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entire issue of the Quarterly News, which includes historic
photographs, you may purchase back issues by calling Longyear
Museum at 1-800-277-8943 or 1-617-278-9000.
Longyear Museum
Quarterly News
Summer 1970
Vol. 7, No. 2
Mrs. Longyear Finds and Purchases Mary Baker Eddy Homes
Four
Historic Houses
WHEN MRS.
MARY BEECHER LONGYEAR drove on July 7, 1920 straight from Barton,
Vermont through Rumney, New Hampshire and along the wooded road
toward North Groton, her mission of preserving the historic houses
in which Mrs. Eddy once lived was launched. As she approached
the secluded hamlet of North Groton, she met a strong farm woman
driving calves before her. "Do you know where Mrs. Patterson
(Mrs. Eddy) lived in this hamlet in the 1850's?", Mrs. Longyear
inquired. "The house stood by the stream, but was moved forty
years ago and is just this side of the cemetery," the woman
answered. (The incidents recorded in this article are largely
drawn from the diary which Mrs. Longyear kept almost continuously
from 1906 to 1931.)
On Mrs. Longyear
went past the stream with a broken-down sawmill on one side, and
along a road leading past an all-but-abandoned church, to the
grey, dilapidated house standing on a hilltop framed by magnificent
blue mountains. After making many photographs, Mrs. Longyear was
about to take the shortest route back to Concord, when she felt
a strong urge to talk again with the woman she had met earlier.
She learned that the woman's husband had known Mrs. Patterson
well and her son was working on the road over which she had just
come. Mrs. Longyear returned and hailed the son, Fred Kidder,
who showed sincere interest in her plans to restore the Patterson
house.
He assured
her the house could be moved and she asked if he would sell her
a parcel of land on which to place it, and take charge of moving
it. Mr. Kidder told her he was too busy to move the house, but
"he would do his part by building long and wide roads that
the people from the whole world (as you say) may come and see
this place." He was the son of Daniel Kidder whom Mrs. Patterson
helped with his studies as a boy in North Groton. Daniel was now
living in Rumney. Although Mrs. Longyear did not find him at his
Rumney home, his daughter pointed out the house in Rumney Village
opposite the schoolhouse where Mrs. Patterson had lived.
"They
found a neat cottage with a magnificent view," to use Mrs.
Longyear's own words. Mrs. Ver H. Avery greeted Mrs. Longyear
at the house and assured her that Mrs. Patterson had lived there
two years and that the place had a fine spring of water which
often supplied the neighbors. She said she wanted to sell the
place and together they drove to a potato field where a far-reaching
transaction was made, with James Bonnar, the trusted chauffeur,
as witness. She bought the place for $1500, $500 to be paid when
the deed was delivered, and the balance in October. Thus Mrs.
Longyear acquired her first historic house.
Three days
later on July 10, Mrs. Longyear went to Lynn to search out the
house where Mrs. Eddy had received her revelation. The attendant
at the Christian Science Reading Room sent her to one who might
know, and at length Mrs. Longyear and her companions came to the
corner of Broad and Oxford Streets, where Mrs. Patterson had slipped
on the ice. A Mrs. Dearing had a millinery shop at that corner
and she directed them to a number of early students living in
Swampscott. Eventually they found Paradise Road and the attractive
house belonging to Samuel Putnam Bancroft, one of Mrs. Eddy's
earliest students. The house was easily identified by a "B"
on the eaves. Mr. Bancroft had rented the house and the tenant
gave Mrs. Longyear the business address of Mr. Bancroft, Willis
H. Low Company, opposite the Rowes Wharf in Boston. She lost no
time in calling on Mr. Bancroft, whom she found at a very busy
moment, and greeted him with, "I want to thank you for the
help you were to Christian Science in those early days."
He gave her a hearty handshake and said, "Well, those were
busy times. We named the Cause, Christian Science. It used to
be called metaphysical healing." "He took time,"
Mrs. Longyear noted in her diary, "to show me a picture of
Mrs. Eddy that he had in his safe and promised to see me next
week."
Just three
days later, on July 13, 1920, Mrs. Longyear and her daughter,
Judith Lyeth, and two grandsons, with faithful James at the wheel,
set out for Amesbury to locate the Squire Bagley house in which
Mrs. Glover (Eddy) took refuge with Miss Sarah Bagley in 1868.
Mrs. Eddy resumed the name Glover after her divorce from Dr. Patterson.
Mrs. Longyear inquired of an old lady who said she remembered
Mrs. Glover, adding, "She was a very handsome woman, too."
With her directions, they had no difficulty in finding the Bagley
house and were met at the door by Miss Gunnison, former helper
of Miss Sarah Bagley, who had been left the house jointly with
Richard Kennedy, a distant relative and a one-time student of
Mrs. Glover in this house. It was a pleasant home, maintained
much as it must have been when Mrs. Glover was there.
Two days later
Mrs. Longyear and her daughter Judith motored to Stoughton in
search of the Crafts and Wentworth houses. Inquiring at a garage,
they were directed to a drug store and with a "puzzle"
for directions they set out for the Crafts house, arriving there
with the help of "nursemaids, delivery men, carpenters on
a roof and others along the way." They found the current
occupant of the Crafts house knew little of her earlier relation,
Hiram Crafts. Showing Mrs. Longyear the Crafts genealogy, she
remarked that the book made "awful good reading . . . Crafts-Hiram-Hiram-Hiram
why there were lots of them. Good gracious here is one Hiram with
twelve children . . . You should go to Mrs. Wentworth's, she knows
more than I do about this."
After further
difficulties the Wentworth house was located and someone pointed
to the two uppermost windows saying, "That is where Mrs.
Eddy wrote her first book." Apparently Mrs. Longyear made
no effort at that time to purchase this house.
On July 16,
1920, the anniversary of Mary Baker's birth, Mrs. Longyear records
that she had just bought the "Revelation House at Swampscott."
Its purchase had been arranged by her superintendent, Mr. Noyce,
while she was abroad. A few days later on July 23, 1920, she met
Samuel Putnam Bancroft at his office at four o'clock, "a
fine looking, well-dressed man," who, as a young boy, had
been introduced to Christian Science by his cousin, Mrs. Daniel
Spofford. They drove to Lynn, passing along the Lynn shore drive,
so well known to Putnam Bancroft as a boy, to the house where
Mrs. Glover (Eddy) and Richard Kennedy began their work of teaching
and healing. From Jesse H. Sutherland, who had known Mrs. Eddy
well, they verified the place of Mrs. Eddy's accident and then
drove to Swampscott and the Bancroft house. Crossing the street
to the house she had bought, Mrs. Longyear went into the garden
at its rear, and among the hollyhocks, she found George Newhall,
the former owner, who was able to dispel any doubts about the
"Revelation" house being the right one. Mr. Noyce had
bought it for her sight unseen. Mr. Newhall recounted the incidents
of February 3 and 4, 1866, when as a milkman he was making daily
rounds of the houses. He was sent two miles in bitter cold weather
to tell the parson that Mrs. Patterson was dying. Mr. Newhall
had full details of her condition. A day or two later, when delivering
milk again, a neighbor told him of "the miracle" and
that Mrs. Patterson was up and well. To Mrs. Longyear he added,
"I guess I am the only man who knows the truth of it on earth."
The milkman of those earlier days had become the owner of the
house which Mrs. Longyear purchased.
In November,
1920, Mrs. Longyear secured the North Groton property which she
first visited earlier that year.
The purchase
of the Amesbury house, the last one acquired by Mrs. Longyear,
came about in an interesting way. Mrs. Longyear had visited the
house three times and felt that, if it was right for her to have
it, it would come to her. The actual acquisition of the house
followed a dinner in the Longyear home early in 1922 when C. Lothrop
Higgins was a guest. Mr. Higgins had an exclusive specialty shop
on Boylston Street and had frequently provided beautiful bonnets
and accessories for Mrs. Eddy's gowns. He and Mrs. Eddy had been
good friends. At dinner, the Amesbury house was casually mentioned
and Mr. Higgins said, "Do you know the house is being sold
at auction tomorrow?" Immediately Mrs. Longyear asked him
to bid on it for her. At one time Mr. Higgins had lived in Amesbury
and as a boy had been healed by Miss Bagley. He knew Mr. Wadleigh
to whom Richard Kennedy had left the house; Miss Gunnison had
willed her part to Kennedy, and Wadleigh was now selling it at
auction.
This was on
the eve of Mr. and Mrs. Longyear's departure for England to attend
the wedding of their youngest son, Robert, who was then Vice-Consul
of Haiti. They returned on April 14, 1922 and on May 28, Mr. Longyear
passed away. Mrs. Longyear was notified on June 27 that the Amesbury
house was hers, but for the next few months she was in Marquette,
Michigan, on the Longyear farm near Lake Huron, with her children.
She was also performing her duties as executrix of Mr. Longyear's
will.
She resumed
her work of renovating and refurnishing the four houses early
in 1923, and for several months she was tireless in carrying out
plans to open them to the public. At Amesbury, Mr. Higgins was
a great help to her in separating, selecting, and disposing of
the accumulations of the active Bagley family over a hundred years.
The history of this house and the variety and richness of its
content when acquired by Mrs. Longyear, is vividly told in Mrs.
Longyear's little book, "History of a House." The house
contained furniture in abundance and a number of pieces were sent
to the houses in Rumney and North Groton. Mrs. Longyear enjoyed
restoring the old houses, and in all her journeys, she took with
her a friend or a member of the family, thereby turning these
restoration excursions into something of a holiday, reflecting
her perpetual joy in this work.
By mid-1923
the end was in sight. On July 8, 1923 the Swampscott house received
its first guests, among whom were Mr. and Mrs. Edward Everett
Norwood of Washington and their daughter. About two months later,
on September 4, the Amesbury house saw its first guest registered.
Custodians were installed in the houses and guests were welcomed.
After Mrs.
Longyear's passing in 1931, custodians were retained at Swampscott,
Amesbury, and Rumney but the houses were not generally opened
to the public for a number of years. On request they could be
visited. By the mid-thirties repairs and painting were needed,
and in some, heat and electricity. The first house to be reopened
permanently to the public was Swampscott on February 1, 1935.
Rumney was reopened in 1937, Amesbury in 1950, and North Groton
in 1957. In 1962 the Wentworth house at Stoughton, which Mrs.
Longyear visited in 1920, came to Longyear as an anonymous gift.
It is now the fifth historic house maintained by Longyear Historical
Society.
NOTE: For
more detailed information about the various houses see History
of a House by Mary Beecher Longyear; Mary Baker Eddy and
the Stoughton Years by Kenneth Hufford; The Birthplace
of Christian Science and The Rumney Years by Alma Lutz; Quarterly
News published by Longyear: Vol. 2, no. 4; Vol. 3, no. 1;
Vol. 5, no. 4. Available at Longyear Museum.
© 1970 Longyear Foundation Vol. 7 No. 2
To read this entire issue of the Quarterly News, which
includes historic photographs, you may purchase back issues by
calling Longyear Museum at 1-800-277-8943
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