1821-1910
Founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist

Youth.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder, matriarch, and "pastor emeritus" of the Church of Christ, Scientist (more commonly known as Christian Science), was born in 1821 on a farm in Bow, New Hampshire, the youngest of six children of Mark and Abigail Baker. She was a sickly child who suffered from an unknown nervous disorder that sent her into hysterical seizures. The result of her poor health was a spotty education, though she did study Hebrew, Greek, and Latin with her older brother Albert. She had a traditional religious upbringing that led her into membership of the Congregational Church in Sanbornton Bridge, New Hampshire (now Tilton), where the family had moved during her childhood. At the age of twenty-one Mary Baker married George Washington Glover, a builder who moved to Charleston, South Carolina. The marriage was the beginning...