This stereoview image of the corner where Mrs. Eddy fell in 1866—a fall that caused a serious injury from which she dramatically recovered, a healing that she later considered to be the pivotal point of discovery in Christian Science history—is from a rare contemporaneous photograph of that site.
The firm of W. T. Webster, Lynn,
produced this photograph of the corner of Oxford Street and Market Street,
where Mary Baker Eddy, then Mary M. Patterson, fell and was seriously injured
on a Thursday evening, February 1, 1866. From that corner Mrs. Eddy was taken next
door to the home of Samuel M. Bubier, whose home is prominently featured in
this image. (The 1865 and 1867 copies in the collection of the Lynn Directory
indicate that Samuel Bubier lived at 15 Oxford Street, with his main office
across the street at 65 Market Street.) According to Mrs. Eddy’s later
reminiscence, she had been on the way to an evening temperance meeting when she
fell. The 1867 directory, p. 223, listed the Linwood Lodge of the Good
Templars. It had its meetings Thursday evenings at Frazier’s Hall at 106 Market
Street (where the Post Office was also located), at the corner of Summer Street—which
is less than a city block from where Mrs. Eddy fell. It is interesting to note
that Mrs. Eddy was deemed the “Exalted Mistress” of the Legion of Honor, which
was the women’s auxiliary of the Linwood Lodge of the Good Templars; it
actively promoted temperance reform. (Mrs. Eddy on January 25, 1866, attended a
meeting of the Good Templars in Marblehead, Massachusetts, in which the Linwood
Lodge was joined by many other lodges of that order. She wrote an article for
the Lynn Reporter on January 31, 1866, providing details of that event
including the fact that the Linwood Lodge had 348 members. Amazingly, that
article appeared in the Lynn Reporter on February 3, the same date that
this news item about her fall on the ice appeared:
“Mrs. Mary M.
Patterson, of Swampscott, fell upon the ice near the corner of Market and
Oxford Streets, on Thursday evening, and was severely injured. She was taken up
in an insensible condition and carried to the residence of S. M. Bubier, Esq.,
near by, where she was kindly cared for during the night. Dr. Cushing was
called, found her injuries to be internal, and of a very serious nature,
inducing spasms and intense suffering. She was removed to her home in
Swampscott yesterday afternoon, though in a very critical condition.”
The stereoview image was
reproduced on p. 24 of Lynn: One Hundred Years a City (Lynn, MA:1950). Jack
Birss used this image about 1961 to make a pamphlet on Mrs. Eddy’s fall in Lynn
for the Carpenter Foundation. Note: while the Lynn book dates this image at “about
1866,” The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity has the same
image in its display but gives a date of about 1871. The image was also
reproduced in Isabel Ferguson’s Come and See: The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (2001),
p. 49. While Ferguson used in her book various photographs owned by The Mother
Church, this image in her book was courtesy of the Lynn Museum.
Here is a map of Lynn from 1891, showing Market and Oxford streets:
Mrs. Eddy fell just a half block from her destination in this building across the street:
[Elizabeth Hope Cushing, The Lynn Album: A Pictorial History. Lynn, MA: Hastings and Sons, [ca. 1990], p. 36.]
Finally here is another image of the Market & Oxford corner (Cushing, p. 35):
Mrs. Eddy fell just a half block or so from her destination. Think how different religious history might have been if she had actually made it to her temperance meeting that night.
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