Agnes Baldwin Alexander

Agnes Baldwin Alexander (1875–1971) was an American author and distinguished member of the Baháʼí Faith. Life Agnes Baldwin Alexander was born on July 21, 1875, in the Kingdom of Hawaii. She was the youngest of five children born to William DeWitt Alexander and Abigail Charlotte Alexander, née Baldwin. Miss Alexander was a scion of two of Hawaii's most illustrious Christian missionary families—the Alexanders and the Baldwins. Her father was one of Hawaii's most famous men as President of Oahu College, author of "A Brief History of the Hawaiian People", and first Surveyor-General of the Hawaiian Islands. Alexander graduated from Oahu College in 1895, later doing undergraduate work at Oberlin College and U.C. Berkeley. After teaching for a few years, she fell prey to chronic illness. In 1900, she joined a group of Islanders who were going on a tour of Europe. While in Rome in November of that year she encountered an American Baháʼí woman and her two daughters who were returning from a Baháʼí pilgrimage in the Holy Land, they shared with her about the faith. As the result of an epiphany one night, which she described as “neither a dream nor vision”, she embraced the Baháʼí Revelation and accepted it as God's new message to humanity as proclaimed by Baháʼu'lláh. At the request of Baháʼu'lláh's eldest son, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, who was then head of the Baháʼí Faith, Miss Alexander pioneered the Baháʼí Faith in Japan in 1914. In 1921 she became the first Baháʼí to introduce the New Gospel in Korea. Except for extended vacations in Hawaii, Agnes spent over thirty years in Japan.