In the 1880s, news of Christian Science healing was spreading through the American Midwest to such states as Illinois, Kansas, and Nebraska. This missionary work was carried on by men and women who had studied with Mary Baker Eddy at her Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston. Among them were Joseph and Mary Armstrong of Irving, Kansas, who attended a large Normal class for teachers in May 1889. Twenty-one-year-old James Neal, a clerk at the Armstrong Bank, had attended the equally large Primary class that February. This 12-minute video tells their story, excerpted from Longyear’s one-hour documentary, “The Onward and Upward Chain.”
