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The Mary Baker Eddy Libraryfor the B e t t e r m e n t o f H um a n i ty

2F A L L 2 0 0 4

Vol. 4 No. 2

No.

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TThe he MarMary y Baker Baker EddEddy y LibrarLibrary f or for thethe BettermentBetterment o fo f HumanityHumanity200 200 Massachusetts Massachusetts Avenue, venue, Boston, Boston, MA MA 0211502115 T Telephone: elephone: 61617.45450.70007000 888888.222222.37113711E-mail: E-mail: magazine@[email protected] W Web eb site:site: wwwwww.marybakereddylibrary.marybakereddylibrary.org.org

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WoWoman an Suffrage Suffrage Association, ssociation, March arch 15, 15, 1888.1888.

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CoCover,ver, BeloBelow:w: Woman oman suffrage suffrage headquarters headquarters

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Fall04.CVR.agsi.r1 9.8.04 1:48 PM Page OBC11

The Mary Baker Eddy Library f or the Betterment o f Humanity Fall 2004

a look inside

TrusteesChairman

Virginia Harris

Treasurer

Walter D. Jones

Secretary

Don W. Wilson

Peter Ackerman

Allen Weinstein

Founding PurposeThe Library is engaged in furthering the universal quest for spirituality and the science of being—and their effect on health and human progress.

MissionThe mission of theLibrary is to providecommon ground toexplore the power ofideas throughout historyto inspire individualsand transform theworld; the ongoingsearch for life’s deepermeaning; and the ideas,life, and achievements of Mary Baker Eddy.

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ContextsHistorian CarolynDeSwarte Gifford looks at American women andreligion in an age of greatsocial reform and highlightsthe intersections of the suffrage and temperancemovements.

2

PenningsPiecing together new discoveries in the Libraryarchives, researchersSherry Darling and JanellFiarman reveal Mary BakerEddy’s support of womansuffrage.

10

Col lect ionsWriter Cathy Armerexplains how a researchquery led to the linkbetween Mary Baker Eddyand woman suffrage.

16

Founders Circ le

20

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2F A L L 2 0 0 4

Vol. 4 No. 2

No.

Katharine F. FoxShirley S. FoxworthyLa Veda Varner FrasierTony and Marjorie Faller

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ThThe e M a rM a ry y Ba k e r a k e r E dE ddydy L iL i b rb r a ra ryf or for ththe B e t t e r m e n te t t e r m e n t o fo f H u m a n i t yH u m a n i t y

ThThe e MagaMagazinezine ofof


1The Mary Baker Eddy Library f or the Betterment o f Humanity Fall 2004

Mary Baker Eddy’s accomplishments as an author, founder, religious reformer, and leader illustrate her conviction that women were capable of more than nineteenth-century society and conventions prescribed. Yet Mrs. Eddy’s stance vis-à-vis the woman suffrage movement has proved elusive.

In this issue’s groundbreaking “Pennings” article, however, researchers Sherry Darlingand Janell Fiarman draw on recently uncovered documents in the Library’s vast collections toshow that Mrs. Eddy was a longtime supporter of the suffrage movement, sharing vision andfriendship with Mary A. Livermore, president of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association.

Perhaps it should not be surprising that religious and social reformation were conjoinedin nineteenth-century America. In this issue’s “Contexts” article, Northwestern University’sCarolyn DeSwarte Gifford describes the linkages between the two, and the energy created—moving thousands of men and women to join the struggles for temperance and woman suffrage.

In “Collections,” writer Cathy Armer provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of theLibrary’s Research Room staff at work, noting that findings such as Mrs. Eddy’s involvementin woman suffrage prove once again the value of opening the Library’s collections.

And we are pleased to inform our readers that this value is about to multiply. We haverecently been notified that the Library’s quarterly magazine (the one you’re now reading) willsoon be available to scholars around the world through the leading history databases AMERICA:HISTORY AND LIFE and HISTORICAL ABSTRACTS. This is an important accomplishment for theLibrary. Coupled with this summer’s fellowship program, we are beginning to glimpse the possibilities for exponential growth in scholarship related to Mary Baker Eddy’s life and ideas.

None of this would have been possible without the support of you, our readers and Friendsof the Library. Thank you for being there for this new and ever-expanding institution.

Stephen I. DanzanskyExecutive Editor

Chief Executive Officer of the Library

F r o m t h e E x e c u t i v e E d i t o r Mar

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T he first six decades of the nineteenth century were an era

of social reform in the United States. During this time, many

Americans joined reform movements in order to refine and

deepen the moral dimensions of their beliefs and values, and to make their

new republic a more just, egalitarian, and compassionate society. Both men

and women participated in efforts to improve education at all levels from

elementary school to college; provide better care for the ill, insane, and

handicapped; address the widespread drunkenness in the country through

temperance measures that discouraged the use of alcohol; revise the prison

system and eliminate capital punishment; abolish slavery; promote the

better treatment of American Indians; and find alternatives to war.

C o n t e x t s

At points where the nineteenth-century suffrage and temperance movements overlap, we

find a rich story of American women, religion, and social reform.

The New Woman and the Vote

Left: From 1887 to 1905, editor

Alice Stone Blackwell sent suffrage

news updates called The Woman’s

Column to newspapers across the

United States. The February 11, 1893,

issue explains author Harriet Beecher

Stowe’s position on woman suffrage.

Blackwell’s parents were reformers

Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell.

Above: A detail from the stationery

on which Frances E. Willard wrote to

Mary Baker Eddy, October 30, 1884.

Willard’s letter thanks Eddy for her

donation to The World’s Woman’s

Temperance Union.

By Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford



A significant cluster of reforms aimed to improvewomen’s lives and win them equal rights with men. Anearly public demand for such reforms was articulated atthe women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, NewYork, in July 1848. This watershed event was organized byLucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880), a Quaker minister,and her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), anantislavery supporter. Both of these women’s rights pio-neers were deeply concerned by the inequalities and dis-abilities women faced in every aspect of American society,and their concerns were reflected in the convention pro-ceedings. Delegates issued a powerful Declaration ofSentiments and Resolutions written by Stanton, whichproclaimed the fundamental equality of women and men.The document insisted that women’s equal status was oneto which they were entitled by “the laws of nature and ofnature’s God.” 1

Stanton’s Declaration echoed the language of the1776 Declaration of Independence but included a sub-stantial list of injustices suffered by American women thathad not even been considered by America’s foundingfathers. The small band of women’s rights advocates—both female and male—who attended the conventionunanimously passed many resolutions that addressed awide range of women’s educational, legal, religious, andeconomic disabilities. They also passed—though notunanimously—a resolution stating that “it is the duty ofthe women of this country to secure to themselves theirsacred right to the elective franchise.” 2

Conf l ict ing not ions of womanhoodThe egalitarian ideas of the first women’s rights conven-tion, embodied in its resolutions and the Declaration ofSentiments, seem, in retrospect, courageous and vision-ary. Yet they were profoundly shocking and unacceptableto most men and women of the time, who held a very dif-ferent view of the nature of womanhood. While theunderstanding of womanhood in the Declaration ofSentiments was based on the notion that women and menwere the same with equal rights, the reigning notion ofwomanhood in mid-nineteenth-century America—theideal of the “true woman”—was based on the assumption

Library of Congress

Above, Left: Portrait of Lucretia Mott, circa 1870. Mott orga-

nized the Seneca Falls women’s rights convention, along with

Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Above, Right: This unsigned notice announcing the Seneca Falls

women’s rights convention appeared in The Seneca County Courier,

July 14, 1848.

The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University


Above, Left: The mid-nineteenth-century notion of the “true

woman” appeared in literature, speeches, and sermons. The

Reverend J.D. Fulton’s book The True Woman (1869) forcefully

argued against woman suffrage.

Above, Right: Daguerreotype portrait of Catharine Beecher,

1848, possibly by W. & F. Langenheim.


of women’s fundamental difference from men. The vastmajority of middle-class Americans believed that this dif-ference was both rooted in nature and ordained by God,buttressed by Scripture and centuries of Christian teaching.

The essential differences between man and womanwere understood as complementary; each had attributesthat the other lacked. The true woman’s prime virtueswere her moral nature, gentleness, compassion, and self-sacrificing love; the virtues of her complement—the “trueman”—were physical strength, courage, and the ability todirect and govern. Woman’s sphere of activity was thedomestic world of home and church; man’s was the busi-ness and political realm. In all male/female relationships,man was to be the ruler or head and woman was to sub-mit to his rule.

This understanding of male/female duties and rela-tionships was reiterated and expanded upon in countlesssermons, political speeches, advice books, novels, andpoetry, until it was woven into the social fabric ofAmerican life. Challenges to this reigning notion of womanhood were seen as a threat to a cherished ideal.The notion of womanhood and equality that earlywomen’s rights leaders championed was definitely such athreat. Particularly frightening, and even horrifying, tomainstream Americans was the idea of woman suffrage.

If women gained the right to vote, they would be assum-ing male prerogatives of authority and trespassing into themale sphere of governance. Powerful injunctions againstwomen assuming the male role of governing were to befound in New Testament verses such as 1 Timothy 2:11, 1 Corinthians 11:3 and 14:34-35, and Ephesians 5:23.

Even female prominent reformers such as CatharineBeecher (1800–1878) opposed woman suffrage. Beecherdisagreed with her siblings author Harriet Beecher Stowe(1811–1896) and Congregationalist minister Henry WardBeecher (1813–1887), both supporters of woman suffrage.Although she supported teaching as a career for womenallowing them economic independence, Beecher did notlook with favor on women’s entry into the political realm,seeing this as trespassing into male territory. Not only didBeecher object to women voting, she even questioned theactivity of petitioning, in which women had participated

Library of Congress The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University



from the 1820s on. She viewed petitioning as moving toofar into the male sphere of governance. Beecher did mod-ify her position on woman suffrage toward the end of herlife, but did not believe that the vote would be a panaceafor the many economic disabilities that women faced.3

Writing in the 1860s, several decades later thanCatharine Beecher, the Reverend Horace Bushnell (1802–1876), an influential Congregational theologian, arguedfor similar reasons against women’s right to vote. A chap-ter in his Women’s Suffrage; The Reform Against Nature(1869) titled “Woman Not Created or Called to Govern”pointed out that women’s essential difference from menmade them unfit to govern. Their proper role was one ofsubmission to male government. Although he endorsedthe growth of educational and economic opportunities for

women, Bushnell remained adamantly opposed to womansuffrage precisely because it was “unwomanly.” 4

Bushnell’s opinion carried much weight with main-stream American Protestants. Yet in the quarter centuryafter the Seneca Falls convention, support for woman suf-frage and for a new understanding of womanhood hadgrown significantly. Bushnell’s ideas were countered byequally influential preachers, such as Henry WardBeecher, who believed that women were called by God todevelop their gifts, regardless of any narrow notion ofwomen’s sphere. As early as 1860, Beecher advocatedwomen’s right to vote in an address published in TheIndependent, a liberal Protestant newspaper.5

During the 1850s, more women’s rights conventionswere held and local suffrage organizations began to spreadthroughout the northern and western United States,slowly at first, but gathering momentum as time went on.New voices emerged to champion the vote for women,among them Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), a prominentQuaker temperance activist who traveled tirelessly speaking for woman suffrage and organizing local andstate suffrage groups.

In 1869, two national woman suffrage groups wereorganized: the National Woman Suffrage Association(NWSA), led by Stanton and Anthony and headquartered

National Woman’s Christian Temperance UnionLibrary of Congress

Above, Left: A portrait of Lucy Stone, taken between 1840

and 1860. Stone founded the AWSA with her husband,

Henry Blackwell.

Above, Right: Frances E. Willard writing in the den of her “Rest

Cottage,” Evanston, Illinois, circa 1889.

Right Page: An undated photo of Frances E. Willard in Boston.



in New York, and the American Woman SuffrageAssociation (AWSA), led by Lucy Stone (1818–1893) andHenry Blackwell (1825–1909) and based in Boston. Thetwo organizations differed in size—the NWSA was muchlarger—and, to some extent, in approach and tactics. Buttogether they kept the issue of woman suffrage before thepublic and built a network of grassroots suffrage organi-zations that raised the issue at the municipal level, in statelegislatures, and before the U.S. Congress.

The WCTU and woman suf frageBy the mid-1870s another organization had appeared, onethat would grow far larger than either of the two suffrageorganizations and would bring many thousands of main-stream Protestant women into the struggle for womansuffrage. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union(WCTU) was founded in 1874, in the wake of theWoman’s Temperance Crusade, a series of hundreds ofchurchwomen’s demonstrations against liquor dealers thatsprang up spontaneously, first in Ohio and western NewYork, and spread rapidly throughout the Midwest andbeyond. Crusaders had limited success in closing down afew saloons, but as the demonstrations waned, they quicklyrealized that a permanent organization would be neces-sary to carry on the temperance reform they envisioned.

The crusaders who flocked to become part of thisnew women’s temperance group were joined by otherwomen who had been active in various older temperanceorganizations. From its beginnings, the membership ofthe WCTU was overwhelmingly evangelical Protestant.Mostly drawn from Methodist, Baptist, and Disciples of Christ congregations, members were also from Pres-byterian and Episcopal churches, and a few came fromother denominations. The WCTU members’ stronglyheld religious faith was based on the authority of the Bibleand their personal experience of conversion to belief inJesus Christ. The vast majority of them accepted the idealof the true woman that they had been taught by parents,pastors, and the customs of the society in which theylived. For the most part, these women were not suffrag-ists, and they did not wish to be identified with what theysaw as the radical aims of women’s rights reformers.

For its first five years, the WCTU was led by presi-dent Annie Wittenmyer (1827–1900), a Methodist activelyinvolved in women’s benevolent work. During her tenure,the organization continued the types of strategies and tac-tics that female temperance reformers had been pursuingduring the mid-nineteenth century. Wittenmyer encour-aged the establishment of gospel prayer meetings whosemembers worked to persuade individual drinkers to sobri-ety; garnered the support of religious groups; churned outtemperance literature for children and adults; broughtWCTU influence to bear on the political process ofchoosing male temperance candidates for office; and peti-tioned at all levels of government to enact laws prohibitingthe sale of alcohol. All these activities were viewed as suit-able for women. Like most of the WCTU constituency atthat time, Wittenmyer opposed woman suffrage.

By the late 1870s, however, the attitude towardwomen voting began to change within the WCTU.Methodist educator Frances E. Willard (1839–1898), theWCTU’s corresponding secretary, challenged the organi-zation to support the vote for women. Willard had beenraised to conform to the ideal of the true woman, but shehad also been influenced by more liberal notions aboutthe nature of womanhood and women’s space developingduring mid-century. From her late teens on, she read arti-cles and attended lectures on women’s rights and becameconvinced that her vocation was to work for what shecalled “the cause of woman.” After hearing a speech in1868 by Theodore Tilton (1835–1907), a popularwomen’s rights lecturer, in which he championed womansuffrage, Willard wrote in her journal:

Somehow since I heard Tilton lecture, my pur-pose is confirmed—my object in life clearer than

National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union



ever before. What I can do in large & little ways,by influence, by pen, by observation for woman,in all Christian ways, that I will do. And may Godhelp me! 6

Frances E. Wi l lard and the “new woman”During the 1870s, Willard became more and more certainthat advocating the vote for women was a powerful waythat a committed Christian woman like herself could fur-ther women’s cause and bring about a better future forwomen. She looked forward with hope to “The Dawn ofWoman’s Day,” when women would be equal to men in all areas of life and would share the responsibility of cre-ating an egalitarian future.7 Willard began to speak out onthe “Ballot for Home Protection,” 8 melding together thetraditional notion of woman as guardian of the domesticsphere with the more radical idea of woman as voter.

A persuasive orator who shared the evangelicalProtestant faith of WCTU members, Willard was able toconvince them that it was God’s will that they vote. Sheoften recounted her experience of God’s call to advocatefor woman suffrage: “Upon my knees alone…there wasborne in upon my mind, as I believe from loftier regions,the declaration, ‘You are to speak for woman’s ballot as aweapon of protection to her home and tempted loved

ones from the tyranny of drink.’”9 Woman suffrage wouldbe a strong weapon in the war for the nation’s sobriety,Willard claimed, and one, moreover, sanctioned by God.If women could vote, they could join with male reformersto support temperance candidates for political office andpass laws prohibiting the sale of liquor.

Willard’s election to the WCTU presidency in 1879signaled the organization’s shift toward support of womansuffrage as well as a broadening of its understanding of theroles that women could take in reform. Willard wasencouraged in her effort by several prominent WCTUstate presidents who were suffragists, including Mary A.Rice Livermore (1820–1905), from Massachusetts;Zerelda Gray Wallace (1817–1901), from Indiana; MaryTorrans Lathrap (1838–1895), from Michigan; and JudithEllen Horton Foster (1840–1910), from Iowa. By 1881the WCTU had endorsed the vote for women as a pow-erful tool in the struggle for temperance. Over the nexttwo decades, Willard succeeded in presenting an alterna-tive to the image of the true woman that had been so per-vasive during the mid-nineteenth century. In her 1887presidential address to her organization, she declared:“The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union is doing nowork more important than that of reconstructing the idealof womanhood.”10 The “new woman” that Willard and

Library of CongressNational Woman’s Christian Temperance Union



others envisioned would be active in the political, legal,and economic arenas as well as the home, and would sharewith men the rights of citizenship and the responsibilityof creating a just and equitable society.

By the first decades of the twentieth century, agroundswell of support for woman suffrage was develop-ing, thanks to the efforts of woman suffrage organizations,the WCTU, and many other women’s groups thatemerged during the last third of the nineteenth century.These organizations had been aided from the beginningby many male reformers who joined them in the call forwomen’s vote. In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment grant-ing woman suffrage passed, after more than seventy yearsof struggle. With its passage, women had not only won theright to vote; they had also succeeded in presenting a new,expanded image of womanhood and woman’s place. ■

Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford is a research associate in gender studies

at Northwestern University. She is the editor of “Writing Out My

Heart”: Selections from the Journal of Frances E. Willard, 1855–1896

(University of Illinois, 1995) and co-editor of Gender and the Social

Gospel (University of Illinois, 2003) and “Let Something Good Be

Said”: Speeches and Writings of Frances E. Willard (University of

Illinois, forthcoming). She has also authored many articles on

American women’s religious experience and social reform activities.

1 Proceedings of the Woman’s Rights Conventions, Held at Seneca Falls andRochester, N.Y., July and August, 1848 (1870; 1969) 5.

2 Ibid., 4.3 See, for example, C.E. Beecher, An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism

with Reference to the Duty of American Females (1837) 100–101. 4 H. Bushnell, Women’s Suffrage; The Reform Against Nature (1869).5 H.W. Beecher, “Woman’s Influence in Politics,” The Independent,

16 February 1860.6 F.E. Willard, journal, 21 March 1868, in C.D. Gifford, ed., “Writing

Out My Heart”: Selections from the Journal of Frances E. Willard,1855–1896 (1995) 266.

7 F.E. Willard, “The Dawn of Woman’s Day,” Our Day, 2 November1888, 345–360.

8 F.E. Willard, Home Protection Manual: Containing an Argument for theTemperance Ballot for Woman…. (1879; 1987) 6–26.

9 F.E. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an AmericanWoman (1889) 351.

10 F.E. Willard, “President’s Annual Address,” Minutes of the NationalWoman’s Christian Temperance Union (1888) 90.

Left Page, Left: An anti-temperance cartoon printed in Puck,

May 29, 1901.

Left Page, Right: Headquarters of the National Association

Opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York City, 1911.

Above: A woman suffrage parade in New York City, May 6, 1912.

Library of Congress



Because Mary Baker Eddy calls for the acknowl-edgement of women’s rights “morally, civilly, andsocially” in her text Science and Health with Key

to the Scriptures, researchers have naturally looked for con-nections between Eddy and the late nineteenth-centurywoman suffrage movement.1 While Eddy’s main causewas Christian Science, she clearly supported female socialreformers in the decades following the Civil War. And, we now know that Eddy actively engaged with womansuffrage leaders over a period of thirty years.

Eddy wrote to one of her early students of ChristianScience, Clara Choate, on March 15, 1882,

It is glorious to see what the women alone aredoing here for temperance, more than ever manhas done. This is the period of women, they areto move and to carry all the great moral andChristian reforms, I know it. Now darling, let uswork as the industrious Suffragists are at workwho are getting a hearing all over the land.2

Above: Detail of “Jesus, What Precept is Like Thine” from the

1905 edition of the Christian Science Hymnal. The hymn (#163)

was adapted from text written by Mary A. Livermore.

Right Page: An August 7, 1904, Boston Sunday Globe article fea-

turing Mary Baker Eddy, Mary A. Livermore, and Susan B. Anthony,

among other prominent and influential American women of their

time. (Photo by Mark Thayer)

P e n n i n g s

Mary Baker Eddy, Mary A.Livermore, and Woman Suffrage

by Sherry Darling and Janell Fiarman

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stantonwere not the only women—and their ideas not

the only ideas—that fueled the drive for women’s right to vote.

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Certainly Eddy’s endorsement of women’s rights wasrooted in the spiritual, as she states in her 1891 pamphletNo and Yes, designed to answer theological questions onChristian Science:

Let it not be heard in Boston that woman, “last atthe cross and first at the sepulchre,” has no rightswhich man is bound to respect. In natural law andin religion the right of woman to fill the highestmeasure of enlightened understanding and thehighest places in government, is inalienable, andthese rights are ably vindicated by the noblest ofboth sexes. This is woman’s hour, with all its sweetamenities and its moral and religious reforms.3

Eddy’s interest in women’s rights stemmed from herlarger theological focus on human progress and the rela-tionships of women and men to God and to each other.

This focus led her to support social programs promotingdignity and equality, such as temperance and aid for thepoor. In each edition of Science and Health, from the veryfirst in 1875 through the final one thirty-five years later,Eddy repeats these words almost verbatim,

Civil law establishes very unfair differencesbetween the rights of the two sexes. ChristianScience furnishes no precedent for such injustice,and civilization mitigates it in some measure.Still, it is a marvel why usage should accordwoman less rights than does either ChristianScience or civilization.

Our laws are not impartial, to say the least, intheir discrimination as to the person, property,and parental claims of the two sexes. If the elective franchise for women will remedy the evilwithout encouraging difficulties of greater magnitude, let us hope it will be granted.4

Looking back from the vantage point of the twenty-firstcentury, the nineteenth-century woman suffrage move-ment appears to be a unified group working together for the same goal, but in fact it was made up of many

Above: Clockwise from left, a heading to several November 19,

1899, New York Journal articles, including one in which Susan B.

Anthony cites Mary Baker Eddy as an example of an important

female religious leader; the title page from Mary A. Livermore’s The

Story of My Life; the copy of The History of Woman Suffrage Vol. IV

that Susan B. Anthony inscribed to Mary Baker Eddy in 1902.

Mark Thayer

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different groups and approaches. Victoria Woodhull, forexample, combined her support of woman suffrage with a campaign for free love. In Eddy’s view, the danger inmixing suffrage and free love, which “outrages decency,insults human nature and disgraces the name of woman,” 5

outweighed the benefit of suffrage.Eddy also rejected the views of suffrage advocates

who attacked the Bible as the source of women’s oppres-sion. In her notes on The Woman’s Bible edited by ElizabethCady Stanton, Eddy wrote, “The man’s Bible is thewoman’s bible. We cannot have two if the sexes are equal.”6

Points of connection do exist between Eddy andStanton and Susan B. Anthony, the most familiar nine-teenth-century women’s rights leaders. Stanton’s nameand address appear in one of Eddy’s address books and, asobserved above, Eddy made critical notes on The Woman’sBible. In 1887 Anthony took a course of lectures onChristian Science healing from Laura Lathrop, a studentof Eddy’s, and, in 1888, she went to hear Eddy lecture inChicago. Eleven years later in an article reprinted in theChristian Science Sentinel, Anthony is quoted asking,“What of Mrs. Eddy? No man ever obtained so large afollowing in so short a time. Her churches are among the largest and most elegant in Boston, Chicago, andother cities.” 7 Anthony also corresponded briefly withEddy and inscribed for her a volume of The History ofWoman Suffrage.

In the nineteenth century, association with any organization that supported woman suffrage put one'sreputation and respectability at risk, but Eddy did find a group working within a Christian framework that she could join: the Massachusetts Woman SuffrageAssociation (MWSA), co-founded by Mary A. Livermore.

Little known today, Livermore was a major figure inthe nineteenth-century campaign for woman suffrage as an organizer, speaker, and writer. She was the first womanawarded an honorary degree by Tufts University, and shewas also founder and/or president of several beneficentand reform organizations, including the MassachusettsWoman’s Christian Temperance Union and the MWSA.Patterns in Livermore’s long life paralleled those of Eddy’s in many striking ways. Both women were writers,publishers, organizers, and public speakers, and both weredeeply religious.

Mary A. Livermore, “of a grand and noble order”Born in Boston in 1820, a year before Mary Baker Eddy,young Mary A. Livermore struggled for a sense of Godthat would give her life meaning.8 Obedient and reverent,she endured her father’s teachings of a frightening, inflex-ible God. Like Eddy, Livermore suffered with the anxiety

that her siblings might not be among the elect few whom God had determined to save from damnation.Prayer and Bible readings were part of each day for her,and she met her father’s requirement of reading the entireBible annually. But more comforting to her was theChristianity modeled by her mother, focused in a prac-tical way on living the love for others that Jesus hadtaught. Similarly, Eddy wrote that her own father, astaunch Calvinist, had “an iron will” and that she felt closer to her “sainted mother,” whose “life was a livingillustration of the Christian faith.” 9

Livermore encountered another view of God and hiscreation quite different from her father’s when she metthe man she would marry. In her autobiography she tellsof the Christmas service in a Duxbury, Massachusetts,church where she first heard the Universalist ministerDaniel Livermore present, in a new way, parables that sheknew almost by heart—the prodigal son, the shepherdand the lost sheep. For the first time she found biblicalconfirmation of a tender, loving God, a God of forgivenessrather than punishment. Later Livermore would write ahymn that refers to this vision of a world transformed byforgiveness, of wrath and sin dying away, and of the divineplan “to bring the wanderer back by love.” (An adaptedversion of this hymn, “Jesus, What Precept Is LikeThine,” appears in the Christian Science Hymnal.)

As a minister’s wife, Livermore not only kept houseand raised her children, but also wrote stories and poemsfor temperance publications and co-edited a Universalistmonthly, New Covenant, with her husband. During theCivil War, Livermore stepped into a more public rolewhen she took on co-leadership of the NorthwesternSanitary Commission, providing hospitals of the Unionarmy in the Western Theatre with supplies and fresh food, as well as much-needed oversight of the volunteerrelief effort.

While Livermore had long campaigned for a changein the status of women (opening colleges to them, repeal-ing unjust laws, and enlarging industrial opportunities),she had felt that many reforms could be accomplishedwithout woman suffrage. But her experiences during thewar changed her mind; she wrote, “I became aware that alarge portion of the nation’s work was badly done, or notdone at all, because woman was not recognized as a factor in the political world.” 10 Livermore came to see thelegal right to vote as both a symbol of equality and anassertion that property and family law needed to berevised and women’s educational and occupational oppor-tunities expanded.

Convener of Chicago’s first woman suffrage conven-tion in 1868, Livermore became president of the Illinois

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Woman Suffrage Association,11 an outgrowth of the con-vention, and began her own suffrage journal, The Agitator,in 1869. Later that year her place in the national move-ment for woman suffrage was confirmed when shebecame vice president of the American Woman SuffrageAssociation (AWSA). AWSA, headquartered in Bostonand organized by former abolitionists, differed in partfrom the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA),headed by Stanton and Anthony, by supporting the pas-sage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, whichextended suffrage to African American men but not towomen. The AWSA also differed from the NWSA infocusing on suffrage rather than collateral issues, such asmarriage and divorce.

In 1869 Livermore was invited by Lucy Stone and theother leaders of the AWSA to become editor of TheWoman’s Journal, and Livermore and her husband movedback to Massachusetts so she could accept this position. In

doing so, she joined a group of women’s rights advocatesthat included Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and WilliamLloyd Garrison, with whom she co-founded the MWSA(the Massachusetts branch of the AWSA). Livermoredescribed the group as reformers “of a grand and nobleorder … and the ideal reformer whom they sought toemulate was Jesus, the Christ.” 12

During this time, Livermore took her message of con-cern for women to an even larger audience by becoming alyceum lecturer and speaking across the country on issuesof significance to women: suffrage, women’s education,marriage, as well as temperance and other topics. In fact,the first concrete evidence we have of Eddy’s interest inLivermore’s work for woman suffrage, an interest thatgrew into respect and continued over three decades intothe twentieth century, relates to a Livermore speakingengagement.

Eddy and L ivermore: In fu l l sympathyIn early November 1871, Mary Baker Eddy mailed herfriend Mary Ellis an invitation to come from Swampscottto Lynn, Massachusetts, to hear Livermore debatewomen’s rights with General James A. Hall fromPortland, Maine:

Above, Left: Mary A. Livermore in the study of her Melrose,

Massachusetts, home, circa 1898. Image from The Story of My Life.

Above, Right: Calvin A. Frye took this photo of Mary Baker

Eddy in her study at Pleasant View, Concord, New Hampshire,

circa 1903.

Book source: Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School


Now [Livermore] is talented and I thought youmight enjoy hearing her notwithstanding thesubject is not what you or I care much about, butI took a season ticket to help the cause, ’tis for the“Woman’s Union” in this city to support the poorand help such as need help.13

It is interesting to note that, in her letter of invitationto Ellis, Eddy qualified her enthusiasm for Livermore’ssubject matter. But whatever her own position on womansuffrage before the debate, within a few weeks of hearingLivermore speak on the issue, Eddy had visited theWoman Suffrage Bazaar and joined the MWSA, payingher initial membership dues to Livermore herself.14 Whilewe cannot say whether Eddy paid dues every year after1871, Library documents do confirm that her secretaryCalvin A. Frye paid $1 in suffrage dues for Eddy onMarch 27, 1888, in response to a renewal notice she hadreceived from the MWSA.15

Something about Livermore’s presentation of womansuffrage so connected with Eddy’s views that it broughther to the Woman Suffrage Bazaar and persuaded her tobecome a member of the organization. It is easy to imag-ine that Livermore’s forceful arguments for the educationof women and for custody rights for women resonatedwith Eddy’s own history as a widow unprepared to earn aliving and a mother unable to obtain or determine thecustody of her child. In her lectures, for example,Livermore proclaimed,

If I were able, I would change the public senti-ment so radically, that no girl should be consid-ered well-educated no matter what her accom-plishments, until she had learned a trade, a business, a vocation, or a profession. Self-supportwould then be possible to her, and she would notfloat on the current of life, a part of its uselessdriftwood, borne hither and thither by its trou-bled waters.16

Perhaps more fundamental, Eddy shared theChristian framework of Livermore’s suffrage views, andboth preached the equality of the sons and daughters ofGod from the pulpit as well as the lecture platform. InLivermore, Eddy found a suffragist she could identifywith and respect, and, through her, a suffrage organiza-tion she wished to support.

Two letters from Livermore to Eddy in the 1880sindicate a mutual respect had developed between them. Ina letter dated April 11, 1887, Livermore wrote that shewould not be able to use a complimentary ticket to a lec-


ture by Eddy, but added, “With your permission, I willretain the Complimentary Ticket, as my husband, or myson-in-law may be able to use it. Either of them would beglad to hear the lecture, and through either I shouldobtain a better report than the press ever furnishes.”17

Two years later, on December 2, 1889, Livermorewrote from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a probable lecturetour stop. She was evidently writing in response to a letter from Eddy’s adopted son, Ebenezer J. Foster Eddy,about where Eddy’s dues for the MWSA should be paid.After directing him to the office of the society in Boston,Livermore wrote of Eddy’s support for the cause ofwoman suffrage:

While we have known she was in full sympathywith our work, we have hardly expected heractive cooperation, her own work is so large andabsorbing. But we shall always be grateful for anyservice she can render.18

During this same period, we know of at least oneadditional Livermore lecture that Eddy attended, thistime in Boston in 1888. Eddy writes of Foster Eddy,“After his adoption the first of my going out with him toentertainments was in a Hall to hear Mrs. Livermore.Before the evening came I charged him to get me a frontseat and not a side seat—and one near the platform.”19

In several instances we can see the high regard Eddyhad for Livermore. Eddy wrote a letter on January 5,1893, to Foster Eddy, who was in New York City to over-see the preparation of a biographical entry on Eddy in theNational Cyclopedia of American Biography. After explainingto Foster Eddy why she was editing the copy to describeherself as the “discoverer” of Christian Science ratherthan as a minister, Eddy writes of some misgivings she hasabout the proposed entry, and uses the presence orabsence of Livermore as her measure of the project’sintegrity: “Is Mary Livermore named in their Cyclo.? And why not? You know I had a strong invitation to let my autobiography appear in a recent publication. Buttook special care to find out all that I did and then Irefused it.” 20

In 1899, when a libel suit against Eddy was beingwidely publicized,21 she encouraged Irving C. Tomlinson,a young Universalist minister who had become a Christian Scientist, to continue his contacts withLivermore. Eddy wrote to Tomlinson on October 26,1899, “Your good work begun with Mrs. Livermore may be strengthened by sending her ‘Miscellaneous Writ’ and send me the bill or call and get the book at[Pleasant View].” 22



Tomlinson writes in his reminiscence of Eddy, “In herrelationships with non-Scientists Mrs. Eddy endeavoredto alleviate any misconceptions which they might enter-tain about her or her Cause. Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, atthe time one of the foremost women leaders in America,was known by Mrs. Eddy to be an old friend of[Tomlinson’s].” After learning that Livermore was a fami-ly friend of his, Eddy sent Tomlinson to speak with theesteemed women’s rights leader on her behalf “to encour-age a friendly feeling” and “to remove any misunder-standing which might possibly exist.” 23

A copy of Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, inscribedwith the respects of the author, was presented toLivermore by Tomlinson around Christmas of 1899, andLivermore was prompt in thanking Eddy and noting theirshared ideologies:

I am in receipt of your “Miscellaneous Writings,”for which I thank you very heartily. I shall keep iton my writing table, where I can take it up at anytime, and read a selection. A cursory examina-tion, during which I have read pages has onlybrought to my observation essential truths whichI have accepted all my life.24

Ful f i l l ing the Scr ipture, equa l iz ing the sexesClearly Mary A.Livermore valued Mary Baker Eddy’s ideasand they shared a mutual appreciation for one another’swork. In the months and years that followed, Eddy occa-sionally gave direction to send copies of significant issuesof her periodicals to “the prominent people such as RevTalmage, Edward Everett Hale, Mrs. Livermore etc.” 25

A final note on Eddy’s regard for Livermore appearsin an undated bit of dictation Eddy gave to Frye: “Mrs.Livermore, in a lecture says that, every new idea has threestages first ridicule then consideration then adoption.” 26

This progression seems an apt description of the success-ful woman suffrage movement. First the idea of womenvoting seemed ridiculous, then it was considered reason-able after presentation by people like Mary A. Livermore,and finally, in 1920, it was ratified as the NineteenthAmendment to the United States Constitution.

Above, Left: The copy of Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896

(1899) that Mary Baker Eddy inscribed to Mary A. Livermore.

Above, Right: A December 30, 1899, letter in which Mary A.

Livermore thanks Mary Baker Eddy for sending Miscellaneous

Writings. The letter overlays a New York Tribune tidbit about

Livermore clipped for one of Eddy’s scrapbooks.

Mark Thayer



History is often selective in recording the people andevents that have helped to shape our society. Lookingback from the twenty-first century, we focus on Susan B.Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as the leaders of thewoman suffrage movement, while other major figures oftheir time, representing a wide spectrum of views,alliances, and associations, have dropped out of our view.Mary A. Livermore, an important player in her own day,needs to be recovered in ours for us to better understandthe complex struggle for woman suffrage. Her erasurefrom our historical memory also means the loss of a sig-nificant aspect of Mary Baker Eddy’s story, becauseLivermore provides the strongest link between Eddy andthe movement for equal rights for women.

Understanding this connection also enriches ourunderstanding of Eddy’s theology. In 1908, the ChristianScience Sentinel reprinted an article by Alice Hubbard, aprogressive journalist who helped her husband, ElbertHubbard, manage The Roycroft Press. Alice Hubbardwrote of Eddy in the Roycroft publication The Philistine:A Periodical of Protest,

I believe that the crowning glory of this woman isthat she has demonstrated towards the equality ofthe sexes as no other human being has. She hasbeen most effective because she has not workeddirectly for it … Had Mrs. Eddy taken up thework for equal suffrage as did Mrs. Stanton, MissAnthony, and that excellent band of workers, shecould not have done for it what she has by quietlyassuming and silently living equal rights forwomen and men, and by making such provisionfor it as she has in her religion.27

One such “provision” was Eddy’s statement of universalhuman rights:

One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations;constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars;fulfils the Scripture, “Love thy neighbor as thy-self;” annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,—whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, polit-ical, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes;annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing thatcan sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed.28

■

Sherry Darling, Ph.D., is a staff researcher at The Mary Baker Eddy

Library. Janell Fiarman, a former Library staff researcher, is teaching

English in China during the 2004–2005 school year.

1 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1911) 587.2 M.B. Eddy to C.E. Choate, 15 March 1882, Outgoing

Correspondence of Mary Baker Eddy (hereafter cited as OC)L04088.

3 No and Yes (1891) 45.4 Science and Health (1911) 63.5 Letter to the Editor in the Lynn [Massachusetts] Transcript,

14 October 1876, signed Mary Baker Glover.6 A10873.7 New York Journal, 19 November 1899. Reprint, Christian Science

Sentinel, 14 December 1899.8 Biographical information about Livermore can be found in

M.A. Livermore, The Story of My Life: or The Sunshine and Shadow of Seventy Years (1898).

9 In her autobiography Retrospection and Introspection (1891) 5–6, Eddy quotes these words from the eulogy for her mother given by Rev. Richard S. Rust.

10 Livermore, My Life, 479.11 In 1887 Eddy donated one Science and Health and six copies of

her pamphlet “Historical Sketch of Metaphysical Healing” to this group, Incoming Correspondence of Mary Baker Eddy (hereafter cited as IC) 970.

12 Livermore, My Life, 586. 13 M.B. Eddy to M. Ellis, November 1871, OC L05668.14 The first Woman Suffrage Bazaar held in Massachusetts ran from

December 11 to 22, 1871. M.A. Livermore to E.J. Foster Eddy, 2 December 1889, IC 593.

15 C.A. Frye, Account Book 1, May 1887–May 1891, SF; MWSArenewal notice dated 15 March 1888, IC 726(a).

16 M.A. Livermore, What shall we do with our Daughters? (1883) 61.17 M.A. Livermore to M.B. Eddy, 11 April 1887, IC 593.18 M.A. Livermore to E.J. Foster Eddy, 2 December 1889, IC 593.19 A10580. Eddy adopted the adult Dr. Ebenezer J. Foster in

November 1888.20 OC V01186. In fact, Mary Livermore did appear in the

Cyclopedia and Eddy decided not to withdraw. 21 The suit, brought by Josephine C. Woodbury, was decided

in Eddy’s favor in June 1901. 22 M.B. Eddy to I.C. Tomlinson, 26 October 1899, OC L03693.23 Reminiscences of I.C. Tomlinson, 683. 24 M.A. Livermore to M.B. Eddy, 30 December 1899, IC 593.25 OC L10224. See also OC L18670. DeWitt Talmadge was a

prominent preacher whose sermons Eddy read and had clipped for her scrapbooks. Hale was an influential Unitarian minister.

26 A11555. This quote has sometimes been attributed to ArthurSchopenhauer. In 1903 Eddy attributed a similar statement to Louis Agassiz.

27 A. Hubbard, Christian Science Sentinel, 8 February 1908, 446.28 Science and Health (1911) 340.

Research Opportuni t iesThe Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanitycollections include more than 28,000 letters, manuscripts, copy-books, and scrapbooks, and approximately 9,000 historical photographs and 9,000 artifacts. Interested members of the publicmay view these materials in the Library’s Research Room.Appointments are available by calling 888-222-3711, ext. 7218, orvia the Library Web site, www.marybakereddylibrary.org.



C o l l e c t i o n s

T his spring, Library researchers discovered a sub-stantial link between Mary Baker Eddy and the

nineteenth-century woman suffrage movement. Beginningwith a name and historians’ curiosity, Sherry Darling and Janell Fiarman pursued clue after clue, graduallyuncovering letters, receipts, scrapbook clippings, reminis-cences, and inscribed books to piece together the detailsof Eddy’s public support of the Massachusetts WomanSuffrage Association.

The result is significant. American women’s historianand Library adviser Judith Wellman states, “By the latenineteenth century, Americans all across the country gavewidespread support to woman suffrage. Thanks to thecareful detective work of Library historians, we now knowthat Mary Baker Eddy was among them.”

Previously, the Library’s researchers had been dissatisfied with the standard response they provided toquestions about Eddy and suffrage. This response men-tioned Eddy’s association with Susan B. Anthony becauseof a letter from Anthony and a book that Anthony hadinscribed and given to Eddy. The collections also includea note that Eddy paid suffrage dues; the assumption wasthat she paid them to Anthony’s organization.

The recent discovery of documentation firmly con-necting Eddy with woman suffrage started with an e-mailquery that arrived in fall 2003. Janell Fiarman, a six-yearresearcher of the collections, began work on the query,which sought information relating to Mary A. Livermoreand Eddy in the context of the development of nursing.Fiarman’s initial search yielded little material onLivermore, but what she learned about this contemporaryof Eddy’s surprised her. “I was struck by the similaritiesbetween her life and that of Mrs. Eddy—struggling asgirls with the fierce Calvinism of their fathers, spendingtime as young women in the pre-Civil War South, becom-ing public figures as mature women,” Fiarman says. “Bothwere moving from a God of judgment toward a God whois love. That was huge—a whole different worldview—and Livermore went through the same experience.”

“It seemed that Mrs. Eddy would have felt a kinshipwith Mary Livermore,” Fiarman adds. But the Librarycollections contained only hints of that kinship:Livermore’s name appeared among others on notes Eddy wrote asking her staff to send her texts to certainpeople, and clippings about Livermore appeared in Eddy’s scrapbooks.

By Cathy Armer

Behind the Scenes at the LibraryRecent discoveries highlight the importance of opening the Library’s collections to the public.



Fiarman mentioned the religious connection she sawbetween Eddy and Livermore to her colleague SherryDarling. Darling, who joined the research staff a monthbefore the Library opened in September 2002, wasintrigued. Following a hunch that the Library collectonsheld Livermore correspondence, Darling consulted afinding aid that led to three letters from Livermore toMary Baker Eddy and Ebenezer J. Foster Eddy in anunlikely file descriptively named “Very Old Correspond-ence (A–L).” The letters built on the Livermore clippingsand Eddy’s notes.

The “Very Old Correspondence” file was created byCalvin A. Frye when he became Eddy’s secretary in 1882.In general, he placed into this file correspondence thatpredated his appointment, though by this logic, theLivermore letters, which date from 1887 on, should nothave been housed there. Darling and Fiarman surmisethat another document in the file prompted Frye to placeLivermore’s correspondence in it. Whatever that docu-ment was, it may have been removed in Eddy’s time by amember of her staff.

Shortly after reading these letters, Darling happenedacross a list of various businesses with which Eddy corre-sponded. Here she found a reference to the MassachusettsWoman Suffrage Association. In a file folder labeled“Wolcott to Woodland,” she encountered the subfolder“Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association” (filedunder “W” for “Woman”). It held the substantial link:records that Eddy paid renewal dues to the association in1888. At last, a clear connection could be drawn betweenEddy and the woman suffrage movement of her time.

“This is just a wonderful start to what’s possible.Nobody has fully explored Mary Baker Eddy’s involve-ment in various social movements—there are many areasthat need to be plumbed,” Darling says.

The Library Research Room staff numbers four peo-ple, and—in addition to overseeing and assisting Libraryvisitors and independent researchers exploring the collec-tions—this small group often fields 70–80 telephone, e-mail, and letter queries per week, responding to topicsthat run the gamut from ancestors involved in theChristian Science movement to the authentication ofworks attributed to Eddy. The researchers also answerquestions, check facts, and undertake larger research projects, not to mention the research and writing theyperform for the Library magazine.

In addition to Darling, current Research Room staff members are Michael R. Davis, Patrick A.Bowmaster, and senior researcher Judy Huenneke.Manager of the Archives Lesley Pitts oversees the group.

Since this article was written, Fiarman has left the Library to teach English in China for the 2004–2005 academic year. ■

Cathy Armer is a Boston-based writer and editor. She is the former

managing editor of The Magazine of The Mary Baker Eddy Library and

a graduate of Harvard Divinity School.

Phot

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F o u n d e r s C i r c l e


The Mary Baker Eddy Library f or the Betterment o f Humanity Fall 2004

a look inside

TrusteesChairman

Virginia Harris

Treasurer

Walter D. Jones

Secretary

Don W. Wilson

Peter Ackerman

Allen Weinstein

Founding PurposeThe Library is engaged in furthering the universal quest for spirituality and the science of being—and their effect on health and human progress.

MissionThe mission of theLibrary is to providecommon ground toexplore the power ofideas throughout historyto inspire individualsand transform theworld; the ongoingsearch for life’s deepermeaning; and the ideas,life, and achievements of Mary Baker Eddy.

The Mary Baker Eddy Library f or the Betterment o f Humanity200 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 Telephone: 617.450.7000 888.222.3711E-mail: [email protected] Web site: www.marybakereddylibrary.org

The Magazine of The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity (ISSN 1540-3289) is published quarterly by The Mary Baker Eddy Library for theBetterment of Humanity, Inc. at 200 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 USA, and is provided as part of the Friends of the Library membership. For

membership information or change of address, please include the mailing label and direct to Circulation, The Magazine of The Mary Baker Eddy Library for theBetterment of Humanity, P.O. Box 1489, Boston, MA 02117-1489 USA. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, MA. Postmaster: Send address changes to

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Hall of Ideas, Hall of Ideas Forum, Words for the World, and “Quotes” are trademarks of The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity, Inc.The cross and crown seal, Mapparium, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection, The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity, the globe logo,

and Summer SOULstice are trademarks of The Christian Science Board of Directors, and are used with permission.

ContextsHistorian CarolynDeSwarte Gifford looks at American women andreligion in an age of greatsocial reform and highlightsthe intersections of the suffrage and temperancemovements.

2

PenningsPiecing together new discoveries in the Libraryarchives, researchersSherry Darling and JanellFiarman reveal Mary BakerEddy’s support of womansuffrage.

10

Col lect ionsWriter Cathy Armerexplains how a researchquery led to the linkbetween Mary Baker Eddyand woman suffrage.

16

Founders Circ le

20

Images and quotations in this magazine,except those credited otherwise, are usedby permission of The Mary Baker EddyCollection or are from the Library’sArchive. For permission to reproduce content or images from this issue, call617.450.7204 or e-mail [email protected].

2F A L L 2 0 0 4

Vol. 4 No. 2

No.

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ThThe e M a rM a ry y Ba k e r a k e r E dE ddydy L iL i b rb r a ra ryf or for ththe B e t t e r m e n te t t e r m e n t o fo f H u m a n i t yH u m a n i t y

ThThe e MagaMagazinezine ofof


The Mary Baker Eddy Libraryfor the B e t t e r m e n t o f H um a n i ty

2F A L L 2 0 0 4

Vol. 4 No. 2

No.

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