Mary Baker Eddy Library
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
Mary Baker was born in 1821 in Bow, New Hampshire to Mark and Abigail Baker. She was sick a lot of her childhood and rebelled the Calvinist doctrine she grew up on in favor of simple prayer and scripture from the Bible.
Eventually, she married George Washington Glover in 1843; however, he died shortly after while she was pregnant with their son. Alone and unable to support her son alone, Mary moved back home until her mother passed away in 1849. Mary grew ill again and sent her son to her late husband’s family, unable to provide the best care herself. In 1853, she married Daniel Patterson who left her in 1866 after years of infidelity; she was granted a divorce in 1873 on grounds of desertion.
Illness
continued to haunt her throughout her life; she avoided 19th century
medicine in favor of homeopathy and spiritual healing. In 1862, Mary met famous physician Phineas
Quimby and found his mental/therapeutic treatments helpful. However, in 1866, Mary Baker found the most successful
treatment to be from her reading of the Bible and spiritual healing and she
began her development of Christian Science.
She researched, traveled, and taught her Christian Science principles around
the United States, where she met her third husband, Asa Gilbert Eddy who was extremely
supportive of her beliefs and education of others. She started her own church by establishing a
charter in 1879 and published several books and articles, including Science and Health with a Key to the
Scriptures and Church of Christ,
Scientists, and founded the newspaper Christian
Science Monitor. Mary Baker Eddy died in 1910, but her church continued to
grow.