Sarah Blundell
Sarah Blundell (February 3, 1850 - December 20, 1934) was among the earliest Bahá'ís in New Zealand and a member of the first party of Pilgrims to the Holy Land from Australia and New Zealand.
Background[edit]
Sarah was born in Cambridgeshire, England, in 1850. Her parents were Henry Andrews and Mary Staples, and they were nonconformist with her father giving her religious instruction. She attended an orthodox school but did not receive religious instruction at her parents request. When she was eighteen she was among the first women to take the Cambridge University Examination. At some point in her youth she studied piano in Germany, and was encouraged to pursue it professionally which her parents decided against.
On the 27th of October 1870 Sarah married Arthur Blundell, a flour miller who worked on a family farm, in Newmarket, and from 1871 to 1884 they had seven children, with most of them being born in Wissett. As of 1881 the family was living on a seventy-acre farm at Chediston, and had enough means to employ seven men, a governess, and a domestic servant. In 1887 the Blundell's emigrated to New Zealand, where they had less financial stability, and her husband passed away in 1923 with his body being cremated and the ashes sent to England.
In 1911 Sarah read about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's visit to London in the Christian Commonwealth, and ordered Bahá'í literature to study. When Hyde and Clara Dunn, the first Bahá'í pioneers to Australia, visited New Zealand in 1923 Sarah invited them to her home where the first Bahá'í meeting in New Zealand was held, and both she and her daughter Ethel officially became Bahá'ís.
In 1925 Sarah, her daughter Ethel, and her son Hugh, went on Pilgrimage to the Holy Land with the first Pilgrim group from Australia and New Zealand where they met Shoghi Effendi. Hugh became a Bahá'í as a result of this pilgrimage.[1] After pilgrimage they spent three months in England as Sarah wished to see her homeland again.[2]
Sarah passed away on December 20, 1934, at her home in Auckland.
References[edit]
- Collett Family History, Part 4: The Great Western Line, 4M25: accessed 11th Feb 2020
- Obituary published in Baha'i World, Vol. 6, pp 496-498
Notes[edit]
- ↑ The Bahá'í World 1963-1968, The Universal House of Justice 1974, p.320 (Effie Baker's In Memoriam article)
- ↑ https://bahai-library.com/hassall_ambassador_court_baker&chapter=5
