Catharine Beecher: Founder of Female Seminary

Cacey Shelton
HPE 221- Intro to HPER
 Project Two: Ones Who Made a Difference

Catharine Beecher, being the oldest of nine children, was born in East Hampton,
New York on September 6,1800 (Berg 2016). One might think that by having this many
brothers and sisters that she would be highly influenced by them, but she was
“influenced most deeply by her father”. He father was a large part of the second great
awakening as well as her. He led a multitude of revivals, and this made Beecher
inspired to become more religious and to have a more outgoing personality like her
father. Although she wanted to become more religious, she was never able to obtain the
level of faith that she desired. Beecher became a new woman when her family moved to
Litchfield, Connecticut in 1809. When her mother passed away, she had to stop
attending school to take on more motherly duties to her siblings. After her father
remarried, she moved to New London. Here, she got engaged to Alexander Fisher, but
was not sure that she wanted to marry him. Her decision came to an end when Fisher
died at sea in 1822. Catharine never got married after that. Beecher was a prominent
individual when it comes to the advancements of women in physical education. Like
previously stated, she took after her father in ministry. She founded a seminary school
that had already become one of the best schools for girls in the US (Sturges 2016).
Alongside from founding the first school for girls, Beecher founded another school for
girls in Cincinnati, but it did not stay open for long due to financial problems (Beecher
1846). Like most Victorian mindsets, she believed that women were in deed the center
of the home. With the combination of Physical Education and household tasks, Beecher
taught that women could use these skills to nurture (Boyston 1988). Beecher made it
clear that the PE made for men was too strenuous and required too much strength for
women. This being the main reason she developed callisthenic programs for women.
What are calisthenics one might ask? Callisthenics is basically the gymnastics to
improve body fitness and gracefulness. Beecher was a teacher of many things,
including Algebra, history, Latin, rhetoric, logic, physical education, and Natural
Philosophy. She was a major part of consumer sciences as well. Along with developing
these programs and founding these schools for women, Catharine Beecher also was a
big part of sisterhood when it dealt with the rights of women. “They are agents in
accomplishing the greatest work that ever was committed to human responsibility,” is
what Beecher wrote in her one of her books (Beecher 1846). By seeing this quote that
Beecher wrote herself, it is obvious that she cared a lot about the health and
development of women in her day and age and for time to come.
 Works Cited

Beecher, C. (1846). Miss Beecher’s Domestic Report Book; Designed as a

Supplement to Her Treatise on Domestic Economy. New York: Harper and Brothers.

Beecher, C. (1856). Physiology and Callisthenics for Schools and Families. New
York: Harper and Brothers.

Boyston, J., M. K., Margolis, A. T. (1988). The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher
sisters on Women’s Rights and Women’s Sphere. Chapel Hill, North Carolina:
University of North Carolina Press.

Sturges, M. (2016). Catharine Beecher, Champion of Women’s Education.

Connecticut: Connecticut Humanities.

Berg, S. C. (2016). Catharine Beecher. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia.