Jonathan R. Irving (c.1854-c.1918) was born in Canada and died in an unknown location. He immigrated to the United States in 1894. Irving studied Christian Science with one of Mary Baker Eddy's students, Clara M. Sainsbury Shannon. He joined The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 31, 1894, and worked there as a janitor and caretaker. Although he would do so periodically starting in November 1903, in 1907 he went to Eddy's Pleasant View home in Concord, New Hampshire, to permanently relieve handyman John G. Salchow of his watchman duties. He later served as a night watchman and tended the furnace in Eddy's Chestnut Hill home in Boston after she moved there in 1908, and he continued to do so until her death in December 1910. Irving served as a guard in the receiving tomb in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Eddy's body had been placed while awaiting the preparation of her gravesite and where her tomb/ memorial was ultimately constructed. He continued to keep watch afterwards (at least through January 31, 1911).

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