From the Papers: Ringing in the New Year—1887

As 2025 gets underway, our team continues to transcribe, annotate, and publish correspondence to and from Mary Baker Eddy that dates to the last months of 1886. During the holiday season, Eddy often received letters and gifts from students and friends, for which she expressed her thanks.¹ From book orders to updates from the Christian Science field to well wishes, here are some of the New Year’s messages she was receiving 138 years ago.

Orders for Eddy’s Works

The Christmas season was usually a busy time for Eddy and her staff, as they continuously filled orders for her writings. Requests for Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, as well as her pamphlets, poured in throughout the season. In a letter dated December 31, 1886, Albert B. Dorman requested multiple copies of Eddy’s pamphlets Christian Healing and The People’s Idea of God: Its Effect on Health and Christianity, while wishing her staff a “Happy New Year.”²

No rest for the devoted

Eddy’s student Laura V. Lathrop, who was practicing and teaching Christian Science in New York City, remained active through the holidays. She wrote to Eddy on January 23, 1887, describing her trip Washington D.C.:

I went to Washington for a weeks visit between Christmas and New Years, and talked Science pretty much all the time…. New Year’s I, with my friend a Congressman’s wife, received calls at Mrs Sen. Congers of Michigan, and I had an opportunity to talk to a great many intelligent people….³

This outing brought fruitful results—Lathrop continued, “Several leading ladies are getting me up a class there now which I have promised to teach in Feb.” Fulfilling a promise to return to Washington, Lathrop gave a February 9 talk on Christian Science. The next morning she followed up by giving Christian Science Primary class instruction. Many prominent people were in attendance, including women’s rights activists Susan B. Anthony and Phoebe W. Couzins, one of the first female lawyers in the United States.⁴

Personal correspondence

Eddy received notes from her family and friends, including Fanny McNeil Potter, a distant cousin of Eddy with whom she was close. “A Happy New Year to you Darling.” wrote Potter, “& Many. I love the pretty Greeting because it came from a loved one, whose name I reverence, & cherish-”⁵ Unfortunately, we don’t have Eddy’s original greeting to Potter; however, you can read through the correspondence we do have between them on the Mary Baker Eddy Papers website.

Grateful students and followers

In addition to letters from family and friends, Eddy’s students and followers also sent messages. Along these lines, “A Delayed New Year’s Greeting to Rev. Mrs. Eddy” appeared in the March 1887 issue of The Christian Science Journal. The greeting concluded:

May the presence of our beloved instructor long be spared to us; and may each succeeding New Year bring with it increased joy, in the knowledge that the world’s darkness grows less and less dense, and the light of Truth, through Christian Science, is bringing order out of chaos, leading to the fulfillment of the Master’s prayer: “Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven,”—is the earnest wish of your affectionate students and followers. ⁶

It is with this lovely message that the Mary Baker Eddy Papers team wishes you and yours a Happy New Year!