Henry Ward Beecher - Legacy

Legacy

• "He developed a passion for jewels, which he carried, unset, in his pockets, taking them out for comfort when he was tired or in low spirits."
• Beecher, Illinois, was named after him.
• Gutzon Borglum, who created the Mount Rushmore memorial, sculpted a statue of Beecher that stands in the garden of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. wrote the following limerick:

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
called a hen a most elegant creature.
The hen, pleased with that,
laid an egg in his hat,
and thus did the hen reward Beecher.

• In The Resident Patient, a Sherlock Holmes mystery, Holmes' companion Dr. Watson is mentioned as being an avid admirer of Henry Ward Beecher, keeping a portrait of him (beside a portrait of General Gordon) and feeling strongly indignant about the way that Beecher was received during his visit to Britain at the time of the Civil War by "the more turbulent of our people".
• Norwood, Pennsylvania was named after his novel "Norwood".
• The Beecher-McFadden Estate at Peekskill, New York was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
• In the movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon's character quotes Beecher at his arraignment for assaulting a Police Officer.