Beecher, Thomas Kinnicutt

BEECHER, THOMAS KINNICUTT: Congregationalist, sixth son of Lyman Beecher; b. at Litchfield, Conn., Feb. 10, 1824; d. at Elmira, N. Y., Mar. 14, 1900. He was graduated at Illinois College, Jacksonville, Ill., 1843; became school principal at Philadelphia, 1846, at Hartford, Conn., 1848; pastor at Williamsburg (Brooklyn), L. I., 1852, of the Independent Church (afterward called the Park Church), Elmira, 1854, where he served a long pastorate and became widely known for his eccentricities, but still more esteemed for his charities and respected for the practical good sense of many of his plans and ideas. He developed one of the first "institutional" churches, and his Sunday-school was a model one. His chief publication was Our Seven Churches (New York, 1870), a volume of discourses upon the different denominations in Elmira. In Time with the Stars, a book of children's stories, appeared posthumously (1902).