Mary Baker Glover

Science and Health (1875) by Mary Baker Glover

Mary Baker Eddy (July 16, 1821 - December 3, 1910) was the founder of Christian Science, a new religious movement, in New England in the latter half of the 19th century. Eddy wrote the movement's main textbook, Science and Health (1875), and founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879. She also founded the Christian Science Publishing Society (1898) and The Christian Science Monitor (1908). Eddy was born Mary Morse Baker in a farmhouse in Bow, New Hampshire to farmer Mark Baker (d. 1865) and his wife Abigail Barnard Baker, née Ambrose (d. 1849). Eddy was the youngest of the Bakers' six children: boys Samuel Dow (1808), Albert (1810), and George Sullivan (1812), followed by girls Abigail Barnard (1816), Martha Smith (1819), and Mary Morse (1821). Mark Baker was a strongly religious man from a Protestant Congregationalist background, a firm believer in the final judgment and eternal damnation, according to Eddy.[2] McClure's magazine published a series of articles in 1907 that were highly critical of Eddy, stating that Baker's home library consisted of the Bible-though Eddy responded that this was untrue and that her father had been an avid reader. Eddy wrote that her father had been a justice of the peace at one point and a chaplain of the New Hampshire State Militia. He developed a reputation locally for being disputatious; one neighbor described him as "[a] tiger for a temper and always in a row.