George Beecher, the fifth of Lyman Beecher's children, grew up in Litchfield, CT. He attended Miss Porter's Academy with his siblings, went off to Hartford Grammar School when he was 14, and enrolled at Yale College to study the ministry at 16. George left Yale to move to Ohio with his family in 1832. There he was ordained as a minister and accepted his first pastorate in Batavia. George married Sarah Buckingham of Batavia in 1839, and they had a son. Like his older brother Edward, George was an abolitionist, and joined the Anti-Slavery Society.
Batavia, like many small churches, had difficulties paying their minister, and George relocated to Rochester, NY. Rochester was at the heart of the Burned Over district of western New York, so-named because of the repeated religious revivals and reform movements which swept through the area. As a Beecher raised to improve both himself and society George found many new ideas here. He was particularly attracted to Perfectionism.
George and Sarah Beecher returned to Ohio, where George began writing about Perfectionism, teaching music, and studying plants. In July of 1843, he walked into his gardens to shoot some birds and was found dead of a gunshot wound. The Beechers believed that it was an accidental death and the family mourned over the loss of their beloved brother. Stowe confessed that "the sudden death of George shook my whole soul like an earthquake."
