According to one eyewitness in 1912, 'Abdu'l-Baha reportedly said to Sarah Farmer that she would be revered above all American women one day and wrote that He hoped she would be “the envy of queens of all regions and the rival of the celebrated people of the world."
Who was this remarkable woman, what did she do in her lifetime, and why is she important to the future?
Captivated by Sarah’s vision and inspired by her example, two women collaborate across time to give voice to her story—Bahiyyih Randall Winckler, who conducted interviews and gathered information in the 1940s, and Anne Gordon Perry, who excavated Bahiyyih’s manuscript from archives and added contemporary context, photos, and foreword in 2024.
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A short but compelling read
Sarah Farmer was a visionary who strove as much as she could to create a space that would bring spiritually-minded seekers together and thus fulfill a unifying “Ideal.” Though brief, this compelling account shows how she made a mold out of this Ideal and poured every ounce of her being into it, never faltering in her devotion even when she faced opposition after she came to identify the Bahá’í Faith as the embodiment of the conception she had so dearly cherished. It is an inspiring and vividly recounted story of profound sacrifice—a sacrifice from whose fruits we are all continuing to benefit a hundred years later, just as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had assured her we would.