Editing Mary Baker Eddy (section)

== Early life ==
=== Bow, New Hampshire ===
==== Family ====
[[File:Mary Baker Eddy's birthplace, Bow, New Hampshire (2).jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.2|alt=engraving|Eddy's birthplace in Bow, New Hampshire]]
Eddy was born Mary Morse Baker on July 16, 1821, in a farmhouse in Bow, New Hampshire to farmer Mark Baker (d.&nbsp;1865) and his wife Abigail Barnard Baker, née Ambrose (d.&nbsp;1849). Eddy was the youngest of 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).{{sfn|Bates|Dittemore|1932|p=3}}{{sfn|Fraser|1999|p=27}} She was the cousin of U.S. Representative [[Henry Moore Baker|Henry M. Baker]].{{sfn|Smith|1920|loc=online}}

She was the sixth generation of her family born in the United States.{{sfn|Cather|Milmine|1909|pp=3}}{{sfn|Fraser|1999|p=27}} The farmhouse she was born in was built by her grandfather, Joseph Baker Jr., on a tract of land his maternal grandfather, Captain John Lovewell, had been given for service in the [[American Revolutionary War]]. Eddy's father Mark inherited, alongside his elder brother James, the farm when Joseph Jr. died in 1816.{{sfn|Cather|Milmine|1909|pp=4}}

A staunch [[Reformed Christianity|Calvinist]], Mark Baker was an active member of the Tilton [[Congregationalist Church]].{{sfn|Fraser|1999|p=27}}{{sfn|Cather|Milmine|1909|pp=7}} ''[[McClure's]]'' reported he had a reputation for holding strong opinions and quarreling with those he disagreed with; one neighbor described him as "[a] tiger for a temper and always in a row."{{sfn|Bates|Dittemore|1932|pp=5–7}} They also claimed he was an ardent supporter of [[Slavery in the United States|slavery]] and a [[Copperhead (politics)|Copperhead]] who was reportedly pleased to hear about [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s [[Assassination of Abraham Lincoln|death]].{{sfn|Cather|Milmine|1909|pp=8-9}} Despite trying to oust his [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] pastor during the war alongside a faction of his church, he refused to leave the church alongside other members of the faction when they failed. Instead, he continued to attend services, but would storm out at the mention of the [[American Civil War]] during a service.{{sfn|Cather|Milmine|1909|pp=9}}

[[File:Mark Baker, father of Mary Baker Eddy.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=photograph|Mark Baker]]
Eddy and her father reportedly had a volatile relationship. [[Ernest Sutherland Bates]] and [[John V. Dittemore]] wrote in 1932 that Baker sought to break Eddy's will with harsh punishment, although her mother often intervened;{{sfn|Bates|Dittemore|1932|p=7}} in contrast to the strict religiosity of her father, Eddy's mother was described as devout, quiet, light-hearted and nurturing, and a benevolent spiritual influence on Eddy in her formative years.{{sfn|Bates|Dittemore|1932|p=7}}{{sfn|Silberger|1980|pp=18-19}}

==== Health ====
Eddy experienced periods of sudden illness.{{sfn|Fraser|1999|p=35}} Those who knew the family described her as suddenly falling to the floor, writhing and screaming, or silent and apparently unconscious, sometimes for hours.{{sfn|Cather|Milmine|1909|pp=21-22}}{{sfn|Bates|Dittemore|1932|p=7}} Historian [[Robert Peel (historian)|Robert Peel]] wrote that these fits would require the family to send Eddy to the village doctor.{{sfn|Peel|1966|p=45}}

The cause for Eddy's illness was unclear, but biographer [[Caroline Fraser]] wrote she believed the cause was most likely [[Psychogenic disease|psychogenic]] in nature.{{sfn|Fraser|1999|p=35}} According to psychoanalyst Julius Silberger, Eddy may have been motivated to have these fits in an effort to control her father's attitude toward her.{{sfn|Silberger|1980|p=28}} Fraser attributed the illness likely to a combination of hypochondria and histrionics as well.{{sfn|Fraser|1999|p=35}}

=== Tilton, New Hampshire ===
[[File:EddyChildhoodChurch.jpg|thumb|upright|The [[Congregational]] Church in [[Tilton, New Hampshire]], which Eddy attended]]
In 1836, when Eddy was about 14 to 15 years old, she moved with her family to the town of [[Sanbornton Bridge, New Hampshire]], approximately {{Convert | 20 | mi | spell = in}} north of Bow. Sanbornton Bridge was renamed in 1869 as Tilton, New Hampshire.{{sfn|Cather|Milmine|1909|p=6}}

Ernest Bates and John Dittemore write that Eddy was not able to attend Sanbornton Academy when the family first moved there but was required instead to start at the district school (in the same building) with the youngest girls. She withdrew after a month because of poor health, then received private tuition from the Reverend Enoch Corser. She entered Sanbornton Academy in 1842.{{sfn|Bates|Dittemore|1932|pp=16–17, 25}}

She was received into the Congregational church in Tilton on July 26, 1838, when she was 17, according to church records published by Cather and Milmine. Eddy had written in her autobiography in 1891 that she was 12 when this happened, and that she had discussed the idea of [[predestination]] with the pastor during the examination for her membership; this may have been an attempt to mirror the story of a 12-year-old [[Finding in the Temple|Jesus in the Temple]].{{sfn|Cather|Milmine|1909|pp=19-20}}

=== Marriage, widowhood ===
[[File:Mary Baker G. Eddy, 1850s (2).jpg|thumb|upright|alt=photograph|Eddy in the 1850s]]
Eddy was badly affected by four deaths in the 1840s.{{sfn|Gottschalk|2006|pp=62–64}} She regarded her brother Albert as a teacher and mentor, but he died in 1841. In 1844, her first husband George Washington Glover (a friend of her brother Samuel) died after six months of marriage. They had married in December 1843 and set up home in Charleston, South Carolina, where Glover had business, but he died of [[yellow fever]] in June 1844 while living in Wilmington, North Carolina. Eddy was with him in Wilmington, six months pregnant. She had to make her way back to New Hampshire, {{Convert | 1400 | mi}} by train and steamboat, where her only child George Washington Glover II was born on September 12 in her father's home.{{sfn|Gottschalk|2006|pp=62–63}}{{sfn|Gill|1998|pp=xxix, 68–69}}

Her husband's death, the journey back, and the birth left her physically and mentally exhausted, and she ended up bedridden for months.{{sfn|Gottschalk|2006|p=63}} As Eddy was unable to care for him, her son was nursed by a local woman while Eddy herself was cared for by a household servant.{{sfn|Fraser|1999|p=37}}

Eddy's mother died in November 1849. Her mother's death was then followed three weeks later by the death of Eddy's fiancé, lawyer John Bartlett.{{sfn|Gottschalk|2006|p=64}}

[[File:Elizabeth Patterson Duncan Baker.jpg|thumb|upright|left|alt=photograph|Elizabeth Patterson Duncan Baker, Mark Baker's second wife]]
Eddy's father Mark Baker remarried in 1850; his second wife Elizabeth Patterson Duncan (d.&nbsp;June 6, 1875) had been widowed twice, and had some property and income from her second marriage.{{sfn|Gill|1998|pp=86–87}} Baker apparently made clear to Eddy that her son would not be welcome in the new marital home.{{sfn|Fraser|1999|p=38}}