Mary Baker Eddy and Dartmouth
A Study in Shared Education
FOR the college student of the early nineteenth century, his education had a very different meaning from that of today's undergraduate. At this point in history, qualifications for entering our country's colleges and universities embraced characteristics scarely touched upon in today's hectic admissions competition. One had only to be a moderately intelligent male possessing some background in the academic pursuits and a family with sufficient means to be able to do without the labor of a son, either in the homestead or the newly developed business. The college-educated of the period had undergone a unique experience which determined that their careers would be professional. Because the experience of higher learning was unique, it was one to be shared.
The small number of people meeting the necessary qualifications, as well as the small number of colleges and universities, meant that the number of those among whom the new-found knowledge could be spread was large. The pre-digested curricula of Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and many other schools were passed on to brothers and sisters, congregations, pupils, patients, and clients seeking legal advice. Beneficiary of one of these treasured, second-hand curricula was Mary Baker Eddy, discoverer and founder of Christian Science.
Mrs. Eddy was fortunate in two respects. First, she had several such sources from which to draw her education, and second, the quality of these sources was high indeed. Among those whom Mrs. Eddy herself mentions as having had an important influence upon her were Dr. Nathaniel Bouton, pastor of First Congregational Church in Concord, New Hampshire; the Reverend Enoch Corser, pastor of the Congregational Church in Sanbornton Bridge, New Hampshire; and her brother, Albert Baker. Considering its important role in the New Hampshire scene at this time, it is not surprising to note that each of these men was closely associated, during his lifetime, with Dartmouth College.
Mary Morse Baker was born in Bow, New Hampshire, in 1821. Located some five miles north of Concord, the community was predominantly an agricultural one. Schooling for Mary and her siblings began at the Bow schoolhouse, located at a crossroads about a mile from the Baker farm. On the advice of the family physician, the young girl withdrew from the public school and continued her education under the tutelage of her family. Here she received what amounted to the greater part of her early education. She returned to school somewhat later at Sanbornton Academy and at Holmes Acad- emy in Plymouth, New Hampshire, after a move brought the family from Bow to Sanbornton Bridge, later renamed Tilton.
When Mary was eight years old, the Congregational Church in Bow was dissolved and the Bakers began to attend the "Old North" First Congregational Church in Concord, becoming members in 1831. To this church in 1825 the Reverend Nathaniel Bouton had come from Andover Theological Seminary. As part of a somewhat more rigorously religious age, not one, but two meetings were held each Sunday, separated by a break of an hour and a half for lunch. Later recalling this experience, Bouton's son wrote:
"With everybody [the lunch] was less a meal than an appetizer. For the dinner of the day was set for three and a half to four o'clock.... Before these excellent dinners can be eaten, there must be a second service to make one feel he has done his whole duty, and to put a razor edge on his appetite. The afternoon service was of the morning pattern with perhaps a shade less of doctrine; and it was not quite so long. The old standbys - the pillars of the church - were always on hand. It was never the elders who found the easiest excuses for absence. As for the contingent from East Concord and other outlying parts, it could be depended on. Its members had come three and four miles, and nothing less than two sermons paid for their trouble." (John Bell Bouton, A Sketch of theCharacter and Life Work of Rev. NathanielBouton, D.D.)
Mrs. Eddy's father being a staunch Congregationalist of the Calvinist school, the family often remained for both services.
Some years later, the Reverend Dr. Bouton accepted an appointment to the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College. From the College he received in 1851 an honorary Doctorate of Divinity. He served as a Trustee until his resignation in 1877, shortly after which he died in the same year. In eulogy, his son wrote:
"My father now seems an old-fashioned minister because he belonged to a past generation, and his theology was colored by it - chameleon-like - but only skin deep. ... While reveling in the past as an antiquary, he had unlimited faith in the future as a Christian. ... For nothing could shake his belief that Christianity is here to stay."
That Dr. Bouton was influential in Mrs. Eddy's early religious experience, she affirms in a letter to one of the minister's descendants: "The religion that he taught and lived, I honor and love. It was the vestibule of Christian Science."
In her Message to The Mother Churchfor 1901, Mrs. Eddy states, "It was my fair fortune to be often taught by some grand old divines, among whom were the Rev. Abraham Burnham of Pembroke, N. H., Rev. Nathaniel Bouton, D.D., of Concord, N. H., Congregationalists; Rev. Mr. Boswell, of Bow, N. H., Baptist; Rev. Enoch Corser, and Rev. Corban Curtice, Congregationalists; and Father Hinds, Methodist Elder. I became early a child of the Church, an eager lover and student of vital Christianity."
The Rev. Enoch Corser mentioned here was Mrs. Eddy's minister after the Baker family had moved to Sanbornton Bridge. It was he who first received her into the communion of the Congregational Church. Mr. Corser was "less famous than Dr. Bouton, but equally able, and equally learned. He graduated from Middlebury College with the degree A.B., studied theology with a tutor, and received the honorary degree of A.M. from Dartmouth."
That Mr. Corser's wisdom served as an important supplement to Mrs. Eddy's formal education is affirmed by this account of their relationship:
"An intellectual comradeship grew up between Mary and her pastor, who, as his son declared, preferred to talk with her to any one of his acquaintance. They discussed subjects too deep to be attractive to other members of the family, which the family freely and good-humoredly admitted. ... He was a fine-looking old Calvinist, with leonine head covered with a mane of silver, and shaggy brows beneath which rolled eyes of eloquence and compassion. His mouth was wide but firm, suggesting both humor and melancholy. His shoulders had the scholar's droop. One can picture them of a fine summer evening, the slender girl and the old scholar, on their usual promenade in the garden." (Sibyl Wilbur, The Life of MaryBaker Eddy.)
The young girl commanded Corser's deep admiration, and he said of her, "Bright, good, and pure, aye brilliant! I never before had a pupil with such depth and independence of thought. She has some great future, mark that. She is an intellectual and spiritual genius."
PLAYING an even more important role in Mrs. Eddy's early education was her brother, Albert Baker. Entering Dartmouth College when his sister was nine, he returned the following summer to share with her the results of his academic pursuits during the freshman year. He found the young girl eager to learn and began a systematic program designed so that she might know "something more each day than the day before." Of this instruction, Mrs. Eddy in Retrospectionand Introspection later recalled: "My favorite studies were natural philosophy, logic, and moral science. From my brother Albert I received lessons in the ancient tongues, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. My brother studied Hebrew during his college vacations."
The Dartmouth education received by a graduate of the Class of 1834 resembles only slightly the program offered to today's undergraduate. Such a thing as a major was unknown at the time, and each student was expected to complete the required work in the classics, mathematics, physics, rhetoric, and intellectual and moral philosophy, in order to qualify for the A.B. degree. The college year was somewhat different at this time as well. Rather than closing in June, the College held classes until mid-August, with the understanding that the students would spend several months during the winter in teaching or research.
College records indicate that Albert Baker was a careful and thorough scholar. For his academic efforts he received membership in Phi Beta Kappa upon graduation. During his undergraduate years he was a member of United Fraternity, a debating society on campus. He served this group as vice-president and president during his junior and senior years.
After his graduation from Dartmouth in 1834, Baker was asked by Franklin Pierce to read law in his office in Hillsborough, N. H. Pierce's family were close friends of the Bakers, his father having spent considerable time with Albert's parents while living in Concord as Governor of the state. Albert soon had established his own practice and was fully qualified to take over Pierce's clientele while the future President was serving in the Senate. He was subsequently elected to the New Hampshire legislature. Concerning her brother at this time, Mrs. Eddy is cited as later remarking, in substance, "At the time Albert entered the New Hampshire legislature, he was tall and commanding in appearance. He possessed the manners of a Chesterfield and manifested the tenderness of a woman. He had a massive head, a high, projecting forehead, dark auburn hair, and clear brown eyes that expressed intelligence and love."
It was during his term of office in the legislature that he met his untimely death in 1841. In later years, a political opponent wrote thus of him:
"Albert Baker was a young man of uncommon promise. Gifted with the highest order of intellectual powers, he trained and schooled them by intense and almost incessant study throughout his short life. He was fond of investigating abstruse and metaphysical principles, and he never forsook them until he had explored their every nook and corner, however hidden and remote. Had life and health been spared to him, he would have made himself one of the most distinguished men in the country. As a lawyer he was able and learned, and in the successful practice of a very large business. He was noted for his boldness and firmness, and for his powerful advocacy of the side he deemed right."
Mrs. Eddy's affection for the college through which she had indirectly received much of her early training remained with her throughout her life. When, in February 1904, after fire had destroyed Dartmouth Hall, the Boston alumni sought funds for its rebuilding, Mrs. Eddy contributed a check for one thousand dollars. Thus it was that some of Dartmouth's oldest sons joined in sharing their unique experience, in much the same spirit that Eleazar Wheelock shared his training, both academic and religious, with the original student body. It was by just such processes that the Dartmouth education enriched not merely one, but many lives.
Copyright, The Christian Science Publishing Co.
