Mary Baker Eddy and Victoria Woodhull discussion at Daystar Retirement Village

Today Cindy Safronoff held a book talk for Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage at Daystar Retirement Village in West Seattle. It was an intimate audience of about 9 people — a mix of residents, staff, and visitors — in the homey atmosphere of a meeting room with the feel of a living room.  

With Election Day looming large this coming Tuesday, Safronoff’s began her introduction by holding up her very own mail-in ballot.  She explained that when state legislatures first started giving women the right to vote in the 1870s it trigger an American marriage debate. What would happen to the institution of marriage if women were given full civil rights (including the right to vote)? Mary Baker Eddy and Victoria Woodhull had very different views on this question. Woodhull wanted to abolish legal marriage, and Eddy believed giving women full civil rights would improve legal marriage.

Safronoff selected readings featuring Victoria Woodhull’s November 20, 1871 launch of her Presidential campaign lecture tour at Steinway Hall in New York City when, going off-script, she spontaneously made her most famous statement:

Yes, I am a free lover! I have an inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can, to change that love everyday I please! And with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere. And I have further the right to demand a free and unrestricted exercise of that right, and it is your duty not only to accord it, but, as a community, to see that I am protected in it.

Safronoff read a section that showed how Mary Baker Eddy focused on women’s rights to serve in the holy profession of the Christian ministry — in short, the right to the job title “Reverend.” Eddy completely disagreed with Woodhull’s views and figuratively crossed swords with her in the civic dialog. But even so, around the time of Woodhull’s second Presidential run for the 1892 election, Eddy made one of her most famous statements:  

In natural law and in religion the right of woman to fill the highest measure of enlightened understanding and the highest places in government, is inalienable, and these rights are ably vindicated by the noblest of both sexes. This is woman’s hour, with all its sweet amenities and its moral and religious reforms.

Both Victoria Woodhull and Mary Baker Eddy were far in advance of their day. As to whether woman’s hour is come for the United States Presidency, we will find out this coming Tuesday.

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 Seattle Public Library. 

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It is also on the “Women’s, Queer, and Gender Studies” shelf. Copies can be put on hold now, and if paid on Aug 2 the 20% discount will apply. Anyone can purchase a copy by calling the store at 617-661-1515 and they will ship anywhere in the USA.

At the HBS event on August 2, 2016, just one week after Hillary Clinton was officially nominated for President, Safronoff will speak about Victoria Woodhull’s 1872 run for President, Mary Baker Eddy’s take on of woman’s right to hold the highest office of the land, and how American pundits responded two these two women making waves and making headlines in America — as well as an American marriage debate in the 1870s during the early women’s rights movement.

Safronoff will also answer questions and be available afterwards to meet people and sign books.   

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Located at 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, the landmark Cambridge, Massachusetts, bookstore hosts frequent events in the store with authors, many of whom have published bestsellers and won awards for their books. Safronoff has won ten book awards for Crossing Swords in categories ranging from Nonfiction Drama to U.S. History, most recently in Women’s Issues from Independent Publisher Book Awards and Next Generation Indie Book Awards, plus first in Regional Literature from New England Book Festival in addition to awards from Readers’ Favorite, USA Best Book, National Indie Excellence, and Illumination Book Awards.

Crossing Swords will be on the Women’s Studies shelf at Harvard Book Store by the second week of July through the Aug 2 event, which will include a book signing. For anyone unable to attend the event, autographed copies can be ordered through the Harvard.com website or by calling the bookstore at (617) 661-1515 and then picked up at the store or shipped anywhere in the USA.

Harvard Book Store is an independent bookstore, but is adjacent to Harvard University, which was originally founded in 1636 shortly after the arrival of the first Puritan settlers. This has special significance to Safronoff’s book, since the culture of these early settlements is described in Safronoff’s book Crossing Swords as it relates to the history of the institution of marriage in America.

Crossing Swords has additional relevance to the Boston area because both Mary Baker Eddy and Victoria Woodhull have their historical archrives in Boston — Eddy at the Mary Baker Eddy Library at the Christian Science Center, and Woodhull in Special Collections at the Central Library of the Boston Public Library.  This is what brings Cindy Safronoff to Boston — research for a Crossing Swords sequel. Consequently, readers in the Boston area have the opportunity to hear her speak, ask questions, and have her sign their books on Tuesday, Aug 2, 2016, at 7:00PM at Harvard Book Store.      

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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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In addition to people from the University of Washington and residents from the University District neighborhood of Seattle, people came from as far away as Burien, Bellevue, Bainbridge Island, and even Bellingham to hear about Safronoff’s book. One person even came from Grass Valley, California, to attend the event.

Safronoff’s talk focused on Eddy and Woodhull as nineteenth-century examples of female public figures, as well as their disagreement over how women’s rights should impact the institution of marriage–the battle for the soul of marriage, or woman’s climb to new heights and the genesis of modern marriage issues. The readings highlighted how American pundits responded to the influence of these extraordinarily accomplished trailblazing women. Some of the better-known commentators quoted in the readings included Susan B. Anthony, Mark Twain, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

After the readings, audience members showed their interest in the topic through their many questions for the author. The Q&A portion completely filled the remainder of the hour-long “Reading Allowed” event. Then attendees kept Safronoff busy signing books for the next twenty minutes.

Nineteen copies of the book were sold during the event. The bookstore staff seemed to consider the event a success. It was an especially good turnout considering it was the middle of a three-day national holiday weekend in a town that loves its weekend getaways, and the Seahawks, the local professional football team, was in a playoff game the same day.

University Book Store is an independent bookstore founded in 1900 by University of Washington students. The prominent multi-level bookstore, where UW students continue to purchase their text books today, is located near the main campus on University Way.

University Book Store has some coincidental associations to the career legacies of Mary Baker Eddy and Victoria Woodhull, the two leading ladies of the story told in Crossing Swords.

The present-day parking lot for the bookstore was formerly the site of a building part of Eddy’s religious organization. When the University Book Store needed the parking lot, the Christian Science Organization for UW college students sold the property and built their present building two blocks to the south on University Way. 

Also, University Book Store author events too large for the second-floor event room are held at Town Hall downtown, a public auditorium originally built as a branch of Eddy’s church. The auditorium-style building design was influenced by a church architectural style developed in the mid-nineteenth century by Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, Victoria Woodhull’s nemesis in Crossing Swords. 

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Woodhull never lived in Boston. She grew up in rural Ohio, and later lived for short stays throughout the Midwest, including Cincinnati, Ohio, Chicago, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri. In her early adulthood she spent a few years in the then wild west of San Francisco, California. During the early 1870s when she was a nationally-known American public figure — a stock broker, Presidential candidate, and controversial free-love advocate — she lived in New York City. But she spent the last half of her life outside the United States. So she lived in England far longer than anywhere else.  

And when Woodhull was touring the United States as a public lecturer, Boston was the most hostile to her social freedom message. The cultural capitol of Puritan-founded New England, Boston was then a stronghold of the American Protestant Christian political establishment and its values, including the standard of sexual morality that was very different than the “free-love” values Woodhull was promoting. Several times when Woodhull came to lecture in Boston, she was made to feel very unwelcome, flatly denied access to the lecture halls in Boston.   

One aspect of the Victoria Woodhull Papers in the Rare Books and Manuscripts department of the Boston Public Library that does fit with Boston’s cultural heritage is that the papers in the collection are from the phase of life when she most conformed to the sort of moral values Boston was known for. This Victoria Woodhull archive is from the period after she disavowed any support for free-love, married John Biddulph Martin (with a church wedding), and had a stable, monogamous marriage, and not until death did they part. The bulk of the papers in the Boston Public Library collection are the letters between Victoria and her husband. 

One of the most interesting things about the Victoria Woodhull archive being kept by the Boston Public Library is the fact that the location is only a few blocks away from the archive for Mary Baker Eddy. Coincidentally also, the Boston Public Library building was built around the same time that Eddy built her church, which later expanded to include her publishing company building where the Mary Baker Eddy Library would eventually be located.

Woodhull and Eddy were both among the most famous American women in the nineteenth century, and although the two public figures could not have more opposite views on the topic of marriage and “free-love,” they also have some curious similarities. There are enough things in their lives to compare and contrast to keep a scholar busy for a long time. I have already spent three years doing just that, and I know there is still more there to explore. How convenient that these two treasure troves of papers are just a few blocks away from each other! 

Cindy Safronoff has begun research work for the sequel to her first book, Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage (This One Thing, July 4, 2015).  This untold story of America’s nineteenth-century culture war is available on Amazon, or by special order from your favorite local bookstore. 

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In the year 1876, soon-to-be-famous Mary Baker Eddy “crossed swords” with Victoria Woodhull in the newspaper columns of the Lynn Transcript. At the time, Eddy lived here in this historic house in Lynn, Massachusetts.

To promote herself as a candidate for President of the United States, Woodhull had been traveling the country for several years giving lectures on a counter-culture philosophy she called “social freedom.” She had publicly declared war on marriage, and she advocated repealing all laws restricting sexuality, including legal marriage. Instead, she would have society adopt an anything-goes culture for relationships called “Free Love.”

When Woodhull came to lecture in Eddy’s hometown, Eddy and Woodhull ended up having a public exchange of hostile words that makes today’s civic dialogue seem tame. The irreconcilably conflicting viewpoints of Eddy and Woodhull, expressed so vehemently in those letters to the editor, are explored in-depth in a comparative biography by Cindy Safronoff called Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage (This One Thing, July 4, 2015). Eddy and Woodhull both publicly advocated for women’s rights, but they held polar opposite political positions on how empowering women should impact the institution of marriage.

At the time of this exchange, Eddy had finally gotten settled in to a home of her own at 8 Broad Street in Lynn, a historic village turned industrial-hub near Boston. After years of instability, moving around from one boarding house to another, she had accumulated enough money from teaching and her work as a healer to purchase the house. A year prior in 1875, she had published the first edition of her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which she completed at her small writing desk under the skylight in the attic room of this home. She very likely wrote her letter to the editor harshly condemning Victoria Woodhull’s free-love campaign here too, on the very same desk.

Eddy wrote her book to explain her successful system of healing the sick without medicine, which she called Christian Science. The book included a chapter called “Marriage” in which she explained her Puritan-influenced views on the topic. Throughout the book she emphasized how sexual conduct relates to the ability to heal the sick through prayer. Woodhull’s war against marriage was in the news and a topic of social discussions throughout the nation during the years that Eddy was writing the first edition of Science and Health. Eddy’s chapter Marriage had to have been written at least in part as a response to Woodhull’s infamous free-love campaign.  

The 8 Broad Street, Lynn, historic house, owned, managed, and recently lovingly restored by Longyear Museum of Chestnut Hill, MA, is well known to have been the place where Mary Baker Eddy completed and published her first book, launched her educational institution for her spiritual teachings, and founded the organizational structure that eventually became the Christian Science church center at the heart of Boston’s Back Bay.

This Lynn historic house is only now becoming known as the place where Eddy crossed swords with Victoria Woodhull over “free-love” in the year 1876. 

Read all about this little-known piece of Eddy’s history — the untold story of American’s nineteenth-century culture war — in the new award-winning nonfiction drama Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage by Cindy Safronoff.

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Library patrons at Seattle Public Library can now check out the e-book edition of Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage by Cindy Safronoff (This One Thing, July 4, 2015). This literary nonfiction drama on the early women’s rights movement is in the Indie Washington anthology assembled by the new SELF-e program for public library systems in Washington state. Visitors to the Seattle Public Library website can discover Crossing Swords along with titles by other local authors in the BiblioBoard SELF-e Indie Washington section of the e-book catalog (scroll down the “Getting Started with e-Books” webpage).

This Seattle Public Library effort to connect library patrons with new independently published authors is a joint effort of BiblioLabs, a company founded by Mitchell Davis, the innovator behind Amazon’s CreateSpace, and Library Journal, a book review organization originally founded by Melvil Dewey, the innovator behind the Dewey Decimal system for library catalogs. Just launched this summer, the SELF-e program will be rolling out to more and more library systems all over the world, offering a new way for independent authors to be discovered.

Being available through the Seattle Public Library makes Crossing Swords discoverable to thousands of potential readers in the hometown of its author. This is yet one more way to build buzz, readership, and even book sales, launching this book to greater heights. 

Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage by Cindy Safronoff is available for purchase on Amazon, or by special order from most local bookstores, and is available in e-book form for checkout through Seattle Public Library in the Indie Washington anthology.

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But really, this is not the end of this journey. It is only the beginning. Now my work shifts to promotion. These first advance copies will be sent to book review editors at book trade magazines and other publications that might be interested in writing a review of this historical biography. A few will also be sent to authors of books on related topics, with the hope of getting a their endorsements.

I have no idea how many months or years I will put into the promotion for this book. All I can do is approach this next phase the way I have from the very beginning: keeping my focus on the next immediate step. That way, all I ever need to do, is just this one thing.

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