Marcia Steward de Matamores

Marcia Steward de Matamores

Marcia Steward de Matamores (1904 - August 29, 1966) was a pioneer and Knight of Bahá’u’lláh, named for pioneering to the Marshall Islands.

Note, the following is copied from The Bahá’í World, Volume 14. This article needs to be reworked.

Marcia Steward was born in Pasadena, California in 1904 to Dr. and Mrs. Rudolph Shiffman. She attended Girls' Collegiate School in Los Angeles and spent much of her childhood at her grandparents' home with its huge white columns, its great hall and double grand staircase and landscaped grounds dotted with greenhouses and gazebos which spread down to the very foot of the canyon. She graduated in late 1920 and made her debut to a waiting society at Midwick Country Club, followed by a fashionable tour of Europe with an aunt. She was one of that large group of American exiles to Paris, where she lived for a good part o the 'twenties.

Marcia embraced the Bahá’í Faith in 1938 and was eager to pioneer before the conclusion of the first Seven Year Plan (1937-1944) of Shoghi Effendi. She sailed from New Orleans, en route to Santiago de Chile, where she lived in a pension in order to learn the language. Within a year she was lecturing in Spanish on the Bahá’í Faith in the University of Santiago. Marcia had launched upon a brilliant series of services to the Cause which the Guardian described, in his many letters to her, as "magnificent", "exemplary", "meritorious", and "unforgettable"...

References

• The Universal House of Justice. The Bahá’í World - An International Record Vol XIV 1963-1968. Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England: Broadwater Press Limited.