“A Room of Her Own: The Mary Baker Eddy House, Chestnut Hill”

Luey, Beth. “A Room of Her Own: The Mary Baker Eddy House, Chestnut Hill.” At Home: Historic Houses of Eastern Massachusetts. University of Massachusetts Press, 2019, pp 148-72.

Luey richly describes the lives of eight notable residents of eastern Massachusetts, structuring her biographies around their historic homes. Some of the notables include John Adams, the Louisa Alcott family, and Mary Baker Eddy. Luey’s portrait of Eddy incorporates her birth home in Bow, her family’s move to Tilton, her struggle as a young widow with poverty and illness in North Groton followed by more than a decade of renting rooms in boarding houses. In 1875 Eddy bought a house in Lynn, Massachusetts with the earnings from her teaching, but moved six years later to Boston, the epicenter of religious activity. Yet in 1889, a torrent of rivalries, defections and legal problems drove Eddy to seek a more peaceful home in Concord, New Hampshire–a working farm which she renovated and named Pleasant View. But controversy followed her to Concord, so in 1907 Church officials secretly found a home for her and trusted staff who would ensure her privacy (Chestnut Hill). Before her move, Eddy required alterations that would “make her personal space as much like her [beloved] Pleasant View as possible” (170). This grand house offered her a genuine feeling of home for the last three years of her life.

ISBN-13 (Hardcover):  9781625344182
ISBN-13 (Softcover):  9781625344199
ISBN-13 (eBook):  9781613766675

See also annotations:

Mrs. Dickey: Secretary to Mary Baker Eddy with a Chestnut Hill Album by Nancy Niblack Baxter.

We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Version (vol. 2) by The Christian Science Publishing Society