Point of Pines Picnic

On July 16, 1885, a group of Mary Baker Eddy’s students hosted a picnic for friends and family at the Point of Pines, a beach resort in Revere, Massachusetts, located a few miles northeast of Boston and easily accessible by train. This group, the Christian Scientist Association, wanted to celebrate the ninth anniversary of its July 4, 1876, formation. Members billed this event as a “pleasure excursion.” Their destination, a 200-acre beachfront property, was developed in 1881 with picnic grounds, a roller skating rink, a dance pavilion, a racetrack, and a roller coaster. Offerings included boating and daily bandstand concerts. The grounds were lit with electric light at night.

After several hours of socializing and a light meal, attendees of the picnic heard speeches from Association members, including a talk by Mary Baker Eddy. The Christian Science Journal later reported that she “gave to the assembled company the spiritual interpretation of the sea, with its ever-changing expressions of beauty and grandeur; and as the lessen fell from her lips, each student realized more fully than ever before her power of translating the Scriptures into their original language, viz., that of mind.”

Some of the friends who joined the group also spoke, including Addison D. Crabtre, M.D. (often misspelled “Crabtree”), who had authored a chronology of Jesus’ life that Eddy appreciated. Crabtre reported his surprise that “not one” of the Christian Scientists at the picnic “regaled her or his neighbor with the usual encyclopædia of the ‘ills to which human flesh is heir.’” Other speakers included William Kellaway, printer of The Christian Science Journal in the 1880s.

To view a photograph of the attendees at the picnic, read this article from the Mary Baker Eddy Library: Point of Pines