0.0 – Christian Science Publication Contents

      RETROSPECTION AND
  	           INTROSPECTION 

  	                 ANCESTRAL SHADOWS 


 1	    My ancestors, according to the flesh, were from both
  	Scotland and England, my great-grandfather, on
 3	my father's side, being John McNeil of Edinburgh. 
  	    His wife, my great-grandmother, was Marion Moor,
  	and her family is said to have been in some way related
 6	to Hannah More, the pious and popular English authoress
  	of a century ago. 
  	    I remember reading, in my childhood, certain manu-
 9	scripts containing Scriptural sonnets, besides other verses
  	and enigmas which my grandmother said were written
  	by my great-grandmother. But because my great-grand-
12	mother wrote a stray sonnet and an occasional riddle, it
  	was no sign that she inherited a spark from Hannah More,
  	or was her relative. 
15	    John and Marion Moor McNeil had a daughter, who
  	perpetuated her mother's name. This second Marion
  	McNeil in due time was married to an Englishman,
18	named Joseph Baker, and so became my paternal grand-
  	mother, the Scotch and English elements thus mingling
  	in her children. 
 
  
  Retrospection and Introspection --- Ancestral Shadows                2


 1	    Mrs. Marion McNeil Baker was reared among the
  	Scotch Covenanters, and had in her character that sturdy
 3	Calvinistic devotion to Protestant liberty which gave those
  	religionists the poetic daring and pious picturesqueness
  	which we find so grap...hically set forth in the pages of Sir
 6	Walter Scott and in John Wilson's sketches. 
  	    Joseph Baker and his wife, Marion McNeil, came to
  	America seeking "freedom to worship God;" though
 9	they could hardly have crossed the Atlantic more than a
  	score of years prior to the Revolutionary period. 
  	    With them they brought to New England a heavy sword,
12	encased in a brass scabbard, on which was inscribed the
  	name of a kinsman upon whom the weapon had been
  	bestowed by Sir William Wallace, from whose patriotism
15	and bravery comes that heart-stirring air, "Scots wha hae
  	wi' Wallace bled." 
  	    My childhood was also gladdened by one of my Grand-
18	mother Baker's books, printed in olden type and replete
  	with the phraseology current in the seventeenth and eigh-
  	teenth centuries. 
21	    Among grandmother's treasures were some newspapers,
  	yellow with age. Some of these, however, were not very
  	ancient, nor had they crossed the ocean; for they were
24	American newspapers, one of which contained a full ac-
  	count of the death and burial of George Washington. 
  	    A relative of my Grandfather Baker was General Henry
27	Knox of Revolutionary fame. I was fond of listening,
  	when a child, to grandmother's stories about General
  	Knox, for whom she cherished a high regard. 
30	    In the line of my Grandmother Baker's family was the
 
  
  Retrospection and Introspection --- Ancestral Shadows                3


 1	late Sir John Macneill, a Scotch knight, who was promi-
  	nent in British politics, and at one time held the position
 3	of ambassador to Persia. 
  	    My grandparents were likewise connected with Capt. 
  	John Lovewell of Dunstable, New Hampshire, whose
 6	gallant leadership and death, in the Indian troubles of
  	1722-1725, caused that prolonged contest to be known
  	historically as Lovewell's War. 
 9	    A cousin of my grandmother was John Macneil, the
  	New Hampshire general who fought at Lundy's Lane,
  	and won distinction in 1814 at the neighboring battle of
12	Chippewa, towards the close of the War of 1812.
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