|
 |
Part of the American
History & Genealogy Project |
Isabella Beecher Hooker 1822 ~ 1907
Isabella Beecher Hooker
Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker was the
first child of the second wife of Doctor Lyman Beecher, the
illustrious preacher of New England, and was born February 22,
1822, at Litchfield, Connecticut.
Individually and collectively, the Beecher family is considered
the most remarkable in the United States, each member of it
having been the possessor of a commanding talent, great energy
and force of character and great gifts of the highest order.
Isabella Beecher inherited her personal beauty from her mother
and her great individuality came to her from her father. She
married John Hooker, of Hartford, Connecticut, in 1841, and he
was a descendant in the sixth generation of Thomas Hooker who
founded the city of Hartford. He was a man of note in his day, a
famous theologian, earnest patriot and an enlightened statesman.
Mrs. Hooker kept pace intellectually with her husband,
accompanying him in his theological researches and speculations,
learning from him much of his profession and making a study of
the phases and evolution of the law that governed the United
States. She thus became an earnest and profound student of
social, political, and religious questions, and when she adopted
the idea that women should be allowed to vote as a fundamental
right she at once, in characteristic style, began to do all she
could to bring about the great reform. She considered women's
suffrage the greatest movement in the world's history, claiming
that the ballot would give women every social and intellectual,
as well as political, advantage. She wrote and lectured, and
studied and explained the doctrine of equal suffrage for women
for thirty years. She was at the front of this and other reform
movements, going cheerfully through the ridicule and abuse that
fell to the lot of earnest agitators and reformers. During
several seasons she held a series of afternoon talks in Boston,
New York and Washington, and at these assemblages she discussed
political economy and other topics. When well along in life she
published a book entitled "Womanhood - Its Sanctities and
Fidelities," which treated of the marriage relation and of the
education of children to lives of purity in a courageous yet
delicate way. It attracted wide attention and brought to her
many earnest expressions of gratitude from intelligent mothers.
For many years she held the office of vice-president for
Connecticut, in the National Women's Suffrage Association, and
in the yearly conventions of the organization in Washington, D.
C, she delivered a number of able addresses. In the
International Council of Women in 1888 in the session devoted to
political conditions, she delivered an address on the
"Constitutional Rights of the Women of the United States' and
gave an unanswerable presentation of the subject. In 1878 she
took a leading part and acted as spokesman before the committee
of Congress upon a petition asking for legislation in favor of
the enfranchisement of women. One of her later efforts in behalf
of women was in the Republican National Convention in Chicago,
where, in company with Miss Susan B. Anthony, she prepared an
open letter reviewing work of women, claiming that they had
earned recognition and ending with a powerful plea that the
convention would include women in the term "citizens."
When Mr. and Mrs. Hooker celebrated their golden wedding on
August 5, 1891, the celebration took place in City Mission Hall,
in Hartford, Senator Joseph R. Hawley acting as master of
ceremonies. The whole city turned out to honor the venerable
couple, whose fame shed a luster on the place they called home.
Many prominent persons attended the reception, the judges of the
Supreme Court of Connecticut going in a body to tender their
respects. The National American Women's Suffrage Association was
represented by Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell, Mrs.
Rachel Foster Avery, Miss Phebe Couzins, and many others. Mrs.
Hooker's long life was one of zealous toil, heroic endurance of
undeserved abuse and exalted effort. She died in 1907, but her
name stands for one of the best known exponents of the claims of
the women of America who desire the right to vote.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
|