As far back as the memory of any of the present generation of Bakers goes, however, the farm was first occupied by Joseph Baker 2d, and his wife, whose name is recorded by the Baker family both as Mary Ann O’Moor and Marion Moore. Of their large family of children, Mark, born May 2, 1785, was the youngest, and at the death of his father in 1816, he, with an elder brother, James, inherited the farm. Mark’s share of the estate, included the farmhouse and barns, with the obligation to support his mother. The farm was hill land, rising from the valley of the Merrimac River, and not especially fertile, but as his fathers before him had done, he managed, by toiling early and late, to wring from it a living for himself and his large family. In May, 1807, he had married the daughter of Nathaniel and Phebe Ambrose, neighbours across the Merrimac, in Pembroke, and brought her home to his father’s house. Like the Bakers, the Ambrose family were severe Congregationalists, and farmers of the familiar New England type. Deacon Ambrose and his wife were staunch supporters of their church, and they had brought up their daughter, Abigail, to be both pious and thrifty. As the wife of Mark Baker she is remembered for her patience and industry. She devoted all her energies to the care of her family, and was faithful in attendance at church. And this simple record, like that of many another heroic New England housewife, is all that is known of Mrs. Eddy’s mother.

  The dominating influence in the Baker home was Mark, and he made his presence felt in the community as well. His character was naturally strong, and as narrow as his experience and opportunity had been. Born ten years after the American Revolution, he grew up in the atmosphere of sharply-defined opinions and declared principles, peculiar to the times. The country was still comparatively undeveloped and scantily populated, and without the broadening influences made possible by later inventions. His house, in the middle of an isolated farm, was remote from its neighbours; the nearest town was Concord, then a place of two or three thousand inhabitants, and where, except on market days and church days, he almost never went. The hard daily labour of the farm, and the equally hard work which he made of his politics and religion, comprised all his interests. To conquer the resisting land, to drive a good bargain, to order his conduct within the letter of his church law, to hate his enemies and to hold in contempt all who disagreed with him — these were the rules by which he shaped his life. High-tempered, dominating, and narrow, he was not content merely to adhere to his own principles, letting other men live as they would, but sought to impress his convictions upon his neighbours. There are instances of life-long quarrels between Mark Baker and those who differed from him in business, politics, and religion. A quarrel over a question of business with his brother James resulted in a complete separation of the two families (although they lived as neighbours for years) from 1816 almost to the present time. A charge which he brought against a church brother was arbitrated for several years before church committees; and his local political quarrels during abolition days were frequent and bitter. He lived on the Bow farm from 1785 to 1836, and in Sanbornton Bridge (now Tilton) from 1836 until his death in 1865, and to those who knew him in these two communities he is still a vivid memory. In appearance he was tall and lean, his muscles hardened by labour. His iron jaw and tense gray eye bespoke determination and resistance. The very tap of his stick, as he tramped along the country roads, conveyed a challenge. His voice was terrific in power and volume. The Baker voice is a tradition in New Hampshire, and stories are told in Bow of the Baker brothers at work in distant fields upon their farms, thundering like gods to each other across the hills.

  Mark’s neighbours called him “Squire” Baker, and the younger folk called him “Uncle.” They found him sharp at a bargain, but honest in his dealings, and while he paid his workers the smallest wages, he always sacredly kept his word, and in his narrow way he was a good citizen. He tried his friends by his fierce temper and his intense prejudices, which kept him, in one way and another, in a continual ferment. “A tiger for temper, and always in a row.” “You could no more move him than you can move old Kearsarge” (a local mountain). “An ugly disposition, but faithful to his church, and immovable in his politics.” These are the comments of his old neighbours in Tilton to-day.

  Inevitably, he carried his religion and politics to extremes. In the Congregational church he was an active figure, faithful and punctilious in performing all its requirements. Not only did he fulfil his own church obligations, but he saw that his brethren and sisters fulfilled theirs. He brought charges of backsliding against fellow-members when they failed to attend public worship or communion, and was willingly appointed to visit and “labour” with the delinquents. It seems probable that Mark enjoyed this duty and performed it thoroughly. He had his own church troubles, too. The yellowed books of the Tilton Congregational Church record many a disputation between him and the brethren. A quarrel between Mark Baker and William Hayes was aired before the congregation year after year, but the two were never reconciled. The church did not follow Mark’s wishes in the settlement of the differences, and after bringing up the old charges again and again, and receiving no satisfaction, he applied for a letter of dismissal, because he “could not walk in covenant with this church.” When his request was refused, he placed himself on record as “feeling aggrieved at the doings of the church on this subject.”

  A story which has passed into neighbourhood tradition illuminates the man and shows the strength and quality of his religious feeling. One Sunday in his later years he mistook the day and worked as usual about his place. On Monday morning he started for church, but was disturbed at seeing his neighbours at work. As usual he took them to task. “Sister Lang,” he said, frowning at a neighbour who was placing out her tubs for washing, “what is the meaning of this on the Lord’s Day?” The woman replied that as the day was Monday she was preparing to do the family washing, but Mark commanded her to prepare for church instead, and went on his way. Farther along he stopped again. “Brother Davis,” he cried, “what is this commotion in the streets? Why are not the church bells ringing for public worship?” He was again assured that it was Monday; but he was not convinced until he arrived at the church and found the doors closed. He hurried to Elder Curtice, who confirmed his fears. “Is it possible that I have broken the Lord’s Day?” exclaimed Uncle Baker in alarm, and he knelt with his pastor and prayed for forgiveness. Back to his home went the old man, the godly part of him purged. But the old Adam remained, and as he strode up the hill he trembled with excitement. A tame crow, a pet of the children of the neighbourhood, hopped on a bush in front of him, cawing loudly. In his perturbed condition, the sight of the bird made Mark angrier than ever, and raising his stick, he struck the crow dead. “Take that,” he said in a passion, “for hoppin’ about on the Sabbath,” and he stormed on up the hill. At home he kept the day strictly as Sunday to atone for his worldliness of the previous day.

  In politics he was no less intense. He was a pro-slavery advocate before the war, and an unbending Copperhead during it. He hated Abraham Lincoln above all men. Two luckless young women, selling pictures of Lincoln, once entered his house to induce him to buy, but saved themselves from ejection only by a hasty flight. “I’ll never forget what he said about Lincoln,” said one of his old neighbours now living. “When the news of Lincoln’s assassination reached Sanbornton Bridge, I stopped at Mark Baker’s to tell him of it. ‘What!’ he cried, and throwing down his hoe, he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘I’m glad on’t!’”

  When his politics and religion clashed as they did during the Civil War, the old man was sorely torn. His pastor, Elder Corban Curtice, was a Republican who believed in the righteousness of the war, and Mark, with others of a different political faith, attempted to have the minister removed for “political preaching.” Failing in this, some of the oldest members left the church. But Mark Baker remained. He went to church as regularly as ever, and abided by all its rulings as before, but his protest was expressed in a manner altogether characteristic. He sat doggedly through the sermon, his eyes fixed on the elder. The moment the word “rebellion” left the preacher’s lips — whether he referred to the rebellion of the States or the rebellion of the angels — Mark Baker sprang to his feet, and, with flashing eyes and clenched fists, strode indignantly out of the church.

  These incidents show the calibre of the man who was Mrs. Eddy’s father. There is no doubt that he possessed qualities out of the ordinary. With his natural force and strong convictions, and with his rectitude of character, he might have been more than a local figure, but for the insurmountable obstacles of a childishly passionate temper and a deep perversity of mind. He was without imagination and without sympathy. From fighting for a principle he invariably passed to fighting for his own way, and he was unable to see that the one cause was not as righteous as the other. His portrait — a daguerreotype — shows hardness and endurance and immovability. There is no humility in the heavy lip and square-set mouth, no aspiration in the shrewd eyes; the high forehead is merely forbidding.

  From a tintype. Courtesy of Mrs. H. S. Philbrook

  MARK BAKER

  Mrs. Eddy’s father

  All Mark Baker’s children were born in the little farmhouse in Bow, between 1808 and 1821. There were three sons — Samuel, Albert, and George Sullivan — and three daughters — Abigail, Martha, and Mary. The family also included Mark Baker’s mother. According to pioneer custom the early Bakers had built their house on top of the hill upon which their farm lay, fully half a mile from the public road, which at that point follows the course of the Merrimac River in the valley. However inconvenient and impractical this choice of a site may have been, it left nothing to be desired in the view. Across the green valley of woods and fields, through which flows the white-banked river, one can see from the Baker hill-top the long blue ranges of the White Mountains. Nearer at hand there are glimpses of clean white villages, and at the left is the city of Concord. The nearest house is out of sight at the foot of the hill. In Mark Baker’s day it was occupied by his brother James, with whom Mark was not in friendly relation.

  The house itself is of wood, unpainted, and extremely small and plain. A narrow door in the centre opens directly upon the stairway. On the left hand is a little parlour, lighted by two small-paned windows, and containing a corner fireplace. A larger room at the right, used as a granary by the present owner, was once the kitchen and living-room. Overhead there were three or four small sleeping-rooms. One wonders where the family of nine bestowed themselves when they were all in the house at once. The house has not been occupied for many years. The windows are boarded up, and it is desolate and forsaken. Yet it is not forgotten, for every summer Christian Scientists come to visit the spot where their leader was born. It is a shrine to the devout, who carry away stones and handfuls of soil and little shrubs, as souvenirs.

  The Baker children were brought up like other farmers’ families of that time and place. The older ones worked about the farm and in the house, and in the winter when farm work was “slack” they attended the district school. Lonely and unstimulating enough the life seems from this distance, but as a matter of fact it was useful and not uninteresting. It was before the days of steam railroads and the thousand modern aids to living, when every farmer’s family was an industrial community in itself. All the supplies of the household, as well as food and clothes, were produced at home. Each man and woman and girl and boy of the farms was a craftsman, their daily work requiring physical strength and mental ingenuity and a kind of moral heroism. The school supplied their intellectual interests, the church satisfied their religious emotions, and for social diversion there were corn-huskings and barn-raisings and quilting-bees. The rest was hard labour.

  The qualities of Mark Baker were transmitted to his children. They were all high-tempered and headstrong and self-assertive, and they did not lack confidence in themselves in any particular. At home, however, they were trained to obedience and up to the time at least of the birth of his youngest daughter, Mark Baker was master in his own house. But from the beginning it was evident that special concessions must be made to Mary. She was named for her grandmother, who made a pet of her from the first, and no doubt helped to spoil her as a baby. Mrs. Baker, the mother, often told her friends that Mary, of all her children, was the most difficult to care for, and they were all at their wits’ ends to know how to keep her quiet and amused. As Mary grew older she was sent to district school with her sisters, but only for a few days at a time, for she was subject from infancy to convulsive attacks of a hysterical nature. Because of this affliction she was at last allowed to omit school altogether and to throw off all restraint at home. The family rules were relaxed where she was concerned, and the chief problem in the Baker house was how to pacify Mary and avoid her nervous “fits.” Even Mark Baker, heretofore invincible, was obliged to give way before the dominance of his infant daughter. His time-honoured observance of the Sabbath, which was a fixed institution at the Baker farm, was abandoned because Mary could not, after a long morning in church, sit still all day in the house with folded hands, listening to the reading of the Bible. Sundays became a day of torture not only to the hysterical child, but to all the family, for she invariably had one of her bad attacks, and the day ended in excitement and anxiety. These evidences of an abnormal condition of the nerves are important to any study of Mrs. Eddy and her career. As child and woman she suffered from this condition, and its existence explains some phases of her nature and certain of her acts, which otherwise might be difficult to understand and impossible to estimate.

  Until Mary’s fifteenth year the routine of life at the farm was unbroken except for the departure from home of her two eldest brothers to start life for themselves, and the death of her grandmother Baker. In choosing their occupations, Mark Baker’s sons turned away from the farm, new opportunities having been opened by the expanding industrial and commercial life of the country. Samuel, the eldest, went to Boston, in company with a neighbour’s son, George Washington Glover, to learn the trade of a stone mason, as the quarries of New Hampshire had then been recently opened. Albert, the second son, had a higher ambition. He prepared himself for college and entered Dartmouth. He was graduated in 1834, and immediately went to Hillsborough Center, N. H., to study law in the office of Franklin Pierce, afterward President of the United States. Under the influence of Pierce young Baker entered politics. He served one term as Assemblyman in the State Legislature, and received the nomination for Representative in Congress; but he died in 1841 before the election. He was then only thirty-one years old, and his character and ability seemed to justify the high opinion of his friends, who regarded him as a coming man.

  The death of the elder Mrs. Baker occurred in January, 1835, and early the following year Mark Baker sold the homestead and moved his family to a farm near the village of Sanbornton Bridge (now called Tilton), eighteen miles north of Concord. Sanbornton Bridge was, in 1836, growing into a lively manufacturing village. It already contained public-spirited citizens, and had considerable social life. Altogether it afforded larger opportunities than the Bow farm; and here the interests of the Baker family now centred. Abigail, the eldest daughter, soon married Alexander Hamilton Tilton, the rich man of the village, and settled there. Her husband owned the woollen mill, and accumulated a considerable fortune from the manufacture of the “Tilton tweed,” which he put on the market. Mrs. Tilton was extremely handsome and dignified, and her strong character, in which the Baker traits were tempered by a kindliness of spirit and a keen sense of responsibility, made her a leading figure in that little community. She was also capable and adaptable. When her husband died she took charge of his business, and was even more successful in its management than he had been. George Sullivan Baker formed a partnership with his brother-in-law. Martha, the second daughter, married Luther C. Pillsbury, deputy warden of the New Hampshire penitentiary in Concord, but after the death of her husband she returned to live in Sanbornton Bridge. Here, too, Mark Baker and his wife lived out their days, and here Mary Baker passed her girlhood, married, returned as a widow, married again, and once more returned as a deserted wife.

  As soon as they were settled on the new farm, Mary was sent to the district school at the Bridge. The schoolhouse stood on the site of the present Tilton Seminary. It was a two-story wooden building, painted red. The district school occupied the lower floor, while the upper room was used for a small private school, where the higher English branches were taught. After a time these upper classes came to be known as the “academy,” and it was here that Dyer H. Sanborn, the author of Sanborn’s Grammar, taught for five years at a later date. Mary was then nearing her fifteenth birthday, and as she had received almost no instruction at Bow, the family hoped that another attempt at school might be more successful.

  It is one proof of Mary’s remarkable personality that her old associates remember her, even as a child, so clearly. The Baker family was not one to be readily forgotten in any community, and Mary had all the Baker characteristics, besides a few impressive ones on her own account. The writer has talked with scores of Mary Baker’s contemporaries in the New Hampshire villages where she lived, and in their descriptions of her, their recollections of her conduct, and their estimates of her character, there is a remarkable consistency. Allowance must always be made, in dealing with the early life of a famous person, for the dishonour of a prophet in his own country. Such allowance has been made here, and nothing is set down which is not supported by the testimony of many witnesses among her neighbours and relatives and associates.