Detail from a full-length portrait of Isabella Beecher Hooker – Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Sewall Collection
Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822–1907)
Isabella Beecher Hooker was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on February 22, 1822. A member of the famous Beecher family, her father was the renowned minister Lyman Beecher, her brother was the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, and her half-sisters were educational reformer Catharine Beecher and author/activist Harriet Beecher Stowe. She married influential attorney John Hooker at age 19 and her family moved to Hartford where they purchased a homestead that eventually became part of Nook Farm (a literary and intellectual enclave in the late 19th century). There she dedicated her life to both her family and to the enfranchisement of women. She founded the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 and drafted a bill her state legislator introduced that granted property rights to women. She remained a leader of the woman suffrage movement, at both the local and national levels, right up until her death in 1907.
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Looking Back: Tempest Tossed, the Story of Isabella Beecher Hooker
Isabella Beecher was a suffragist and spiritualist who shunned traditional female roles while alienating large parts of her family during her brother's adultery scandal. …[more]
