Sibyl Wilbur

“ As they turned they encountered his son Bartlett and Abigail; for Bartlett was a suitor for Abigail’s hand and she once pinned a rose on his coat in this garden. It is possible that both men were uplifted as they walked down the hill from the Baker home, and that it was then the father, halting his son with a hand on his shoulder, declared to him what he at some time certainly said: “Bright, good, and pure, aye brilliant! I never before had a pupil with such depth and independence of thought. She has some great future, mark that. She is an intellectual and spiritual genius.” ”

“ Mary liked best to listen to the weightier conversation, especially when it touched the welfare of some one dear to her heart. Once she heard the governor laughing merrily with her father over the way Mark Baker had got the best of his son, Franklin, in a lawsuit involving the towns of Loudon and Bow over a question of pauperism.
“You are not a lawyer, and yet my son says you beat him with your arguments,” said the governor.
“He bore his defeat in good spirit and offered me his congratulations,” replied her father. “He is a magnetic young man destined for great things. ”

“ All the Baker children went to school at the crossroads, about a mile from the farmhouse on the way to Concord. When Mary began her schooling, her oldest brother, Samuel, with New England pertinacity, had gone to Boston to learn the trade of mason, from which he steadily developed into a contractor and builder of considerable importance. He built many brick buildings and rows of houses which stood long in Boston. Her brother Albert entered Dartmouth College when Mary was nine and returned home when she was thirteen. ”

“ George was now established in Alexander Tilton’s mill and rose rapidly to become a mill agent and later a partner of the owner, who before that time had married his sister Abigail.
A frequent guest of the family was Professor Dyer H. Sanborn, who kept a private school to which the children of the wealthier families were sent to finish their studies. Boys were prepared by him for college and girls were given a certificate of graduation with academic honors. Mary Baker became his pupil and graduated from this school. Professor Sanborn was the author of a grammar and a man of literary tastes. ”

“ Enoch Corser, pastor of the Tilton church for all the period of their residence at the farm, was also a frequent and honored guest of the Bakers. He was a man of liberal culture as may be imagined from the fact that he privately tutored his son Bartlett, sending him to college prepared to eliminate the first two years of Greek, Latin, and mathematics. This was Mary Baker’s pastor who first received her into communion. ”

“ He relinquished his share of the title in the Bow property to his brothers’ children and bought a farm about a mile from Tilton.
The Baker home life now became more social and less patriarchal. Mary was fifteen, her sisters, Martha and Abigail, eighteen and twenty. All three sisters were notable for their beauty and good breeding. The mother’s agreeable temperament, together with her hospitable nature no less than Mr. Baker’s great interest in public affairs, drew many guests to this house in which the family lived for seven years. ”

“ That they did not entirely succeed is shown in some of her verses written at this time in which, while she shows a rapturous love of nature, she declares that all this is the poet’s world-wish and only a shadow hastening away. She asserts, however, that hope lifts the thought to “soar above matter and fasten on God,” which at this very early age presaged her future religious revelation in no uncertain outline. ”

“ He never married or entered a profession. His father left him well off in lands and money, and with his two maiden sisters he lived for years at Boscawen, a village between Tilton and Concord made famous by Daniel Webster. He was a country gentleman of literary tastes and. hospitable habits. Abigail, after rejecting him, married Alexander Tilton, a wealthy mill owner, and became the great lady of the town. Martha, after teaching for a time in the academy, married a state warden.
While Mary was attending the academy an incident occurred which was long related by old residents of Tilton. ”