Mary Bennett Dukes (b. Bennett) (1862-1913) was born in New York and died in Los Angeles, California. By 1870 she was living in Canton, Ohio, and by 1880 she had moved to Verona, Pennsylvania. In 1884 she went to China under the auspices of the Woman's Union Missionary Society of America, an organization founded in New York in 1861 that sent single women to Asian countries to provide education, training, healthcare, and other services to women. In 1886 she married Oscar A. Dukes in Kobe, Japan. He was a physician and Methodist minister who had also served as a missionary in China, and in 1886 he was sent to Japan to begin a Methodist mission there. For the remainder of her life, Dukes worked alongside her husband as a missionary in Japan, returning occasionally to the United States for periods of time to lecture and visit her family.
In 1894, while on a two-year stay in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she was given a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Upon reading it she experienced what she described as an instantaneous healing of a longstanding ailment. She returned to Japan in 1895 and began practicing Christian Science there. Soon thereafter she published a book condemning the idea of marriage based on her understanding of Christian Science and sent a copy of it to Mary Baker Eddy. Eddy denounced the book in the October 1895 issue of The Christian Science Journal. Dukes passed away while visiting her son in Los Angeles.
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Mary Bennett Dukes (b. Bennett) (1862-1913) was born in New York and died in Los Angeles, California. By 1870 she was living in Canton, Ohio, and by 1880 she had moved to Verona, Pennsylvania. In 1884 she went to China under the auspices of the Woman's Union Missionary Society of America, an organization founded in New York in 1861 that sent single women to Asian countries to provide education, training, healthcare, and other services to women. In 1886 she married Oscar A. Dukes in Kobe, Japan. He was a physician and Methodist minister who had also served as a missionary in China, and in 1886 he was sent to Japan to begin a Methodist mission there. For the remainder of her life, Dukes worked alongside her husband as a missionary in Japan, returning occasionally to the United States for periods of time to lecture and visit her family.
In 1894, while on a two-year stay in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she was given a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Upon reading it she experienced what she described as an instantaneous healing of a longstanding ailment. She returned to Japan in 1895 and began practicing Christian Science there. Soon thereafter she published a book condemning the idea of marriage based on her understanding of Christian Science and sent a copy of it to Mary Baker Eddy. Eddy denounced the book in the October 1895 issue of The Christian Science Journal. Dukes passed away while visiting her son in Los Angeles.
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