The Story
Mrs. Eddy, who was at that time known as Mary B. Glover, purchased the house on Broad Street in 1875, as she was finishing the manuscript for Science and Health. In a small attic room under a skylight in the roof, she wrote the pages that completed her book and painstakingly proofread and corrected the printer’s galley sheets. By year’s end the first edition was published.
A sign above the second-floor windows proclaimed: “Mary B. Glover’s Christian Scientists’ Home,” displaying the first-known use of the cross-and-crown as an emblem of her religious movement.
In this house Mary B. Glover became Mary Baker Eddy. On New Year’s Day 1877, she and Asa Gilbert Eddy were married in the parlor.
Mrs. Eddy wrote about her former house in Lynn: “Very sacred to me are the memories that cluster around my old home …. the earthly dwelling where Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures was written – where my husband, Dr. Eddy, and I instituted the Christian Scientists Home, and passed many happy hours in prayer to God and work for man…” (Mary Baker Eddy, Footprints Fadeless, 105).
Here she formed an association of her students on July 4, 1876, and held its meetings in the parlor. Here she founded her church, the Church of Christ (Scientist), and answered the call to be its Pastor. And here Mrs. Eddy conducted classes of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, chartered in January 1881.
The Eddys took their final leave of Lynn in January 1882. Down the steps of this home, Mary Baker Eddy set out for her great teaching work in Boston and beyond.
