Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
Founder of the Connecticut Women's Suffrage Association (Inducted 1994)
Isabella Beecher Hooker and her husband, lawyer John Hooker, built this residence in 1853; they lived there for nearly thirty years. Their home became a literary salon and center for reformers. Isabella Beecher Hooker, the daughter of Lyman Beecher and sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catharine Beecher, joined the woman’s rights movement after she encountered a section from Blackstone subsuming a wife’s identity into that of her husband’s. She spearheaded the woman suffrage movement in Connecticut and played a role on the national scene as well. In 1869, she established the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, an organization she led for thirty-six years. The Beecher residence is located on the corner of Forrest and Hawthorn Streets in Hartford.
The Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame Historic Site Survey project was funded through generous grants from: