Edward Hitchings (c.1807-1894) was born and died in Saugus, Massachusetts. He was a shoe manufacturer and a Civil War veteran who served as first lieutenant in Company S of the 40th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. After the war, he spent most of his career working in Saugus and Lynn, Massachusetts. Briefly, during the mid-1870s, he was a partner in Slade & Hitchings, a real estate brokership based in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Mary Baker Eddy hired Hitchings as a realtor in late 1874 to find her a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but instead Hitchings helped Eddy with the purchase of a home at 8 Broad Street in Lynn. In 1875, Hitchings, along with others, helped to finance the first printing of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. His involvement with the Christian Science movement seems to have been short-lived and by 1876, he appears to be no longer involved.

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