1751 – 1838
The third wife of Lyman Beecher, and step mother to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher, Lydia Beecher worked at the timid forefront of the Women’s Temperance Movement. Before women stepped out of their socially assigned roles to fight for the vote, temperance activists advocated for an improved home life through husbands and fathers abstaining from alcohol. While forging a path for women’s public activism, Beecher and other temperance activists also grappled with the relationship between women’s rights and the rights of Black Americans held in slavery and living as freedmen.
This program is structured as a meeting of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, where Lydia Beecher will summarize the minutes of your prior meeting, deliver a new semi-biographical speech she is honing for public address, and introduce a letter requesting support from the newly forming American Colonization Society, for consideration and a vote.
Program themes: racism in early women’s movements, gender roles, domestic politics
Hedge Witch History 