The Mary Baker Eddy Birthplace

 

BIRTHPLACE
OF
MARY BAKER EDDY
DISCOVERER AND FOUNDER
OF
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Nearby our home in Manchester, New Hampshire off Route 3A and the Merrimack River is a historic site we never visited until just a few weeks ago.  We drive by it all the time on our way to Concord, passing through the small town of Bow.  There is a small wooden sign "The Birthplace of Mary Baker Eddy", but usually we are too busy to stop, or it is winter and the entrance is snowed in, or the gate is closed, or some other mundane reason.  Finally, we stopped by to see this spot.

The entrance is on Baker Road, up a steep hill from busy Route 3A. The trees form a tunnel, which is lush and quiet.  By the time you reach the top of the hill it is silent except for the distant sounds of traffic on Route 93 nearby.  This little wooded park is squeezed in between routes 3A and 93.  At the time of Mary Baker Eddy's birth in 1821 the area was heavily deforested farm land.  It is hard to imagine her family farm now, since the buildings no longer exist and the landscape has changed so much.

Mary Morse Baker was born on July 16, 1821 to her parents Mark Baker and Abigail Barnard Ambrose.  The family removed from Bow to Sanbornton Bridge (now the town of Tilton) in 1836.  She married George Washington Glover in 1843, but he died of Yellow Fever after only six months. She remarried in 1853 to Daniel Patterson, a local dentist, but divorced him in 1872.  In 1875 she published her book Science and Health, which was her guide to her new movement which became known as Christian Science.  Today there are over 1,500 Christian Science churches in over 70 countries. 

In 1877 she married Asa Gilbert Eddy, and became Mary Baker Eddy.  In 1882 the couple removed to Boston, and Gilbert Eddy died the same year.  She established her own church in Boston, and in 1888 opened a reading room which sold her books and bibles.  The founded the Christian Science Monitor newspaper in 1908.  She died at age 89 on 3 December 1910 at 400 Beacon Street in Newton, Massachusetts, and was buried at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  

In 1921 a granite pyramid weighing 100 ton was installed at her birthplace in Bow.  It was blown up (dynamite) in 1962, and her former home in Concord was destroyed, too, because the Christian Science church believed they would become pilgrimage spots.  Her homes in Swampscott, Amesbury, Stoughton, Lynn and Newton (all in Massachusetts) are owned by the Longyear Museum and open to visitors. 

Signs at the birthplace parking area show how the farm and dwelling would have looked in 1821

This engraving was made in 1898 by Mary Baker Eddy's cousin, Rufus H. Baker

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For the truly curious:

"The Dearest Spot On Earth: The Birthplace of Mary Baker Eddy", a blog post from the Mary Baker Eddy Library   https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/research/the-dearest-spot-on-earth-the-birthplace-of-mary-baker-eddy/  

The Longyear Museum and the Mary Baker Eddy Historic Houses:  https://www.longyear.org/   

Wikipedia article on Mary Baker Eddy:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Baker_Eddy   

The Ancestry of Mary Baker Eddy, edited by William Montgomery Clemens, 1924, published by the University of Wisconsin - Madison.  Available to read or download for free online at Google Books at this link:  https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Ancestry_of_Mary_Baker_Eddy/SIZIAAAAMAAJ?hl=en     

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To Cite/Link to this post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "The Mary Baker Eddy Birthplace", Nutfield Genealogy, posted August 10, 2021, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-mary-baker-eddy-birthplace.html: accessed [access date]).