In Anne Braude's presentation (see previous article), she mentions the fact that women in the 19th century had no custody rights over their children. Mary Baker Eddy lost custody of her son early in her life and this experience affected her deeply. In this presentation, Lesley Pitts, manager of the archives at The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity, describes two documents in the collection that illustrate one way Mrs. Eddy came to grips with that experience. Following is an excerpt from the panel on 19th century women in which Pitts participated during the June 2002 Annual Meeting & Conference. Other parts of Pitts's presentation are being reprinted in The Magazine of The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity.
Mary Baker Eddy started keeping copybooks sometime in the 1840s and kept them close to her for the rest of her life. Now, copybooks need a little bit of explanation. Just imagine you were in a day before photocopiers, if you can. There's no way to reference things. You've got to copy items out by hand and put it them in a book. Also, people practiced their handwriting in these copy books. They wanted to have neat handwriting and some practiced by copying out their favorite poems.
Mary Baker Eddy's copybooks contain original journal entries, hand-copied poetry of Longfellow, Keats, Felicia Hemans, Byron, and so on, as well as her original articles and poems. Many of her writings in these books are drafts of what she submitted for publication in newspapers and even for inclusion in early issues of The Christian Science Journal. She continued to read and edit the items in this book throughout her life, probably using them as late as 1910 for her book of poems, which was published shortly before her passing.
