Nathaniel Bouton (1799-1878) was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, and died in Concord, New Hampshire. He graduated from Yale College in 1821 and Andover Theological Seminary in 1824. In 1825, he was named pastor of the First Congregational Church in Concord, where he remained until his resignation in 1867. Dartmouth College (of which he was a trustee from 1840 to 1877) conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1851. Bouton served as president of the New Hampshire Historical Society and wrote History of Concord (1856). In 1866, he was appointed the editor and compiler of the "Provincial Records of New Hampshire," issuing ten volumes of "Provincial Papers" from 1867 to 1877. Reverend Bouton baptized Mary Baker Eddy when she was a child and was a frequent guest to the Baker family home in Bow, New Hampshire. The Bakers attended Reverend Bouton's church from 1829 until 1835, when the family moved to Sanbornton Bridge (now Tilton, New Hampshire). Eddy wrote to Bouton's daughter, Sarah B. Patterson, in 1902, about her love for Bouton and the church of her youth, indicating that the religion he taught "was the vestibule of Christian Science." Eddy also mentions Bouton in her Message to The Mother Church for 1901, praising him as one of the "grand old divines" who taught her as a child.

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