The newly restored St. Louis Central Library

Originally founded in 1865, the St. Louis Public Library built the marble palace called the Central Library after receiving a substantial gift from Andrew Carnegie in 1901, including the magnificent historic art inspired by artists of the Italian Renaissance period.

Today the St. Louis Public Library downtown Central library, where Crossing Swords will reside, is the region’s premier library for research and general library services–a newly revitalized building, artfully blending what was state-of-the art a century ago (but is now a stately historical landmark), with the latest modern innovation. 

The perfect place for Crossing Swords, which likewise artfully revitalizes the story of two of the most dynamic female pioneers of the nineteenth century.  

Local relevance of Crossing Swords

This copy of Crossing Swords just acquired will not be in circulation for check-out. Instead, the book will be kept in pristine condition, available for reading only to visitors to the Central Library. It is being archived in the Rare Books and Special Collection department because of its relevance to St. Louis local history.   

The two leading ladies of Crossing Swords, Mary Baker Eddy and Victoria Woodhull, both have connections to St. Louis. Likewise does the author Cindy Safronoff, who has made St. Louis County her primary home for the past ten years. St. Louis County Public Library, St. Louis Public Library, as well as other St. Louis area libraries were used for most of the research for Crossing Swords.   

Woodhull’s connections to Spiritualism in St. Louis

Victoria Woodhull lived and worked as Spiritualist medium in St. Louis for several years around the time of the Civil War. There she married her second husband, Colonel James Harvey Blood, a Civil War hero who had just been elected as Auditor for the City of St. Louis, a prominent and well-paid public office. Woodhull and Blood met through their mutual interest in Spiritualism. Years later Woodhull returned to lecture in St. Louis when she became the first woman to run for US President and her husband helped run her national campaign. All of these St. Louis events are mentioned in Crossing Swords.

Séances, Ouija boards, and other Spiritualist communications with the Spirit World were very popular in the mid-nineteenth century, with strong interest by millions of Americans. Today Spiritualism is no longer such a major American religious movement, but it quietly persists. St. Louis is still an active organizational center for Spiritualism, with a Spiritualist church located on South Kingshighway Boulevard.

Eddy’s connections to Christian Science in St. Louis

Although Mary Baker Eddy never visited St. Louis, she also has significant historical connections. On the other side of Kingshighway Boulevard, on a section of North Kingshighway nicknamed “Holy Ground” due to the concentration of historic Christian churches, is one of the first branches of the Church of Christ, Scientist, Eddy founded in Boston that eventually became a world-wide organization.

This St. Louis church, founded in 1894, is still active today. A letter Eddy wrote to the St. Louis church when it was newly formed is included in one of her primary published books, Prose Works.

Today there are many Christian Science churches in the St. Louis metro area. In fact, St. Louis is a hub for Eddy’s denomination, primarily because The Principia, a private school for pre-school through college Christian Science children, attracts students and visitors from all over the world. The school was originally in St. Louis city and now is in St. Louis County with a second campus in nearby Elsah, Illinois.

Eddy vs. Woodhull: The Battle for the Soul of Marriage

There is some spiritual and religious content in Crossing Swords, highlighting the different and in some ways opposite theological beliefs of Eddy and Woodhull, but the book is cataloged as primarily being on the history of marriage in America and secondarily as a book about cultural conflict in America, as well as biographical for Mary Baker Eddy and Victoria C. Woodhull. If the book were available for check-out, it would have a call number under Dewey decimal system of 306.8109.

Eddy and Woodhull were both among the most famous women in America during the early women’s rights movement, and they took polar opposite political positions on how empowering women should impact the institution of marriage in America. This American values conflict, spiritual and political, this nineteenth-century culture war, hints at the influences of Eddy and Woodhull in creating present American culture.  

Historic Restoration

Both Eddy and Woodhull were front page news in their day, blazing trails in the mid-nineteenth century that are impressive even by today’s standards. They were far ahead of their time. Yet somehow over the course of the past century, both Eddy and Woodhull have been essentially left out of the telling of American history. Crossing Swords sets them both into historic context of the American civic dialog, and shows their place in history and their relevance to today’s culture, and even our divisive social issues. How appropriate then, for St. Louis Public Library to include their story in its extensive collection of top quality books at its newly revitalized St. Louis Central Library. 

Next time you are in downtown St. Louis, be sure to take a tour of the St. Louis Central Library. And while you are there, go up the stairs up to the Third Floor, past the magnificent stain glass windows, to the Rare Books and Special Collections room to take a look at 400-year old rare books, and a recently published literary nonfiction drama called Crossing Swords by Cindy Safronoff.

Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage by Cindy Peyser Safronoff is available on Amazon, by special order from your favorite local bookstore, or through a growing number of public libraries, including St. Louis Public Library. 

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