● ● ● cheerful and quite unmindful of the urgent errand she had sent him on. To a simple, healthy young countryman this seemed like nothing but a piece of outrageous play acting to get Patterson home, and that was the way the story was told in the village.
This attitude is reflected in an item which appeared in the Plymouth Record in 1904 at the time of the dedication of the Christian Science Church in Concord. A North Groton correspondent wrote that the dedication had recalled the thoughts of some of the older inhabitants to the time half a century before when Mary Baker Eddy was the wife of Daniel Patterson and lived there. He went on:
These people . . . remember the woman at that time as one who carried herself above her fellows. . . . With no . . . stretch of the imagination they remember her ungovernable temper and hysterical ways and particularly well do they remember the night ride of one of the citizens who went for her husband to calm her in one of her unreasonable moods.
The Mrs. Eddy of today is not the Mrs. Patterson of then, for this is a sort of Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyl [sic] case, and the woman is now credited with many charitable and kindly acts.19
She was, however, credited with charitable and kindly acts by some who knew and loved her while she was at North Groton, especially by those who were children at the time. The truly simple-hearted did not seem to find her uppity. She was, wrote Elias F. Bailey in 1911, “a lover of children and in return all children loved her.” One of his wife’s cousins was named Mark Baker Kidder as a token of respect, and the “whole familey were verry fond of her.” 20
The reminiscence of Mrs. Sarah G. Chard is typical of the anecdotes told by those who saw her as a kind and loving friend:
She was very fond of children. My little sister, Nettie, and I used to go and play in her house and Mother used to leave us with Mrs. Patterson for half a day sometimes when she went to the village. . . .
19 “Time Makes Changes,” Plymouth (NH) Record, 23 July 1904, p. 8.
20 Elias F. Bailey to Allan A. Beauchamp, 10 December 1911, Reminiscence, p. 1, MBEL