
Elsie A. Lincoln (1857-1918) was born in Round Grove, Illinois, and died
in Sioux City, Iowa. By 1870 she moved to Fort Dodge, Iowa, and in the late 1880s to La
Crosse, Wisconsin. She pursued musical education in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York
City, and Paris and became a prominent concert singer throughout Europe and the United
States. In 1886, Mary Hinds Philbrick, a student of Mary Baker Eddy's stayed in
Lincoln's home and gave Christian Science treatment to her sister, L. Blanche Lincoln,
whose improvement in health inspired several others in the family to study Christian
Science as well. Elsie Lincoln studied with Philbrick in about 1887 and joined The First
Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 6, 1895. Her mother, Lucy
P. Lincoln (b. Hazard), brother, Charles E. Lincoln, and two sisters, Blanche and
Frances "Fanny" E. Ford (b. Lincoln) joined at other times. Lucy and Blanche Lincoln
were listed as practitioners in Fort Dodge in
The Christian Science
Journal, and Lucy was also a member of the National Christian Scientist
Association. In the early 1890s, Elsie Lincoln was called to Boston to serve as the
soloist of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and she continued singing both as a
soloist and in the choir at church services, and once at Eddy's Pleasant View home,
throughout the 1890s. She was listed as a practitioner in
The Christian
Science Journal in Boston from 1898 to 1905. She moved back to Fort Dodge
prior to 1910, and subsequently to Sioux City, where she lived with her sister Fanny
until her passing.
See more letters.