William Henry Beecher was Lyman and Roxanna's oldest son. Less scholarly, but more mechanically skilled than his other siblings, William apprenticed as a cabinetmaker and a clerk in Hartford and New Milford CT, and New York City before becoming a licensed preacher in 1830. His first parish was in Newport, RI, and over the next 20 years William worked at churches in Middletown, CT, Putnam, OH, Batavia, NY, Euclid, OH, and finally North Brookfield, MA, where he remained for nearly two decades. He was an advocate of Spiritualism and phrenology, publishing an article in Fowler's Phrenological Journal.
He wed Katherine Edes of Massachusetts in 1830, and they had six children. Katherine shared William's commitment to anti-slavery and temperance. When she died in 1870, he retired and moved to Chicago to live with his daughters. One of the least famous Beechers, William was an early advocate of abolition, and a proponent of temperance as a means to broader social reform.
