May Maxwell

1870 to 1940. One of the most beloved teachers of the early American Bahá'í community. The first to bring the Faith to Canada. Mother of Rúḥíyyih Khánum. The Maxwell home in Montreal — where she hosted 'Abdu'l-Bahá in 1912 and where the future Guardian's wife grew up — is now a Bahá'í Shrine.

Early life

She was born May Ellis Bolles in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1870, into a comfortable American family. Her childhood was difficult — her health was fragile, she suffered from chronic illness, she was often confined to bed for long periods. She was educated at home and through extensive reading. She had a deep, restless spiritual nature from her earliest years.

In her late teens her family moved to Paris, where her brother Randolph attended the École des Beaux-Arts. May lived with her mother in Paris through her twenties, in fragile health, searching — in the spiritual atmosphere of late-nineteenth-century Paris — for a belief that could hold her.

The encounter

In 1898, May Bolles was twenty-eight. Her health had become so poor that she was often confined to bed. She heard of the Bahá'í Faith through Lua Getsinger, who had recently returned from her own pilgrimage to 'Akká. Lua spoke; May listened; and within weeks May had recognised. She was, with Lua's introduction, soon part of the small Paris Bahá'í community — the first Bahá'í community in Europe.

In 1899 May made the pilgrimage to 'Akká. She was twenty-nine and so ill that her family doubted she would survive the journey. She was carried, much of the way, in a litter. She arrived at the household of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in 'Akká in a state of physical exhaustion.

'Abdu'l-Bahá received her. He spoke with her for hours over the days that followed. Her health, by every account that has come down, improved dramatically over the course of her stay. She returned to Paris transformed.

The Paris years

For the next four years May Bolles served as the spiritual heart of the Paris Bahá'í community. She held a regular fireside that drew seekers from across the city — including Edith Sanderson, Hippolyte Dreyfus, Laura Clifford Barney (later the recipient of Some Answered Questions), Juliet Thompson, and many others who would themselves become significant figures in the early Bahá'í community. She taught with extraordinary tenderness; she lived simply; she gave of her time freely.

The marriage and Montreal

In 1902 May Bolles married William Sutherland Maxwell, a Canadian architect from Montreal who had come to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts and who had been brought to the Bahá'í Faith through her teaching. Sutherland — who would, decades later, design the superstructure of the Shrine of the Báb on Mount Carmel — was a man of great intellectual accomplishment and deep spiritual seriousness. The marriage was, by all accounts, one of unusual partnership.

They settled in Montreal. May became — by sheer fact of her residence — the first Bahá'í of Canada. She made the Maxwell home at 716 Pine Avenue West a centre for Bahá'í teaching. She held firesides. She received visitors from across the continent. She raised her daughter Mary, who was born in 1910 and who would, in adulthood, become the wife of Shoghi Effendi.

The visit of 'Abdu'l-Bahá

In August and September 1912, during His American journey, 'Abdu'l-Bahá visited Montreal — the only Canadian city of His Western travels. He stayed at the Maxwell home for several days. The visit was transformative for the small Canadian Bahá'í community. The home itself, after the visit, became a place of spiritual significance — the only home in Canada where 'Abdu'l-Bahá had been a guest.

The years of teaching

May Maxwell continued to teach for the rest of her life. She travelled to Bahá'í gatherings across the United States and Canada. She corresponded with believers around the world. She nurtured younger teachers. She was, in the small American and Canadian Bahá'í communities of the 1920s and 30s, one of the most beloved and most influential figures.

Her daughter Mary — who from her teens demonstrated the same gifts — became a public Bahá'í teacher in her own right by her early twenties. In March 1937 Mary travelled to Haifa with her mother and father; there she married Shoghi Effendi. She would be known thereafter as Rúḥíyyih Khánum, "Spiritual Lady."

The death

In late 1939 May Maxwell — now sixty-nine — undertook, on Shoghi Effendi's encouragement, a teaching trip to South America. She had long wished to help open Argentina and the southern republics to the Faith. She travelled by ship to Buenos Aires. The journey was exhausting. She arrived in Buenos Aires in February 1940 and began teaching almost at once.

She fell ill in early March 1940. Within days she was gone. She is buried in the Bahá'í Plot in Buenos Aires — far from her American home, in the country she had come to serve. Shoghi Effendi cabled the world: "Beloved May Maxwell, mother of beloved consort, gathered glory of Abhá Kingdom… Inform believers worldwide hold memorial gatherings befitting her unique position high rank."

She had given her life — quite literally — for the opening of the Faith in South America. The Bahá'í community of Argentina was, in significant part, founded on her sacrifice.

The Maxwell Home

The Maxwell home in Montreal — 716 Pine Avenue West, where 'Abdu'l-Bahá had stayed and where Rúḥíyyih Khánum had grown up — was preserved after Sutherland Maxwell's death and is, today, a Bahá'í Shrine. It is open to pilgrims and to visitors and is the only Bahá'í Shrine in North America.