Lyman was a Presbyterian minister who became best known as a revivalist and social reformer in the years before the American Civil War.
[1] James was educated at Lane Theological Seminary in Walnut Hills, within Cincinnati, Ohio, of which his father was president.
During a correspondence with Isabella Beecher Hooker, James admitted to his sister that Anne was suffering from drug and alcohol addiction.
Anne went to Gleason’s sanitarium in Elmira, New York for their water cure treatment before she was committed to an asylum in June 1860.
The regiment would come to be called the 35th United States Colored Troops, and fought at the Battle of Olustee, Florida and Honey Hill, South Carolina.
On the evening of August 25, 1886, after an afternoon at the shooting range with others, James Beecher "suddenly went to his room and taking a rifle placed the muzzle in his mouth and fired, killing himself instantly.