Mary W. Crafts (1828-1912) was born in Stoughton, Massachusetts, and died in Brockton, Massachusetts. She married Hiram S. Crafts, a shoemaker and Mary Baker Eddy's first student, in Stoughton in 1856. Eddy met the Crafts as boarders in the home of the Clarks in Lynn, Massachusetts, in the winter of 1866-1867. When the Crafts returned to their home in East Stoughton (now Avon), Massachusetts, they invited Eddy to accompany them and teach Hiram how to heal. In order to do so, Eddy began to systematize her ideas. In the spring of 1867, the trio left for Taunton, Massachusetts, where Hiram decided to give up spiritualism and establish himself in the practice of Christian Science. After a few months, however, Mary Crafts persuaded her husband to return to his work as a shoemaker. After he died, she went to Brockton and lived with her brother Frederick and his family.

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