father chose to send, for occasionally young boys found admission.
Her school-house was a small building of only one room, probably not exceeding 30 feet by 70, with small closets at each end, one large enough to hold a piano, and the others used for bonnets and overgarments. The plainest pine desks, long plank benches, a small table, and an elevated teacher’s chair, constituted the whole furniture. When I began school there she was sole teacher, aided occasionally by her sister in certain classes, and by her brother-in-law in penmanship.
At that time the higher branches had not entered female schools. Map-drawing, painting, embroidery, and the piano were the accomplishments sought, and history was the only study added to geography, grammar, and arithmetic. In process of time, her nephew, Mr. John Brace, became her associate, and introduced a more extended course. At the time father came, the reputation of Miss Pierce’s school exceeded that of any other in the country.  
Thus, while Judge Reeve’s law school attracted the young men from all quarters, the town was radiant with blooming maidens both indigenous and from abroad.

CHARLES : The ground floor of the new part of the house was occupied by a large parlor, in which memory recalls ministers’ meetings, with clouds of tobacco-smoke, and musical soirees, with piano, flute, and song. Over this were rooms for boarders, and in the attic was the study, the window of which looked out upon a large apple tree.

NARRATOR : The Beecher children had a full life, never guessing until later that other households may have had a more traditional Christmas. Henry recalls.

HENRY : Singing carols at church choir practice was about all I knew of Christmas in my younger days. I never heard anybody speak of it. It was not known in the house of my father, for a Puritan of the Puritans was he.

CHARLES : In the old part &of the houseé was the dining room, with a large window, and a bedroom adjoining, and two east front rooms, separated by the old hall with staircase. In the dining room was built a famous Russian stove, so constructed as to warm six rooms—three below and three above. The large window of the dining room was partially covered by a honeysuckle trained upon the side of the house.
 In the long, low ell was the kitchen and well-room, and on the end of this a long, low shed, containing the wood-house and carriage-house. In front of these, and separated from the street by a stone wall, was the vegetable garden in summer, and the wood-pile in winter; for at wood-spell, as it was called, when all the teams of the parish came hauling vast loads of wood for the pastor, nearly the whole space was covered with immense logs, piled up in rows eight or ten feet high.  
 Behind the house was an orchard; and on the east a narrow yard filled with tamaracks, elms, maples, and other trees, separated it from the main street. The house faced south onto a side street, while the old part of the house fronted on the east.

HARRIET : My earliest recollections of Litchfield are those of its beautiful scenery, which impressed and formed my mind long before I had words to give names to my emotions, or could analyze my mental processes. I remember standing often in the door of our house and looking over a distant horizon, where Mount Tom reared its round blue head against the sky, and the Great and Little Ponds, as they were called, gleamed out amid a steel-blue sea of distant pine groves.    
To the west of us rose a smooth-bosomed hill called Prospect Hill; and many a pensive, wondering hour have I sat at our playroom window, watching the glory of the wonderful sunsets that used to burn themselves out, amid voluminous wreathings, or castellated turrets of clouds—vaporous pageantry proper to a mountainous region.   
 Litchfield sunsets were famous, perhaps because watched by more appreciative and intelligent eyes than the sunsets of other mountain towns around. The love and notice of nature was a custom and habit of the Litchfield people; and always of a summer evening the way to Prospect Hill was dotted with parties of strollers who went thither to enjoy the evening.   
 Seated on the rough granit flagsteps of the east front door with some favorite book—if by chance we could find such a treasure—the book often fell from the hand while the eye wandered far off into those soft woody depths with endless longings and dreams—dreams of all those wild fruits, and flowers, and sylvan treasures which some Saturday afternoon’s ramble had shown us lay sheltered in those enchanted depths. There were the crisp apples of the pink azalea—honeysuckle apples we called them—there were scarlet wintergreen berries; there were pink shell blossoms of trailing arbutus, and feathers of ground pine; there were blue, and white, and yellow violets, and crowsfoot, and bloodroot, and wild anemone, and other quaint forest treasures.

CATHARINE : Father had another home, of which we must give some account, for some of the happiest hours of his life were spent there. Judge Reeve, who resided at the other end of town, was his chief counselor and friend, while Mrs. Reeve was no less intimate with mother.  
  Judge Reeve was an eminently pious man, and entered with the deepest sympathy into all father’s parochial plans and cares; so a call at Judge Reeve’s was the usual completion of evening meetings and preaching excursions. On the other hand, Mrs. Reeve, who mainly depended on a chaise for locomotion, was almost as frequent a visitor at our house. She and mother used to read aloud to each other.

HARRIET : How well I remember Judge Reeve’s house—wide, roomy, and cheerful —where we spent our first few nights in Litchfield. It used to be the Eden of our childish imagination. I remember the great old-fashioned garden, with broad alleys, set with all sorts of stately bunches of flowers. It used to be my reward, when I had been good, to spend a Saturday afternoon there, and walk up and down among the flowers, and pick currants off the bushes.

CATHARINE : Up to the age of 16 my conceptions of religion were about these: that God made me and all things; that he knew all I thought and did; that because Adam and Eve disobeyed him once only, he drove them out of Eden, and then so arranged it that all their descendants would be born with wicked hearts; and that, though this did not seem either just or good, it was so; that I had such a wicked heart that I could not feel or act right in anything till I had a new one; that God only could give me a new heart; that if I died without it, I should go to a lake of fire and brimstone.

HARRIET : My father was fond of excursions with his boys into the forests about for fishing and hunting. At first I remember these only as something pertaining to father and the older boys, they being the rewards given for good conduct. I remember the regretful interest with which I watched their joyful preparations for departure. They were going to the Great Pond—to Pine Island—to that wonderful blue pine forest which I could just see on the horizon, and who knew what adventures they might meet Then the house all day was so still; no tramping of laughing, wrestling boys—no singing and shouting; and perhaps only a long seam on a sheet to be oversewed as the sole means of beguiling the hours of absence.  
  And then dark night would come down, and stars look out from the curtains, and innuendoes would be thrown out of children being sent to bed, and my heart would be rent with anguish at the idea of being sent off before the eventful expedition had reported itself.   
 And then what joy to hear at a distance the tramp of feet, the shouts and laughs of older brothers; and what glad triumph when the successful party burst into the kitchen with long strings of perch, roach, pickerel, and bullheads, with waving blades of sweet-flag, and high heads of cattail, and pockets full of young wintergreen, of which a generous portion was bestowed always upon me. These were the trophies, to my eyes, brought from the land of enchantment.   
 And then what cheerful hurrying and scurrying to and fro, and waving of lights, and what cleaning of fish in the back shed, and what calling for frying pan and gridiron, over which father solemnly presided; for to his latest day he held the opinion that no feminine hand could broil or fry fish with that perfection of skill which belonged to himself alone, as king of woodcraft and woodland cookery.  
  I was always safe against being sent to bed for a happy hour or two, and patronized with many a morsel of the supper which followed, as father and brothers were generally too flushed with victory to regard very strictly dull household rules.   
 Somewhat later, I remember, were the expeditions for chestnuts and walnuts in the autumn, to which all we youngsters were taken. What fun it was, in those golden October days, when father dared William and Edward to climb higher than he could, and shake down the glossy chestnusts To the very last of his life, he was fond of narrating an exploit of his climbing a chestnut tree that grew up fifty feet without branches slantwise over a precipice, and then whirling himself over the abyss to beat down the chestnuts for the children below. ‘‘That was a thing,’’ he said, ‘‘that I wouldn’t let any of the boys do.’’ I verily believe that he valued himself more on some of those exploits than even his best sermons.

CATHARINE : After we moved to Litchfield, Uncle Samuel came among us, on his return from each voyage, as a sort of brilliant genius of another sphere, bringing gifts and wonders that seemed to wake new faculties in all. Sometimes he came from the shores of Spain, with mementoes of the Alhambra and the ancient Moors; sometimes from Africa, bringing Oriental caps or Moorish slippers; sometimes from South America, with ingots of silver, or strange implements from the tombs of the Incas, or hammocks wrought by the Southern Indian tribes. With these came exciting stories of his adventures, and of the interesting persons of various lands whom he had carried as passengers on his ship on such foreign shores.  
  Whenever he came to Litchfield he brought a stock of new books, which he and Aunt Mary read aloud. This was the time when Scott, Byron, Moore, and that great galaxy of contemporary authors were issuing their works at intervals of only a few months, all of which were read and reread in the family circle.

HARRIET : One of my most decided impressions of the family as it was in my childish days was of a great household inspired by a spirit of cheerfulness and hilarity, and of my father, though pressed and driven with business, always lending an attentive ear to anything in the way of life and social fellowship.   
 My oldest sister, whose whole life seemed a constant stream of mirthfulness, was his favorite and companion, and he was always more than indulgent toward her pranks and jokes. Scarcely anything happened in the family without giving rise to some humorous bit of composition from her pen, either in prose or verse, which would be read at table, and passed round among the social visiting circles which were frequently at our house. Among these I remember one written to cover the retreat of a terrified domestic, who was overwhelmed by the misfortune of having broken the best dish in the minister’s new service of crockery:         
Come all, and list a dismal tale          
Ye kitchen muses, do not fail,          
But join our sad loss to bewail.          
High mounted on the dresser’s side,          
Our brown-edged platter stood with pride;          
A neighboring door flew open wide,          
Knock’d out its brains, and straight it died.          
Come kindred platters, with me mourn;          
Hither, ye plates and dishes, turn;          
Knives, forks, and carvers all give ear,          
And each drop a dish-water tear.          
No more with smoking roast-beef crown’d          
Shall guests this noble dish surround;          
No more the buttered cutlet here,          
Nor tender chicken shall appear;          
Roast pig no more here show his visard,          
Nor goose, nor even goose’s gizzard;          
But broken-hearted it must go          
Down to the dismal shades below;          
While kitchen muses, platters, plates,          
Knives, forks, and spoons upbraid the Fates;         
 With streaming tears cry out, ‘‘I never          
Our brown-edged platter’s gone forever’’

and this epitaph for Tom Junior:                                 
 Here died our kit                            
Who had a fit                            
And acted queer.                                  
Shot with a gun,                            
Her race is run,                            
And she lies here.

CATHARINE : Dramatic writing and acting became one of the nothings about which I contrived to be busy and keep others so. Various little dramas were concocted and acted between the school sessions in wintry weather, when dinners were brought. And after a while, when nearly grown up, we got up in the family, very privately, quite an affair of this kind.  
  I turned Miss Edgeworth’s Unknown Friend into a drama, and for some weeks all the children old enough to take part, and several schoolgirls boarding with us, were busy as bees preparing for a rehearsal. It was kept a profound secret till the appointed evening, when father and mother wondered who built a fire in the large parlor, and then, still more, how it happened that so many neighbors and students called at once. Then suddenly the dining room door was opened, and all invited in, while a mysterious curtain was descried at the farther end. The curtain rose, and forthwith the actors appeared, and completed the entertainment amid thunders of applause. The next day, however, as we expected, we were told that it was very well done, but we must not do so any more.

HARRIET : Father was very fond of music, and very susceptible to its influence; and one of the great eras of the family, in my childish recollection, is the triumphant bringing home from New Haven a fine-toned upright piano, which a fortunate accident had brought within the range of a poor country minister’s means. The ark of the covenant was not brought into the tabernacle with more gladness than this magical instrument into our abode.  
  My older sisters had both learned to play and sing, and Father soon learned to accompany the piano with his violin in various psalm tunes and Scotch airs, and brothers Edward and William to perform their part on the flute. So we had often domestic concerts, which, if they did not attain to the height of artistic perfection, filled the house with gladness.

NARRATOR : Very few of Lyman Beecher’s wife Roxana’s letters remain. This note is one of her last—a caring mother instructs her sister about her distant child. In 1816, Catharine, the oldest, was sixteen, Harriet was five, and Charles, the youngest, was less than a year old.

ROXANA : Dear sister Harriet, I have not sent for little Harriet on account of the joiner’s work we are going to have about soon; but if any circumstance unknown to me makes it expedient she should come home, you must send her with Mr. Beecher. I should have sent her a flannel slip if I could have found an opportunity, but it is now too late in the spring. You must get shoes for her, and Mr. Beecher must pay for them; and if he should forget it, I will remember.
   Write me an account of all matters and things respecting both yourselves and little Harriet, whom you must tell to be a good girl, and not forget her mamma, and brothers, and sisters. I hope to come for her sometime in the summer or autumn.

NARRATOR : But in 1816, Roxana Beecher died of tuberculosis. As with many wives in the nineteenth century, she was worn out. She left eight children behind, and one who had died at birth.

LYMAN : It is past. At a quarter past three this morning she fell asleep. In the course of the day she had two or three short turns of distress, but for the last six or eight hours she breathed more freely, and died without a struggle. About four hours before her death she had a lucid interval, in which I conversed with her for 20 minutes. Her state of mind was heavenly, and I have no doubt that her sorrow is turned into joy.

HARRIET : I remember a time when everyone said she was sick; when, if I went into the street, everyone asked me how my mother was; when I saw the shelves of the closets crowded with delicacies which had been sent in for her, and how I used to be permitted to go once a day into her room, where she sat bolstered up in bed, taking her gruel. I have a vision of a very fair face, with a bright red spot on each cheek, and a quiet smile as she offered me a spoonful of her gruel; of our dreaming one night, we little ones, that mamma had got well, and waking in loud transports of joy, and being hushed down by someone coming into the room. Our dream was indeed a true one. She was forever well; but they told us she was dead, and took us in to see what seemed so cold, and so unlike anything we had ever seen or known of her.   
 Then came the funeral. Henry was too little to go. I remember his golden curls and little black frock, as he frolicked like a kitten in the sun in ignorant joy.   
 I remember the mourning dresses, the tears of the older children, the walking to the burial ground, and somebody’s speaking at the grave, and the audible sobbing of the family; and then all was closed, and we little ones, to whom it was so confused, asked the question where she was gone, and would she never come back?   
 They told us at one time that she had been laid in the ground, at another that she had gone to heaven; whereupon Henry, putting the two things together, resolved to dig through the ground and go to heaven to find her; for, being discovered under sister Catharine’s window one morning digging with great zeal and earnestness, she called to him to know what he was doing, and, lifting his curly head with great simplicity, he answered, ‘‘Why, I’m going to heaven to find ma.’’   
 The following lines, written by her eldest daughter, Catharine, then a girl of sixteen, were a tribute offered to her memory. We knew them by heart in our childhood, and have often repeated them with tears.

CATHARINE : The busy hum of day is o’er,                   
The scene is sweet and still,             
And modest eve, with blushes warm,                   
Walks o’er the western hill.            
 The great, the good, the rich, the wise,                 
  Lie shrouded here in gloom;            
 And here with aching heart I view               
    My own dear mother’s tomb.            
 Oh, as upon her peaceful grave               
    I fix my weeping eyes,            
 How many fond remembrances               
    In quick succession rise.             
Far through the vista of past years                  
 As memory can extend,            
 She walked, my counselor and guide,                 
  My guardian and friend.             
From works of science and of taste,               
    How richly stored her mind;            
 And yet how mild in all her ways,              
     How gentle, meek, and kind.             
Religion’s bless’d and heavenly light              
     Illumined all her road;            
 Before her house she led the way               
    To virtue and to God.            
 Like some fair orb, she bless’d my way              
     With mild and heavenly light,             
Till, called from hence, the opening heav’n               
    Received her from my sight.             
Now left in dark and dubious night,               
    I mourn her guidance o’er,            
 And sorrow that my longing eyes                 
  Shall see her face no more.            
 Father in heaven, my mother’s God,                 
  Oh grant before thy seat,            
 Among the blessed sons of light,                 
  Parent and child may meet.            
 There may I see her smiling face,                 
  And hear her gentle voice;           
  And, gladden’d by thy gracious smile,                  
 Through endless years rejoice.

HARRIET : At Nutplains, our mother, lost to us, seemed to live again. We saw her paintings, her needlework, and though the place was lonely, yet scarcely ever without agreeable visitors. The lonely little white farmhouse under the hill was such a paradise to us, and the sight of its chimneys after a day’s ride were like a vision of Eden. To us, every juniper bush, every wild sweetbriar, every barren sandy hillside, every stony pasture spoke of bright hours of love, when we were welcomed back to Nutplains as to our mother’s heart.