In the early 1900’s there were at least two celebrated figures in America who were known to be descended from Colonial hero Captain John Lovewell of “Lovewell’s Fight.”
One of these was scientist and science-popularizer Professor Joseph Taplin Lovewell, whose fame was somewhat parochial, the bullseye of his influence being his home turf of Topeka, Kansas. The other notable Lovewell descendant was the internationally famous Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, one of the fastest-growing religious denominations during the early decades of the 20th century.
Willa Cather and Mark Twain were among contemporary writers who had openly expressed mixed feelings about Mrs. Eddy in print, admiring her intellectual brilliance, while taking issue with her theology and what struck some as ruthless ambition.
Mrs. Eddy and her supporters evidently launched a literary counteroffensive in the pages of Alfred Henry Lewis’s magazine Human Life, with an in-depth article spanning 13 installments, all under the title, “The Story of the Real Mrs. Eddy.” According to the subject of the story herself, one of her Baker ancestors “married Hannah Lovewell, only child of Captain John Lovewell … and as his sole heir inherited the lands assigned to her father in Pembroke.”
One of Prof. Lovewell’s friends, who was an admirer of Mary Baker Eddy and a member of the Christian Science church, gave the professor several issues of Human Life to peruse. The professor, who possessed a unique insight on the subject of Lovewell family history, wrote a letter to his famous cousin, pointing out her genealogical misstep.
As he told a reporter for the Topeka Daily Capitol:
Hannah was not the only child of Captain John Lovewell. He also had two sons, John and Nehemiah. John’s son married Nehemiah’s daughter, and their son Nehemiah was my father. Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy is therefore the great great granddaughter of Captain John Lovewell, descended from Hannah Lovewell, while I am the great great grandson of Captain John Lovewell, descended equally from his sons Nehemiah and John.
I wrote to Mrs. Eddy a brief note, merely calling her attention to this error, and without thought of receiving a reply. Her reply frankly admits that she was mistaken in the matter.
Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., June 7, 1907.
Mr. J. T. Lovewell, Ph. D., Academy of Science.
Dear Sir:
You will please to accept my thanks for your correction of ‘the only child.' History inaccurate is no history.
I would have informed myself before writing that as history - but as hearsay I said it.
Very truly yours,
Mary Baker G. Eddy
I ran across the story of this exchange of letters between two descendants of Captain Lovewell, quite by accident. It cropped up while I was checking to see if accounts of the 1725 standoff at Lovewell Pond continued to crop up in 20th century newspapers as often as it had in the 19th, or whether the press eventually lost interest in the story after the conclusion of the Indian Wars.
Instead I was directed to a page-length column of type in the Topeka Daily Capitol which did mention the 1725 ambush, but was chiefly concerned with describing, in exhaustive detail, a note containing fewer than fifty words, received by a prominent resident of Topeka.
The newpaper argued that the letter “goes a good ways to prove that Mrs. Eddy, the head of the Christian Science church, is neither insane nor dead, both of which charges have been made against her recently.”