Image Gallery

At the end of September, twenty-seven participants set off on Longyear Museum’s Fall Tour of Mary Baker Eddy’s New England. The four-day tour began and ended at the Museum, but in between the group traveled to over seventeen sites in New Hampshire and Massachusetts relating to the history of Mrs. Eddy. One participant said of the trip, “[The] tour is a highlight never to be forgotten…It must be true that you can never know all about a place until you have been there…The tour also helped tremendously in creating a mental timeline for Mrs. Eddy’s years.”

The first stop on the tour was Bow, New Hampshire, Mrs. Eddy’s birthplace. Throughout the tour participants read Retrospection and Introspection, Mrs. Eddy’s own account of her history. One traveler said, “Over the years I have read and drawn from Retrospection and Introspection – it is now like a new found message to me.”

In North Groton, New Hampshire, participants were able to examine firsthand the archaeology work being done at the mill site across from the Patterson house. One tour participant said, “To me, the North Groton house symbolizes Mrs. Eddy’s persistence in prayer and determination not to be defeated – no matter what!”

Although the group arrived at Red Rock at high tide, several participants bravely climbed out on the rock. Mrs. Eddy visited this beautiful spot on the Atlantic Ocean while she lived in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Here the group visited the kitchen in the Bagley home in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Mrs. Eddy boarded with Sarah Bagley on two occasions, once in 1868 and again in 1870.

Two participants pose outside the Swampscott, Massachusetts, home. Mrs. Eddy rented rooms on the second floor of this house from late 1865 to the spring of 1866. It was here that she experienced the healing which led to her discovery of Christian Science.

Longyear President•Executive Director Anne McCauley visits with Fall Tour participants outside the historic house in Stoughton, Massachusetts. While living here as a guest of the Wentworth family, Mrs. Eddy completed her first manuscript on Christian Science, The Science of Man.

Tour consultant Sue Dunlap in Alanson Wentworth’s shoe shop. Mr. Wentworth was a farmer and shoe maker. His wife, Sally, was one of Mrs. Eddy’s earliest students.

Participants enjoyed the opportunity to examine the exterior restoration at the house in Lynn, Massachusetts. After the visit, one participant said, “Thank you for your devotion to the restoration work and for upholding such high standards in your work!”

Travelers slip on booties to protect the original carpeting at Mrs. Eddy’s last home in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

In Mrs. Eddy’s home in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, guests examine a photograph taken by William Rathvon while he was serving in the household as one of Mrs. Eddy’s secretaries.

Constance Shyrack, Resident Overseer of the house at 62 North State Street in Concord, New Hampshire, welcomed the group for a tour. One participant said, “I knew the least about 62 North State Street [before the visit] and found that tour to be the most important in expanding my understanding of our Leader’s chronology of writing and progress in her work for the Cause of Christian Science.”

At the end of the tour, one participant said, “This was a most memorable/significant event in my life-study as a Christian Scientist!” Another commented, “As I thought about all the places we’d visited, a sentence from Science and Health stood out: ‘Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality’ (page 298:13). These qualities seem to me to describe the different steps of progress that Mrs. Eddy went through as she moved from place to place – from Bow to Boston.”