Image Gallery
Amesbury, Mass.: A Refuge for Teaching
The Squire Bagley house
This house was built circa 1780, probably by Isaac Bagley. The house was expanded by his son, Squire Lowell Bagley, to meet the needs of his growing family. Longyear Museum has restored the exterior to the colors and style of the 1860s, when Mary Glover (later Mary Baker Eddy) was a guest here for two brief, but crucial, periods.
Squire Bagley’s daughter
Lowell Bagley married Sarah Osgood in 1811, and the couple raised three daughters, Emmeline, Mary, and Sarah. It was their daughter Sarah who, nearly fifty years later, in 1868 and again in 1870, offered shelter here to the Discoverer of Christian Science.
Storage attic: a treasure chest of family history
When Mrs. Longyear found this house in 1920, it was still furnished much as it had been sixty years earlier, and contained personal memorabilia that reflected the family’s history over several generations. The attic and cellar held trunks, chests, and boxes full of things the Bagleys had used in their daily lives.
Unchanged in over a century
The interior today presents the Bagley home much as it was one hundred forty years ago, when Mrs. Glover (later Mary Baker Eddy) lived there.
A “time capsule” of the past
Most of the furnishings in the house today belonged to the Bagley family. Visiting here is like stepping through a door into their lives well over a century ago.
The kitchen
Further research and restoration are ongoing, with a view to presenting the Bagley home as much as possible the way Mrs. Glover would have known it when she found refuge here.
Bagley house, where two early students of Christian Science were taught
Taking a room with Sarah Bagley in June and July 1868, and returning briefly in 1870, Mrs. Glover (later Mrs. Eddy) taught two of her earliest students here. One of those students was Sarah. Mrs. Glover’s teaching of Christian Science underscored her conviction that her discovery was indeed Science and could therefore be taught.
A succession of rented rooms
During these years, circumstances forced Mrs. Glover to move repeatedly as she explored her discovery and looked for ways to share it with others. Her small upstairs bedroom at the Bagleys’ was one of a long succession of rooms she occupied in several towns.
Setting out for a wider destiny
From here Mrs. Glover moved on to Lynn in 1870, where she taught larger classes of students, wrote and published Science and Health, and stepped forward into her broader role as the Leader of Christian Science. The framed needlework with the motto from Psalm 91:11, was in the room occupied by Mrs. Glover.
