CATHARINE BEECHER was invited by Lucy Ann Parsons to bring her Beecher Plan to the Milwaukee Female Seminary. She was the eldest of 13 children, of the infamous Beechers of Boston: teachers, preachers, judges, and leaders of antebellum reform. Catharine's younger sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was an abolitionist; Catharine was a feminist. She had lost her fiancé in a sea accident and determined to live true to his memory and single. But the "plight of woman" was that, without marriage or a profession, a single woman could not sustain her livelihood. Catharine set out to educate women for professions, which would give them independence.

Catharine's idea of women's professions is controversial today. She spoke only of teaching, nursing, child care, and conservation of the domestic state. But she demonstrated their professional status and taught them in an academically rigorous, liberal arts context.