Sibyl Wilbur (1871-1946) was born in Elmira, New York, and died in San
Diego, California. Her parents died when she was young, and by age 14 she had moved to
Nebraska and was earning a living by teaching at a prairie school. She saved enough
money to attend a Minneapolis, Minnesota, prep school before enrolling in Hamline
University, a Methodist college in St. Paul, Minnesota. At 21 she began her journalistic
career at the
Minnesota Journal. Over the next two decades she
wrote about women's rights, labor issues, and culture, working for major metropolitan
newspapers in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, and Boston. She was
politically active as an organizer in the Woman Suffrage Party in New York City. In
1896, she married a journalist in Washington, D. C., named O'Brien, however the marriage
eventually dissolved. Wilbur interviewed Mary Baker Eddy at Pleasant View, Eddy's home
in Concord, New Hampshire, for the
Boston Herald in May 1905.
After doing so, she looked to defend Eddy against attacks by several newspapers, as well
as
McClure's Magazine, which had been publishing a series
attempting to discredit Eddy. Wilbur sought to refute this effort by publishing a
monthly series of articles in
Human Life magazine between
December 1906 and December 1907. The series became the basis for her book,
The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (1908), which was the first published
biography of Eddy. In 1907, Wilbur took a personal interest in Christian Science and had
Primary class instruction with Alfred Farlow, one of Eddy's students, however we have
found no further information concerning her continued involvement with Christian
Science. She moved to San Diego in 1918, after marrying John S. Stone that year in New
York, New York. Following their divorce in 1930, she remained in the city and was very
involved with the women's suffrage movement there until her passing. Wilbur was a San
Diego Branch Member of the National League of American Pen Women and a member of the New
England Woman's Press Association.
See more letters.