1. The finding aid for the Mary Baker Eddy Book Collection states about this volume, “Notations primarily by Mary Baker Eddy. Some by Calvin A. Frye.” While this article attributes notations and marks to Eddy, some notations in Eddy’s psalter were written by Frye at Eddy’s direction.
  2. Notation in the Book of Psalms (New York: American Bible Society, 1879), B00016, back flyleaf. On the front flyleaf, two notations reference other biblical books, “Exodus III” and “Luke XXI.”
  3. One exception is this notation, written next to Psalm 102: “I opened to this Ps Feb. 19, 1839.” Eddy may have been recalling a girlhood memory or intending to write a different year, such as 1889 or 1893. Mary Baker Eddy, notation in The Book of Psalms, B00016, 143.
  4. Mary B. G. Eddy, “Special Notice from Rev. Mary B. G. Eddy,” The Christian Science Journal, June 1889, 156.
  5. While the church membership voted to abandon “its congregational organization” on December 2, 1889, the church continued “to hold Sunday services and Friday evening meetings as a voluntary association.” The Mary Baker Eddy Library, “A Chronology of Events Surrounding the Life of Mary Baker Eddy,” 2022, 41, https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2.10.22-MBE_detailed_annotated-chronology.pdf. See Mary Baker Eddy to the Church of Christ (Scientist) Boston, 28 November 1889, L00008.
  6. “A Chronology of Events,” 37–43. See Eric Nager, “Why did Mary Baker Eddy disband her church in 1889?,” The Mary Baker Eddy Library, 26 June 2023, https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/research/why-did-mary-baker-eddy-disorganize-her-church-in-1889/
  7. “A Chronology of Events,” 45. See pages 37–47 for additional details about this reorganization and other pertinent events from 1889–1893.
  8. See Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), 13–18; “A Chronology of Events,” 41.
  9. “A Chronology of Events,” 44.
  10. Notation in The Book of Psalms, B00016, title page, 65. The Bible translation used in Eddy’s psalter is the King James Version. Eddy’s psalter was published six years before the 1885 Revised Version.
  11. Notation in The Book of Psalms, B00016, 65. The letters “am” stand for animal magnetism, which Eddy described as “the specific term for error, or mortal mind. It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful.” (Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures [Boston: The Christian Science Board of Directors], 103.) Eddy’s use of the term “mortal mind” echoes Paul’s reference to “the carnal mind” in Romans 8:7, a passage that Eddy quoted multiple times in her writings.
  12. Notations in The Book of Psalms, B00016, title page.
  13. Marks in The Book of Psalms, B00016, 53–54.
  14. See James Limburg, Psalms, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 126–127.
  15. Marks in The Book of Psalms, B00016, 77.
  16. “A Chronology of Events,” 41, 44.
  17. John 2:17 quotes Ps. 69:9, John 15:25 quotes Ps. 69:4, and John 19:28–30 echoes Ps. 69:21 (see Matt. 27:34; Mark 15:36; Luke 23:36).
  18. Eddy, notation in The Book of Psalms, B00016, 95.
  19. See Bernhard W. Anderson with Steven Bishop, Out of the Depths: The Psalms Speak for Us Today (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 60–62; J. Clinton McCann Jr., Reading the Psalms Again for the First Time: A Spirituality for Justice-Seekers & Peacemakers (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2024), 41.
  20. Eddy, notation in The Book of Psalms, B00016, 159.
  21. “A Chronology of Events,” 44–45.
  22. Eddy, notation in The Book of Psalms, B00016, title page.