Historic Houses

Another Brief Refuge

The house:  Built circa 1780, this house was expanded over the years to meet the growing needs of the Bagley family. Squire Lowell Bagley married Sarah Osgood in 1811, and the couple raised three daughters here - Emmeline, Mary, and Sarah.  It was their daughter Sarah who, nearly fifty years later, offered shelter here to the Discoverer of Christian Science.

When Mrs. Longyear found this house in 1920, it still held furnishings and personal memorabilia from the previous century, reflecting the tastes and interests of the Bagley family.

The exterior has been thoroughly restored to the colors and style of the 1860s. The interior presents the Bagleys' home much as it was over 150 years ago. Further preservation and restoration is on-going.

Its story:  The small upstairs bedroom in this house in Amesbury, which Sarah Bagley provided for Mrs. Glover (the future Mrs. Eddy), represents a long succession of rooms she rented in several towns during a nine-year period.  During these years, circumstances forced Mrs. Glover to move repeatedly as she explored her discovery and looked for ways to share it with others. 

Finding a brief refuge at the Bagley home in June and July 1868, Mrs. Glover taught her second student here - Richard Kennedy.

Later, after her year-and-a-half stay with the Wentworths in Stoughton, she returned to this house for a few weeks in the spring of 1870 and took Sarah Bagley as her fourth student.  From here Mrs. Glover moved to Lynn, where she set up a teacher-practitioner partnership with young Kennedy, and, more importantly, where she began to teach classes of students and stepped out onto a wider stage. 

Admission and Additional Visitor Information

$5.00 suggested donation. Longyear members and children under 12, free.

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Virtual Tour

Longyear Museum is pleased to share a brief video featuring the interior of the Mary Baker Eddy Historic House in Amesbury, Massachusetts, as visitors see it today: