Henry Ward Beecher, the son of the Rev. Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote, was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813. The father was an eloquent, fearless, great-hearted man, the son and grandson of a sturdy blacksmith; the mother a refined, dignified, intellectual, beautiful, and superior woman. Her family connections were of the best in New England. Her ancestor, James Foote, an English officer, aided Charles II. of England to hide himself in the Royal Oak which grew in a field of clover, and for this was knighted; the family coat-of-arms bearing an oak for its crest with a clover-leaf in its quarterings. Roxana, the granddaughter of General Ward of Revolutionary fame, was remarkably well educated for the times. She was versed in literature and history, which she studied while she spun flax, tying her books to the distaff,--no wonder that her great son was an omniverous reader,--she wrote and spoke the French language fluently, drew with the pencil, and painted with the brush on ivory, sang and played on the guitar, and was an expert with her needle. [Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER.] After her marriage with Mr. Beecher, she opened a school for girls in their parish at East Hampton, Long Island, to eke out a living on their four hundred dollars salary. From here they were called in 1810, eleven years after their marriage, to the hilly, lonely town of Litchfield, Conn., bringing their six little children with them. Henry Ward was the ninth child, the eighth then living. So many cares and privations broke down the beautiful mother, who died when Henry was three years old. A friend of the family writes: "She told her husband that her views and anticipations of heaven had been so great that she could hardly sustain it, and if they had been increased she should have been overwhelmed, and that her Saviour had constantly blessed her; that she had peace without one cloud, and that she had never during her sickness prayed for life. She dedicated her sons to God for missionaries, and said that her greatest desire was that her children might be trained up for God.... "She attempted to speak to her children; but she was extremely exhausted, and their cries and sobs were such that she could say but little. She told them that God could do more for them than she had done or could do, and that they must trust him." After Lyman Beecher had prayed, "she fell into a sweet sleep from which she awoke in heaven. It is a moving scene to see eight little children weeping around the bed of a dying mother."