Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/25



MRS. EDDY'S AMERICAN ANCESTORS—MARK BAKER, AND LIFE ON THE BOW FARM—SCHOOLDAYS IN TILTON—EARLY INFLUENCES—HER FIRST MARRIAGE

ARY A. MORSE BAKER, the future leader of the Christian Science Church, was the sixth and youngest child of Mark and Abigail Baker. She was born July 16, 1821, at the Baker homestead in the township of Bow, near the present city of Concord in New Hampshire. As a family the Bakers were of the rugged farmer type of the period to which they belonged. From the days of John Baker, their earliest American ancestor, who came from East Anglia and obtained a freehold in Charlestown, Mass., in 1634, throughout five generations to Mark Baker, they had worked the unwilling soil of their New England farms, and brought up large families to labour after them. One of their number had engaged in the pre-Revolutionary wars, and in 1758 received a captain's commission from Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire. This was