This was a most interesting discovery, and I carefully investigated the whole situation, made several trips to Stoughton for the purpose, and talked with many residents of the place who had known Mrs. Eddy well, and were perfectly familiar with her history while there. I subsequently procured the whole story in writing, under oath, by those who knew it personally. Since then, others following my published accounts, have detailed the Stoughton episode and McClure’s Magazine published it in full.
It appears that in 1867, Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Patterson, went to Stoughton to live. She had separated from her second husband, Daniel Patterson, and not having then married her third husband, Eddy, called herself, and was known by the name of her first husband, Mary M. Glover.
Mrs. Glover first lived at Stoughton with one Hiram Crafts, and taught Crafts from manuscript a system of mental healing she told Crafts she had learned from Dr. P. P. Quimby. After learning it, Crafts undertook to practise it and had announcements printed and circulated declaring his system to have been the discovery of Dr. Quimby.
But Mrs. Glover and Mrs. Crafts did not seem to find one another’s society especially enjoyable, and for a time, Mrs. Crafts left Mrs. Glover in possession. In 1868, upon the invitation of Mrs. Sally Wentworth, Mrs. Glover moved to the Wentworths’ house at Stoughton, where she continued to live until 1870.
Mrs. Eddy’s writings will be searched in vain for any reference to Mrs. Wentworth, or to the fact that she spent about three years in the Wentworths’ house at Stoughton; but, in characteristic fashion, she hides the facts under this obscure and oracular utterance:
“I then (1866), withdrew from society, about three years, to ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind that should take the things of God and show them to the creature, and reveal the great Curative Principle, God.”
Mrs. Wentworth invited Mrs. Glover to live with her and teach her the Quimby science of mind healing, and that is what Mrs. Glover did during the three years she was a member of Mrs. Wentworth’s family. She “pondered her mission,” etc., by avowedly teaching Dr. Quimby’s alleged science of mind healing, and she gave Mrs. Wentworth a copy of her, Mrs. Glover’s, manuscript copy of Quimby’s writings. This copy of Mrs. Eddy’s copy of what she then said were Quimby’s writings, in Mrs. Wentworth’s handwriting and containing corrections and interlineations in the handwriting of Mrs. Glover-Eddy, is the manuscript now in the possession of Mrs. Wentworth’s son, Horace T. Wentworth of Stoughton, Mass.
During Mrs. Glover’s sojourn at Mrs. Wentworth’s, the household consisted, besides Mrs. Wentworth and her guest, of her husband, Mr. Alanson C. Wentworth, and their two children, Lucy and Charles O. Wentworth. Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth died in 1882, but Lucy and Charles O. and Horace T. Wentworth are still living, and they, with their cousin, Mrs. Catherine I. Clapp, who was much at their house during Mrs. Glover’s visit, have stated the facts under oath and in such a manner that they must be believed.
Lucy Wentworth, now Mrs. Arthur L. Holmes, was about seventeen years of age when Mrs. Glover left her mother’s house. Mrs. Holmes, who still lives at Stoughton, says that she well remembers Mrs. Glover’s visit, and that she was teaching her mother a system of mental healing she said she had learned from Dr. Quimby.
“‘It wasn’t safe for anybody to say anything to me against Mrs. Glover,’ says Mrs. Holmes. ‘She spent all her time teaching my mother her new science. I was around her constantly, would rather be with her than with any one else, and I often used to hear her say, “I learned this from Dr. Quimby.” It is one of the distinct recollections of my childhood.’”