UK Bahá’í Histories
13 July 2015
1 Kalimát 172 B.E.
Please see below a message from the UK Bahá’í Histories Project for your kind attention.
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Dear Friends,
Most of you will already be familiar with the UK Bahá’í Histories Website http://bahaihistoryuk.wordpress.com/ where some 200 histories have been published to date, with many more to follow.
It has been suggested that we also aim to publish the histories of some of the earlier Bahá’ís in this country. For this venture we would like to offer an invitation to any friends who might be interested in compiling a short biography for the UK Bahá’í Histories Project of one or more of the believers listed below. This would necessarily entail some research into what has so far been written by them, or about them, for the purposes of sharing their stories on the online Histories website.
- Richard Backwell (became a Bahá’í in 1944 in Ceylon/Sri Lanka)
- Hasan Balyuzi (Hand of the Cause of God)
- Jeanette & Owen Battrick (became Bahá’ís c. 1950, stalwart pioneers overseas)
- Lady Blomfield (early English Bahá’í, host to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on his visit to Britain in 1912-13)
- Thomas Breakwell (first Englishman to become a Bahá’í and one of the three luminaries of the Irish, English and Scottish Bahá’í communities)
- Dr. John Esslemont (Hand of the Cause of God)
- John Ferraby (Hand of the Cause of God)
- Ernest and Joan Gregory (Sheffield/Nottingham)
- Philip Hainsworth (became a Bahá’í in 1938 in Bradford)
- E.T. Hall (early Manchester Bahá’í)
- Bill and Madeline Hellaby (Skipton, Yorkshire)
- Daniel Jenkyn (early believer from St. Ives in Cornwall)
- Joseph Brothers (early believers in Manchester)
- Bernard Leach (world famous potter from St. Ives, Cornwall)
- Eric Manton (early pioneer to Zambia (Northern Rhodesia)
- Dr. Ernest Miller (Liverpool)
- The Newman Sisters (Mary, Beatrice and Florence) from Pontypridd, Wales
- Ethel Rosenberg (became a Bahá’í in 1899, one of the pioneers of the Cause in the Western world)
- Hassan Sabri (came to England as a youth from Egypt, pioneered in Africa, served in the Holy Land)
- Richard St. Barbe Baker (Founder of the organisation Men of the Trees)
- George Palgrave Simpson (served on the 1st NSA of England)
- Mrs Miriam Thornburgh-Cropper (American, the first Bahá’í in England, taught the Faith to Ethel Rosenberg)
Our Histories team will be able in most instances to offer some guidance as to which Bahá’í World volumes, which books and internet articles may be useful source material for this research. We can also offer guidelines and reading material that may help you, based on the Wilmette Institute course “Writing Biographies and Histories”.
If you would like to offer your assistance, please let the UK Bahá’í Histories Project know of your interest and who you would like to write about.
We look forward to hearing from you.
With loving Bahá’í greetings,
Jenny Lockwood
Thelma Batchelor
UK Bahá’í Histories Project
bhp1uk@gmail.com