For local family with ties to history, a milestone
HOPKINTON - This was one presidential election the three generations of Beecher boys weren't about to miss.
Amid the crowds streaming in and out of Hopkinton Middle School yesterday morning, Edward Beecher, 59, his 99-year-old father, Milton, and his teenage son Robert pulled up in a silver station wagon to cast what was a historic vote for a family that traces its lineage back to the famed abolitionist and author Harriet Beecher Stowe.
For the first time, all three men voted together in an election, and all three said they came specifically to vote for Barack Obama.
Edward Beecher said the Illinois senator's candidacy stirred an excitement in him that he hasn't felt in four decades.
"The last time I felt such hope was the day Robert Kennedy won the California primary," said Edward, an adult-services coordinator for the state Department of Mental Retardation. "But it was so short-lived."
Milton Beecher, who turns 100 in March, calls himself an independent and said the first president he voted for was Herbert Hoover, in 1928. Although he has difficulty hearing and needs the assistance of a wheelchair, the retired highway engineer for the state of Connecticut wanted to vote as a way to make his feelings known about the current occupant of the White House, George W. Bush: "He's the worst president we ever had!"
Another motivating factor: he "doubts" he'll be around for the next presidential election.
Robert Beecher, 18, a senior at Hopkinton High School, said he's been looking forward to voting for the first time.
"I'm glad this election got to be the one I voted in," especially since many of his friends and classmates were not yet of voting age, he said. "I feel lucky I'm old enough to vote in this."
The family says Beecher Stowe, the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a novel published in 1852, is a direct cousin who descended from a common relative, English colonist John Beecher. The book, about a cruel slave owner, was hugely popular in its day and served as a powerful social critique that exerted significant political influence during the Civil War.
Edward Beecher said that even before the family officially learned of its connection to the author a few years ago through genealogical research, it long suspected it had ties to her and instinctively shared her views on equality.
"From the time I was young, my mother and father raised me to respect that everyone was equal," he said. "It didn't have anything to do with color or race or ethnicity."
His own philosophical kinship to the abolitionist spirit grew stronger during his days as a politically active student at Boston College in the late 1960s and early '70s, he said.
So what would Beecher Stowe say about her relatives supporting an African-American man for president?
"She'd probably say, 'It's about time!' " Edward Beecher said with a laugh. "I think she'd be proud [of us] and proud of the American people." 