"Why this has the feel of a home just as a woman would make it!" said a Christian Scientist from Switzerland on her first visit to Mrs. Eddy's home at 12 Broad Street, Lynn, Massachusetts. "It is pretty but simple, and I sense here discipline and also attention to detail, and it all tells me about our Leader."
A tour of the six historic sites belonging to The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, plus the six owned by the Long year Historical Society, helps make the visits of many Christian Scientists to New England enjoyable and instructive. Each year thousands of travelers like the Swiss woman find that their visits to these sites give them a better understanding of Mrs. Eddy's mission. And on their tour they discover the beauties of New England too!
Historical preservation, like the cause of ecology, is aimed at providing present and future generations with a richer visual environment. It presumes that appreciation of the past is vital nutriment for future progress.
The most recent acquisition is in Bow, New Hampshire— the White Rock Hill site on which stood the Meeting House where Mrs. Eddy attended church as a child. An early nineteenth-century site, the land was obtained because of its interest to Bow as well as to the Christian Science movement. It was saved from a residential development.
Each site has a story to tell, and a great deal is done to convey this to the visitor. At Mrs. Eddy's birthplace, which is just a few miles from White Rock Hill, the foundation of the old saltbox house is marked out in gravel and stone. A nearby redwood display case contains a description of the building that was once there.
At some sites, there are exhibits that throw light on Mrs. Eddy's life. The Lynn house has a new one on the founding of the Christian Science movement. At 400 Beacon Street, Chestnut Hill, near Boston, where she lived when she founded The Christian Science Monitor, the exhibits are presently on earlier Church building programs. All exhibits are changed periodically.
Trained guides welcome visitors at all the historical houses and do much to make the sites of educational value. The map "Mary Baker Eddy and New England" is obtainable at the historical houses and also by mail from the Archivist of The Mother Church. It gives information on the sites, all of which are within a day's drive of Boston.
The whole approach is to inform and inspire the visitor through tangible reminders of the movement's historical heritage. It is to stimulate thinking, not emotionalism, and to call attention to Mrs. Eddy's mission and accomplishments, not to personality.
Integrity has from the start been given top priority in this historical preservation program. The information supplied to guides at the houses is periodically checked for accuracy to ensure that it is in line with the findings of recent research. Just this spring the plaque that identifies the site of the Baker farm in Tilton, New Hampshire, was changed for the third time, no less. The correction added a year to Mrs. Eddy's stay with her parents there—from 1836 to 1849, not to 1848 as was previously believed.
Using as a guide the "preservation through documentation" program of the United States Federal Government and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Archivist's office is presently compiling for each site a photo-data file. This file provides interior and exterior photographs, architectural drawings, inventories of furnishings, and historical data. In the event a building is damaged or destroyed, the documentation would be available to ensure accurate restoration.
Also, these files cover sites where buildings of historic significance once stood. For example, there is a file on the Christian Science "White Mountain Church." This site is just a few miles from New England's sole federally-designated wilderness area. Mrs. Eddy's letter to this church is, of course, to be found in her volume, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.My., p. 184.
