Mary Baker Eddy was 44 years old when she made the discovery that changed her life from a farm girl to one of the most powerful women of her day. It was 1866, and she fell on ice in Lynn and knocked unconscious. While her doctors assumed that she was going to die, she was healed after a few days of reading her Bible. Motivated to share her revelation and heal others, she started with her niece as her first patient. She named her innovative ideas “Christian Science” and fast became a popular but controversial speaker about the link between spirituality and health. At the age of 54, Baker Eddy published “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”. It was an immediate best-seller, with sales of over 10 million copies, but she rewrote it 432 times, compulsively revisiting the book until her last month. Disappointed that existing Christian churches would not embrace her discovery, she started her own “Church of Christ, Scientist,” which today has branches around the world. In 1902 she hosted an international conference of over 15,000 participants in Boston. Despite her tremendous success, she was paranoid and distrusted her own followers. Read more...

Even though she spent the first 28 years of her life in slavery, and English was not her first language, Sojourner Truth became one of the most well-known public speakers of the 19th century, advocating for equality between sexes and races. She became famous for broadening the notion of activism beyond the white, educated, middle-class women who primarily made up the suffrage movement. Born as Isabella Baumfree into slavery, one of 10 or 12 children in a Dutch-speaking community in New York. Most of her siblings were sold to different owners, and she learned about them from her mother’s stories. From childhood, she was sold between four masters and suffered abuse, neglect, and even rape. In 1826, She escaped with her infant daughter, Sophia, after her master broke his promise to free her, leaving her four older children behind. The Van Wagenen family from New Paltz, NY, hosted her after the escape and bought her freedom for $20. When her previous master sold her five-years-old-son, Peter, to a new owner in Alabama, she, with the help of the Van Wagenens, sued him at the New York Supreme Court and won; she is one of the first black people to sue a white man in a United States court and prevail. She spent her first decade as a free woman doing household work in New York City. In 1843, she followed God’s calling to become a preacher, changed her name to Sojourner Truth, and till she passed away, she toured the country advocating for various reform causes, including the abolition of slavery, peace, and women’s suffrage. In 1850, she dictated her biography and William Lloyd Garrison published it, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: a Northern Slave; she bought her first home in Florence, MA, and spoke at the first National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, MA. A year later, at Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, she gave her most famous speech, which in later years got the title “Ain’t I a Woman?” This speech was one of the many that followed. Throughout her career, she lectured everywhere she went, from small gatherings to large conventions, advocating for African-American women’s equal rights, voting rights, and property rights. In 1867, Truth made Battle Creek, MI, her home base, purchased a house, and settled there with her daughters. Till her last days, she never stopped preaching her truth.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Sojourner Truth with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers.   Read more...