Christian Science Timeline

1821

Mary Morse Baker born in Bow, New Hampshire

1821

Born on a farm in Bow, New Hampshire, Mary Baker was the youngest of Mark and Abigail Baker’s six children. Her formal education was interrupted by periods of sickness. When not in school, she read and studied extensively at home, writing prose and poetry from an early age. Her parents sought help from physicians for her ailments, but the treatments brought only temporary relief.
1833

Slavery Abolition Act bans slavery throughout the British Empire
1838

Joins the Congregational Church in Sanbornton Bridge, New Hampshire

1838

Raised in a deeply religious Congregational home, Mary Baker questioned the Calvinist doctrine of predestination at an early age, and regularly turned to the Bible and prayer for hope and inspiration.
1843

Mary Baker marries George Washington Glover, 32, a building contractor, and sails with him to Charleston, South Carolina
1844

Glovers move to Wilmington, NC. George Washington Glover dies. Mary Glover returns to parents’ home and her first and only child, George W. Glover, is born.
1848

First Women’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York which leads to the battle for suffrage and women’s legal rights.
1851

Abigail Tilton, Mary’s sister, offers her a home, but as her health worsens her son George is not welcome. Mary writes poem “The Mother at Parting with her Child.”
1853

Mary Glover marries dentist and homeopath Daniel Patterson, hoping to make a home for her son, George, though her debilitating illness continues.
1861-5

American Civil war
1862

Struggling with chronic illness compounded by personal loss, Mary Patterson was preoccupied with questions of health.

1862

Finding that conventional nineteenth-century medical treatments produced harmful side effects, Mary sought relief in various alternative treatments of the day, including the Graham diet and hydropathy (water cure).

During Patterson‘s long absences, she studied homeopathy in depth and became intrigued by its emphasis on diluting drugs to the point where they all but disappear from the remedy. She experimented with unmedicated pellets (now known as placebos) and concluded that a patient’s belief played a powerful role in the healing process.

While investigating new treatments, she continued to seek comfort and insights from the Bible, still drawn by the healing record contained in its pages.
1863

Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves