Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887) was a prominent, Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist, and speaker in the mid to late 19th century. An 1875 adultery trial in which he was accused of having an affair with a married woman was one of the most famous American trials of the 19th century.^[1] In 2007, The Most Famous Man in America: A Biography of Henry Ward Beecher by Debby Applegate won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.