Sarah J. Bodwell was born in Sanbornton, New Hampshire, and died in Laconia, New Hampshire. She attended Ipswich Female Seminary in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1835. She married Charles Lane, editor of the Belknap Gazette, in Sanbornton in 1838. Although Mary Baker Eddy referred to Bodwell as principal of Sanbornton Academy (which Eddy attended in 1842), her title remains unclear. Evidence shows that Bodwell was a teacher at either Sanbornton Academy or Woodman Sanbornton Academy or perhaps both of the Sanbornton district schools. Her father, Reverend Abraham Bodwell, was a Congregational minister and sat on both of the district schools' executive boards.

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