May Bolles and the First Centre in Europe

A retelling based on Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By and his cable on May Maxwell's passing, with the account of Thomas Breakwell's first visit from Bahá'í Chronicles. Words in quotation marks are from those sources.

May Ellis Bolles was an American living in Paris when Lua Getsinger, as Shoghi Effendi records, won her over to the Faith. In 1898 Phoebe Hearst was arranging a pilgrimage to 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and several Americans resident in Paris, May Bolles among them, were added to her party. Fifteen pilgrims reached the prison-city of 'Akká in three parties, the first of them on 10 December 1898. They were the first believers from the West to make the pilgrimage.

In God Passes By Shoghi Effendi writes that "No sooner had one of these pilgrims, the afore-mentioned May Bolles, returned to Paris than she succeeded, in compliance with 'Abdu'l-Bahá's emphatic instructions, in establishing in that city the first Bahá'í center to be formed on the European continent."

One of those who came to that centre was a young Englishman, Thomas Breakwell. In the summer of 1901 an acquaintance, Mrs. Milner, told him of a friend in Paris who had found a philosophy that gave meaning to her life, and brought him to the apartment where May Bolles was then staying. They talked for three days. Bahá'í Chronicles records that he "accepted the Message without reservation, and eagerly received all the books which May had to give him." Shoghi Effendi names Breakwell the first English believer, together with Hippolyte Dreyfus, the first Frenchman to embrace the Faith, and Laura Barney, who later compiled Some Answered Questions, among those whose conversion strengthened the Paris centre.

In 1902 May Bolles married the Canadian architect Sutherland Maxwell and moved to Montreal, where, in Shoghi Effendi's words, she "succeeded in laying the foundations of the Cause in that Dominion." When 'Abdu'l-Bahá came to Montreal in 1912, He stayed first in the Maxwells' home. Their daughter Mary later married Shoghi Effendi and became known as Rúḥíyyih Khánum.

In 1940, at seventy years of age and in poor health, May Maxwell travelled to Buenos Aires to serve the Faith in Argentina, and died there soon after she arrived. Shoghi Effendi cabled:

'Abdu'l-Bahá's beloved handmaid, the distinguished disciple, May Maxwell, is gathered into the glory of the Abhá Kingdom. Her earthly life, so rich, eventful, incomparably blessed, is worthily ended. To sacred tie her signal services had forged, the priceless honor of a martyr's crown is now added, a double crown deservedly won.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By and Messages to America.

Effendi, S.. (1944). *God Passes By*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/god-passes-by/