From the Papers: Women practicing Christian Science in the American West

Last year the Mary Baker Eddy Papers published “Open a public institute at once,” an article about some of Mary Baker Eddy’s students who at her urging opened institutes for teaching Christian Science throughout the United States. In cities such as New York, Chicago, and Syracuse, New York, women including Laura Lathrop, Ellen Cross, Mary M. W. Adams, and Elizabeth Webster established schools to help ensure that Christian Science teaching was both available and reliable. 

Further west, Sue Ella Bradshaw and Minnie B. Hall De Soto founded institutes in California and Colorado. As women like these sought to carry out Eddy’s instructions on the rugged terrain of the American West, they faced a unique set of challenges particular to their gender and to life on the frontier. Despite these difficulties—or perhaps because of them—both De Soto and Bradshaw brought Eddy’s teachings to the West. Their letters give us a glimpse into what life was like in the West and reveal the promise they saw there for establishing Christian Science.  

De Soto wrote to Eddy in February 1886: “We hope to have this the Religion of the West. and Denver is certainly taken by storm.”¹ She also traveled in Colorado and California at this time, teaching and healing. In August 1886 she wrote this to Eddy: 

I have just given my last lesson in C.S. to my Oakland Class- and I feel very happy about their understanding. really from a material stand point they would have been very hard students, but I got on very well – They are – very learned people, and have asked me more questions than they would think of asking a College Prof., but it really seemed wonderful the answers I was able to give….² 

Three months later she wrote another letter. “Now I have a most delightful class of 16 persons – all husbands & wives – in Greeley Colo,” she reported. “Almost all mama has cured. Greeley is a town that was incorporated with prohibition and the most staunch people they seem- just set – scarcely a spiritualist in the town ….”³ 

De Soto’s letters reflect her impressions of the people most fit to receive the teachings of Christian Science. They also show her own growing confidence in sharing the teachings of Christian Science.

For her part, Bradshaw wrote to Eddy in the summer of 1886, in response to the call for Christian Science institutes:

I purchased property in San Jose last year for C.S. purposes and if a school could be established regardless of pupils it would be already accomplished When it becomes known that I will teach I think that difficulty will disappear. I have kept myself so quiet heretofore. but I should be able to speak now.… I wished to stay in San Jose if they will yet hear me because to my sense it is the chief city, the city of prophecy and promise, called the Athens of California and the Garden City, and many think this little valley an earthly paradise….⁴ 

How were their views of Christian Science, Western society, and their role in it, shaped by the circumstances of their time? Debates still persist over the extent to which life on the trail, and during the early years on the frontier, altered the roles of women and their place within society. Yet an examination of the work accomplished by Christian Scientist women helps demonstrate the broadening of gendered roles in the late nineteenth-century American West.

In response to historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis, which argued that the settlement of America’s rugged frontier was essential to the development of a unique form of democracy in the United States, historians studying women in the West see the region as uniquely fitted for simpler democratic institutions. They emphasized the frontier as a space of increased political and economic freedom for women, where they could operate at least partially free of Victorian gender ideologies. Others concluded there was less opportunity for women on the frontier, noting instead a reactionary return to the familiar. These scholars believed that, in an absence of structure and the familiar, women in fact held more tightly to the Victorian notion of True Womanhood, in order to preserve their moral influence.⁵ 

Together, the experiences of Bradshaw and De Soto speak to the lasting impact of the frontier’s power in transforming gendered divisions of labor. Both women worked to establish Christian Science institutes in the western US, assuming leadership roles in communities and religious organizations, and embracing newfound freedom and influence as women. The work of founding and overseeing an institute involved numerous activities, including property management, writing, advertising, teaching, and healing. This demonstrates the extent to which women in Christian Science labored to expand its teachings while taking hold of the newly available opportunities open to their gender.

As a woman living in San Jose, California, in 1880, Bradshaw was already a minority. There were 10 men to every six women in the state. The city still retained many vestiges of the Gold Rush era, having developed from a trading post for miners into an agricultural hub of the Santa Clara Valley. Bradshaw arrived in San Jose following her mother’s marriage in 1871. After spending time in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston, where she studied at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, she returned to teach Christian Science herself. Responding to Eddy’s encouragement to establish an institute in California, she wrote in 1886, reporting how she had already purchased property in San Jose the previous year with Christian Science in mind.⁶ Bradshaw’s property at 189 South Second Street soon became the site of the California Metaphysical Institute, incorporated in 1886. It advertised in The Christian Science Journal as receiving patients and providing an “opportunity on the Pacific Coast for a course of instruction in the practice of Christian Science Mind-healing.” She continued to teach and heal for years to come. 

In Colorado, De Soto (then Minnie B. Hall) faced similar circumstances. As in California, the discovery of gold at Cripple Creek had brought an influx of men who settled the region. Connection with the transcontinental railroad allowed the city to flourish and grow as a center of cattle ranching and mining. These male-dominated industries made De Soto a minority, much like Bradshaw. Although as a second generation settler, born to strong and enterprising parents, she was likely more comfortable and familiar with the frontier and the challenges it presented than was Bradshaw. Her mother, Mary Melissa Hall, had moved westward with her first husband, Nathan Nye, joining the gold rush. But Nye proved to be an abusive alcoholic and abandoned his wife in a mining camp. While living alone among mostly male prospectors in a Colorado mountain valley, she nursed two men back to health who had been missing from the camp for weeks. One of them, Charles Hall, eventually became her second husband and earned a fortune through developing a salt mine. Later in life Hall developed a life-threatening foot injury and traveled east for treatment. She found healing in Chicago through Christian Science. After she returned home to Denver with her daughters, news of her healing helped the recognition of Christian Science to spread throughout the city.⁷ 

Through her mother’s experiences and example, De Soto was probably more willing to challenge the gender norms of the previous generation. A February 1886 letter to Eddy indicates that she recognized the need for Christian Science teaching in Denver: 

It seems to me that Denver needs a teacher from your College. so many who scarcely know any thing of this work are trying to teach here. Would you allow us to take the different courses with you in succession it is a long trip and I should like to remain at the College until we had finished….⁸ 

De Soto had been successful in teaching up to this point. “Our house is crowded from early until late,” she reported. “We have over 60 regular patients beside our absent patients, but I feel that it is wrong for those to teach who have not proven to them-selves that All is in Christian Science.”⁹ 

That September Eddy wrote to her, encouraging her to open an Christian Science Institute in Denver. Although De Soto had expressed interest in doing this, she had initially spent time traveling throughout the West and teaching classes in various locations. Since it appeared that De Soto had neglected to open an institute in Denver specifically, Eddy wrote to her a second time in September 1886, pleading, “My dear girl, When will you take my advice and start an Institute yourself?”¹⁰ She continued, “Mesmerism is outwitting you While you are chaffing over the work of outlaws in this Science you forget that they are getting round you by stating first their spurious claims.” And she reminded De Soto, “Now if you had started when I said they would have been put on the defensive and not you. But your delay has reversed it and given them the advantage.”¹¹ 

Actually, De Soto had opened an institute in Denver. A note written in her hand on that September letter from Eddy indicates that she had already received a charter for her institute on August 23, 1886, and that she had taught the first class prior to that, on June 8.¹² Like Bradshaw’s, De Soto’s institute helped to spread Christian Science to the American West and ensure that the instruction aligned with Eddy’s writings and teachings.

As women working in leadership roles on America’s western frontier, both De Soto and Bradshaw faced unique challenges. The overwhelmingly male populations of Denver and San Jose made their work as women more peculiar. But at the same time, the redefinition of gendered roles during westward migration and in early years on the frontier seems to have made a lasting impact on their ability to achieve influence in a male-dominated world.