Agnes Baldwin Alexander
subject: Missionaries Biographies Hawaii Cemeteries Agnes Baldwin Alexander
description: Agnes Baldwin Alexander (July 21, 1875 - January 1, 1971) Ms. Alexander is best known as the first Bahá’i of Hawai`i and the missioner who carried the faith to Japan and eastern Asia. She was the youngest of five children born to William DeWitt Alexander* and Abigail Charlotte (Baldwin) Alexander and granddaughter of two mission families - Reverend William and Mary Ann Alexander and Reverend Dr. Dwight and Charlotte Baldwin. Born in Honolulu, she attended Oahu College (now Punahou School) and furthered her studies in education at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oberlin College. She worked at Punahou school assisting in the kindergarten, then as a second-grade teacher from 1898 to 1900. Due to ill health, she toured North America and Europe in 1900. “It was in far off Rome,” Miss Alexander wrote, that she received the “Light of this New Day.” She learned from Mrs. Charlotte Dixon about Bahá’u’lláh, prophet-founder of the Bahá’i faith, as a new messenger from God. After three meetings with her, Agnes wrote she could not sleep, “an overwhelming realization came to me, which was neither a dream nor vision, that Christ had come on earth.” She embraced the Bahá’i cause that morning, November 26, 1900. `Abdu’l-Bahá, son of Bahá’u’lláh and head of the faith, wrote Ms. Alexander requesting her to return to Hawaii to spread the New Gospel. As Bahá’i believe God to be the author of all the world’s major religions, Ms. Alexander regarded her Bahá’i missionary work as an extension of her grandparents’ efforts. Returning to Honolulu, she lived with her parents and sister Mary, however the new religion upset her parents. She wrote: “Among my relatives a rumor had spread that I had taken up some strange belief. I had to show through my life, and not be words, the great happiness that had come into my life.” She continued her Bahá’i teaching quietly, patiently and person-to-person, eventually gathering together a small group of local believers. The first public oppos…
publisher: Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library at the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives.
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