Mary Hanford Ford (1856 - 1937)

Mary Hanford Ford (née Finney; November 1, 1856 – February 2, 1937) was an American lecturer, author, art and literature critic and a leader in the women's suffrage movement. She reached early notoriety in Kansas at the age of 28 and was taken up by the society ladies of the Chicago area who, impressed with her talks on art and literature at the Chicago World's Fair, helped launch her on a new career. In addition to work as an art critic and speaker she wrote a number of books, most prominently a trilogy Message of the Mystics. Circa 1900 to 1902 Ford found the Baháʼí Faith.