List of 7th Heaven characters


This is a list of characters from The WB/The CW family drama, 7th Heaven.

Overview

The Camden family

The Camden Family is made up of Eric and Annie and their seven children: Matt, Mary, Lucy, Simon, Ruthie, Sam, and David.

Eric Camden

Rev. Eric Camden was raised in Binghamton, New York by his parents, Colonel John Camden and Ruth Lynch. Based on the episode "Halloween", it appears that Eric was born in 1954. According to the episode "One Hundred", his birthday is in January. Eric attended college for five years and graduated from Cobell Seminary. Shortly thereafter, he married and began a family with Annie Jackson. He has one sister, Julie Camden-Hastings, who ends up marrying the doctor that delivered Eric and Annie's oldest, as well as the youngest children. After his heart-bypass operation, Eric decides to leave the ministry and even stop attending church. He renews his faith and returns to church in time to marry Kevin and Lucy. He had three cardiac episodes in seasons 4, 7 and 11 and survived.

Annie Camden

Anne "Annie" Camden is the wife of Eric and mother of Matt, Mary, Lucy, Simon, Ruthie, Sam, and David. She has a half-sister named Lily, through her father, Charles Jackson. Her mother is Jenny Jackson. During her college education, Annie studied everything from art to business and economics, and in later seasons returned to school to earn a degree in early childhood education.
Though she has chosen to be a stay-at-home mother, Annie is a jack of all trades. She balances a family of nine on a minister's salary, is a plumber, builder, seamstress, cook, and much more. She also serves, from time to time, as the treasurer for the church.
Annie is the backbone of her family. The mother of seven, she is often the one who the children come to talk to, often over milk and cookies. She tries, with her husband, to instill strong morals in her children. She is noted as hoping Ruthie will not follow in her footsteps or of her two other daughters and marry too young. She hopes Ruthie will take the time to travel first.
Annie is the only daughter of her parents. Her mother, Jenny, dies early in the first season from cancer, a death that strikes Annie hard. Harder yet is her father's quick bounce to a relationship with Ginger. During one episode, Annie leaves the church after her father brings Ginger to service. Mary chases her and is struck by a car. Annie accepts Ginger slowly and Ginger and her father wed. Her father has Alzheimer's disease and Annie spends more and more time with him in Arizona before he dies. Annie is quoted in later seasons as saying that she likes Ginger a lot more now that her parents are back together. In an early season, Annie learned of an illegitimate daughter her father had with his high school girlfriend. She eventually meets this half-sister, Lily, and the two form a relationship over time.
In 2009, she was included in Yahoo!'s Top 10 TV Moms from Six Decades of Television for the decade 1996–2007.

Matt Camden

Matthew "Matt" Camden is Eric and Annie's firstborn. In the beginning of the series, Matt is a junior in high school and he was born in 1980. In the first season, he started out 16 years old. Matt sacrifices his school time to help others, if they wished to remain anonymous, he would respect that and not even tell his father. During high school, he bounces from job to job, including tutor and Dairy Shack delivery driver. He is not always a star student, but he manages to graduate at the top of his class and get accepted for a White House internship in Washington, D.C., with First Lady Hillary Clinton. He returns to Glenoak for college, rooming with friend and fellow "P.K." John Hamilton. Matt's new uncle, Dr. Hank Hastings, helps him get a job in the hospital cafeteria; during his time there, he decides to become a doctor. His uncle Hank is the main inspiration why he wanted to become a doctor. He ends up working at the local free clinic with Hank, beginning by helping save the life of a woman who could not get anyone but Matt to take her symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy seriously.
He meets Sarah Glass, a fellow medical student, just when he really wished to meet the one who would be the love of his life. Their first date ends with them getting married. Because Sarah is the daughter of a rabbi who wants his daughter to marry a Jewish man, they initially keep their marriage a secret. They eventually have a large family wedding presided over jointly by their proud fathers, who almost called off the wedding feuding over Matt, who plans to convert to Judaism. Matt and Sarah move to New York to attend medical school, and while there have been problems, they have remained happy together. Near the series' end, they graduate from medical school and announce that they are expecting twin boys, who are born the following summer in 2006. It is also shown throughout the series that he knows American Sign Language, a result of his relationship with Heather, making him bilingual.

Simon Camden

Simon Camden is the middle child and second son. In the early part of the series, he is known to his siblings as "The Bank of Simon" because he always seems to have money, and he loves to make money. His other interests have included golf, magic, and cars. He was born in 1986 and in the first year he started out when he was 10 years old.
During the pilot episode, Simon's most fervent wish is for a dog. When asked to say grace before the family had dinner, he even includes a dog request in his prayer. Although his parents do not think he is mature enough for the responsibility of a pet, Annie goes to the pound "just to look" and falls in love with a dog who was scheduled to be euthanized. This dog became the Camdens' beloved "Happy."
Simon meets a girl named Deena in sixth grade and finds out that Eric counseled her family years ago when she was diagnosed with leukemia. They date for the majority of middle school, but break up on the last day of eighth grade, though they remain friends.
Transitioning to high school is rough for Simon, despite help from his bubbly, popular big sister Lucy. He dates a girl named Cecilia Smith, and they even consider furthering their relationship by becoming sexually involved with one another, but decide against it. The summer before his senior year, Simon accidentally hits and kills a boy named Paul Smith who was Ruthie's age. Since Paul was on a bicycle with no helmet and was later proven to be under the influence of drugs, the death is ruled accidental and Simon is not brought up on criminal charges, but he cannot stop blaming himself for the accident and also fears retaliation from Paul's older brother, who was the likely guilty party who spray-painted "thou shall not kill" on the sign at Reverend Camden's church. He passes the CHSPE and leaves school early to start college. While in college, partly as a way to cope with his guilty feelings and low self-esteem, he breaks the family's edict of not having premarital sex.
Simon has three serious girlfriends over the course of the show: Deena, Cecilia, and Rose. He later gets involved with a girl that he knew from college, Sandy, who has a son named Aaron, fathered by Martin Brewer. Simon provides emotional, and maybe even physical support for Sandy and her son.
After a scare involving Simon's girlfriend Georgia being pregnant, he meets Rose. Simon and Rose fall deeply in love, get engaged, and plan a wedding, but when the wedding day finally comes, they decide to not get married because neither is ready for marriage and Rose still has feelings for an ex-boyfriend. Sandy and her son Aaron come to the party after the non-wedding and Sandy says she needs to talk to him; her message isn't revealed, but the assumption is that it's about Aaron's paternity and that Simon is Aaron's father. In season 11, it is confirmed that he is not the father. Simon eventually goes on to marry someone else or at least get engaged, and he graduates from college.

Mary Camden

Mary Camden-Rivera is the second-born child and the eldest daughter of Eric and Annie. She was born in 1982 and started out when she was 14 years old. Mary might be considered the black sheep of the Camden family. By the time she is 15, Mary is an aspiring athlete with an immense love for basketball. As the months progress, she seems to rise in both ability and confidence until she is hit by a car before the end of her freshman year, critically injuring her knee. She has a series of different boyfriends. She dates Wilson West, a guy she meets at the park while with Ruthie, who becomes her first love. He later reveals to Mary that he had sex with a 16-year-old girl and got her pregnant. The girl died in childbirth, leaving Wilson with their son Wilson Jr., called Billy. By Mary's senior year, she and her basketball teammates allow their grades to slip, which causes their coach to impose a lockout on them. After a secret meeting, the team decides to enact their frustrations by vandalizing the school gym. They are caught at the scene of the crime, and are arrested. Through a special program for first offenders, Mary is able to evade serious punishment by doing community service, which is where she meets Robbie Palmer. When she gets her driver's license, she can not parallel park but, on Lucy's advice, cries about it and the driving instructor compassionately gives her a passing grade. Mary has a dream of playing pro for the Lakers, and thinks that when her coach rings her up that this is the dream coming true, but it's actually training disabled people for the Special Olympics.
Mary decides not to go to college since she lost her scholarship, but work instead. She cannot hold down a job, being fired everywhere, from The Pool Hall to Pete's Pizza. While working at Pete's, she meets Frankie and Johnny, a young, drug-addicted married couple who have a baby girl named Mercy. Eric and Annie learn that Mary has been caught drinking while babysitting her cousin, Erica, pulled over by a cop, and given a warning, and that she has numerous debts to credit card companies, insurance companies, and to her family. Not wanting Mary to hit rock bottom, Eric and Annie decide it is best that she go to Buffalo because they can not give her the attention she needs. She lives with her grandparents, works at a homeless shelter in the fall, and starts college in the winter. Her departure causes some people in the church community to think that Mary had an unplanned pregnancy, but Eric quickly refutes the rumor. She leaves home angry at her entire family, whom she sees as betraying her, and refuses to speak to her father. In time, she calms down and plans to return home for the summer, as she and Robbie start dating again.
While in New York, she discovers that Wilson is also living there. Instead of staying in Glenoak for the summer like she originally planned, she breaks up with Robbie and moves back to New York and starts dating Wilson. After getting advice from the Colonel, she decides to get a job in public service. When she cannot become a police officer because she is not old enough, she applies for a position as a firefighter, and, after the Colonel pulls some strings, she gets into the firefighter program. When she starts training, she meets Ben Kinkirk, who is also in training. He comes over to her place and they kiss, which Wilson walks in on. The two break up and she returns home to California for a time, but on a trip to New York with Lucy, she reveals that she is moving back to New York to train to be a flight attendant. She begins dating a pilot, Jack, who is the same age as her father, though this does not last. She moves to Florida for a time to get away from her family. While in Florida, Mary runs into Carlos Rivera, a man she had met while volunteering at a homeless shelter years earlier, and who the Camdens took in during the holiday season. Carlos and Mary get married shortly after Lucy, and they reveal her pregnancy and the marriage to her family at that time. Her parents visit at the birth of her son, Charles Miguel "Charlie", named in honor of her and Carlos' late grandfathers. They eventually divorce and Carlos takes Charlie back to Puerto Rico when Mary gives her parental rights up. It is announced by Carlos when he attends Simon's wedding that the two are back together and that Mary is expecting twin girls. Though Mary is not at Simon's wedding, she is able to still see her family the next day, as she finally graduates from college the same day as Matt and Sarah. During the following summer, Mary gives birth to twin daughters. Mary's son is born in 2004 and her twin daughters born in 2006.