Lucy Wentworth was halfway between 13 and 14 when a quiet woman named Mary Baker Glover came to live at her family’s farm in Stoughton, Massachusetts. It was September 1868.
Lucy had lived on the farm her whole life, and something like this had not happened before. All through the year, she and her family took care of their horse, cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. They grew vegetables and wheat for bread in their garden, and apples in their orchard. Her mother, Sally, made cheese and butter. Her father, Alanson, farmed their rocky land and made shoes in a little cobbler’s shop in their yard. And of course, Lucy and her brother Charles went off to school every day. All of them worked very hard, day in and day out.
With Mrs. Glover’s arrival, life became a little different.
Lucy looked at their guest with a bit of wonder. Mrs. Glover—who later in life would become known as Mrs. Eddy—stood very straight, and Lucy thought she had a “certain style” in the black-and-white plaid dress she often wore. Mrs. Glover also had a pearl ring, and she was sometimes willing to do a quick jewelry trade. Lucy would wear the pearl for a bit, which was exciting, and Mrs. Glover would wear Lucy’s ring! Lucy even thought Mrs. Glover’s walk was out of the ordinary. It was “a sort of graceful glide.”
The biggest change, though, was that Mrs. Glover moved into a bedroom upstairs and would spend all day working there. She would study the Bible and write and write and write. Lucy thought she was writing a book, but she still couldn’t understand why Mrs. Glover had to be in there all day.
Something had happened to Mrs. Glover two years before, and it explained why she was working so hard. On a bitterly cold February day in 1866, she had fallen on an icy street and had injured herself very badly. No one expected that she would survive, let alone walk again. But a few days later, she asked for her Bible and read one of the healings of Jesus. Filled with inspiration, she caught a glimpse of God’s great goodness and love, and it healed her. The pain she had been experiencing stopped, and she was able to get up and walk across the room.
Quite a number of people witnessed this healing, but none of them—including Mrs. Glover herself!—understood how it had happened. She wanted to find out. Was it possible for it to happen again, she wondered? Could other people be healed, too, just the way they had been in Jesus’ time?
Mrs. Glover had loved the Bible since she was a little girl, but now she dug into it more deeply than ever before to try to find answers. In fact, for several years, she read very little else. She called the Bible “her sole teacher.” She prayed to understand what she was reading and wrote many notes. And most important of all, she grew certain that it was the power of God that had healed her.
During this time, Mrs. Glover was very much alone. Her first husband, George Washington Glover, had passed away soon after they were married. Her beloved son Georgy had been taken from her by well-meaning family members and raised by a foster family. Her second husband, Daniel Patterson, had deserted her. Without his support, she had barely enough money to live on.
It was not an easy time, and it was made harder by the fact that she didn’t have a permanent home. Instead, Mrs. Glover stayed with friends or rented rooms in boarding houses. What she longed for was a quiet place to work, but often, when she talked to people about the possibility of God healing them, her landlords and fellow boarders got stirred up and asked her to leave. In fact, Mrs. Glover moved at least 15 times between 1866 and 1868!
It wasn’t surprising, then, that when Lucy’s family invited Mrs. Glover to stay with them, she agreed.
Lucy’s mother, Sally, was particularly interested in what Mrs. Glover could teach her. By this time, Mrs. Glover knew for sure that healings like the ones that had occurred during Jesus’ day were still possible, because of her own healing and because she had seen others freed from illness when she prayed. Lucy’s father, for example, had struggled for many years with a painful hip condition that had kept him from working. He had been healed of that problem—and of addiction to tobacco—when Mrs. Glover prayed for him. Lucy herself was healed of partial deafness. Seeing all of this, Sally hoped that Mrs. Glover could teach her to heal, too, since she often nursed friends who were ill. In return for Mrs. Glover teaching her, Sally and her family would offer Mrs. Glover a home.
That’s how Lucy’s new friend came to be living in the bedroom upstairs and covering so many sheets of paper with her writing. One of the things Mrs. Glover worked on during her stay at the Wentworths’ was a booklet called “The Science of Man.” It aimed to teach students like Lucy’s mother how to heal through spiritual means alone, following Jesus’ example. This booklet was the first piece of writing describing the system of Christian healing Mrs. Glover later named Christian Science. Through all of her work, she felt God’s guidance.
Each day, Mrs. Glover worked diligently. But at the end of the day, she would be ready to relax. That was Lucy’s favorite time. Mrs. Glover would sometimes go to meet her on the way home from school, and the two would take a walk, talking happily.
After dinner, there were all kinds of possibilities for fun! Lucy’s family was very musical, and they often invited Mrs. Glover to sing with them—including two songs she particularly loved, “Speed Away” and “Star of the Twilight.” She had subscribed to two magazines with stories for Lucy and Charles, so reading was also a possibility. But best of all for Lucy was when Mrs. Glover invited her, Charles, and their friends into her room. She bought a backgammon board and taught them to play, and they often had lively games of “Hunt the Thimble.”
Sister and brother remembered these evenings for years afterward and looked back on their time with Mrs. Glover with fondness. Lucy remembered that Mrs. Glover “entered heartily into our fun and would make herself one of us.” Charles even called this period “one of the brightest spots in my life.”
For Mrs. Glover, her year and a half in Stoughton was a time to be with a family and children she enjoyed. But most importantly, it offered a quiet place to pray and write—and a rest from packing, unpacking, and moving constantly. She also continued her healing work. Not just Lucy and her father were healed, but many others—including cases of consumption, severe intestinal problems, and addiction to drugs. And Mrs. Glover learned more about how to teach others to heal in Christian Science. Her time with Lucy and her family gave her important preparation for what was to come.
In 1870, Mrs. Glover moved on to another home. And just a few years later, she was finally able to purchase a home of her own at 8 Broad Street in Lynn, Massachusetts. There, she completed and published her most important book, the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. While living at 8 Broad Street, she also founded the Christian Science church. And in the second-floor parlor of the cozy house, she married Asa Gilbert Eddy and became Mary Baker Eddy, as the Discoverer, Founder, and Leader of Christian Science is known today.
Alice M. Hummer is Longyear Museum’s director of communications.
This story draws on the published writings of Mary Baker Eddy, unpublished reminiscences and other documents at Longyear Museum and the Mary Baker Eddy Library, and various biographies of Mrs. Eddy.
