John M. Fletcher (1832-1912) was born in Loudon, New Hampshire, and died in Concord, New Hampshire. He married Lucy A. Fletcher (b. Adams) around 1854. Fletcher worked as a carriage trimmer for L. Downing & Sons in Concord for many years before becoming a dentist after the American Civil War. Around 1897 he extracted a tooth for Mary Baker Eddy. In 1900 Reverend N.T. Whittaker published a booklet titled, Christian Science: Is it Safe. In it he wrote that Fletcher stated that Eddy asked him to extract her tooth using local anesthesia and paid him ten times the amount to do so. Fletcher later rebutted this and condemned Whittaker for spewing falsehoods. Fletcher was a tenor and sang with the choir at the North Congregational Church and later the Lowell Street Universalist Church. In his leisure time he worked as a taxidermist and maintained an ornithological collection.

See more letters.