Florence MacAlister (b. Stewart) (1861-1932) was born in Cramond, Midlothian, Scotland, and died in Argyllshire, Scotland. In 1896 she married Norman G. MacAlister, a coast guard inspecting officer, in Edinburgh, Scotland. MacAlister was the granddaughter of John McNeill, 1795-1883, who was a well-known Scottish surgeon and diplomat. She wrote a book about him entitled Memoir of the Right Hon. Sir John McNeill, G.C.B., and of His Second Wife Elizabeth Wilson By Their Grand-Daughter, which was published in 1910. Mary Baker Eddy, in her autobiography Retrospection and Introspection, claimed to be descended from John McNeil in reliance on a misapprehension of this fact by her cousin, Fanny McNeil Potter. The claim was furthered in an article published in Ladies' Home Journal in November 1903, and thereby came to MacAlister's attention. In December 1903, MacAlister wrote a letter to Eddy denying the veracity of the claim and enclosing a copy of a correction statement addressed to the editor of Ladies' Home Journal. She also published a correction statement in the British weekly periodical Truth, which was widely republished in several American newspapers. In the March 12, 1904, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel, Archibald McLellan, the Sentinel's editor, also published a correction to the claim.

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