# Dunn, Clara and Hyde

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-19 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Graham Hassall, Dunn, Clara and Hyde, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Dunn, Clara and Hyde
> 
> Graham Hassall
> 
> 2000-01
> 
> Clara and Hyde Dunn are among the few Bahá'ís who left their
> homes to pioneer in response to 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Tablets of the
> Divine Plan. They travelled to Australia, where their combined
> efforts across several decades succeeded in established a firm
> pillar of the world-wide Bahá'í community. Both were named Hands
> of the Cause of God by Shoghi Effendi, Hyde posthumously, in
> 1951, and Clara in 1952.
> 
> Hyde was born in London, the son of a chemist, 5 March 1855.
> As a young man he worked in England and France, before migrating
> to North America with his first wife, Fanny. He worked as a
> travelling salesman for Borne's Milk Company. In Seattle in about
> 1905, Hyde overheard Ward Fitzgerald quoting the words spoken by
> Bahá'u'lláh to E.G. Browne: "This earth is one country and
> mankind its citizens, regard ye not one another as
> strangers" (early translation). Hyde was attracted by these
> words, and soon became a Bahá'í. He commenced travelling with
> Fitzgerald to share the message with others. Subsequently, such
> prominent Bahá'ís as Thornton Chase, Lua Getsinger and Ella
> Cooper assisted Hyde in his close investigation of the Bahá'í
> teachings. In about 1907 Hyde met Clara Davis when he entered her
> office in Walla Walla, Washington, to place an advertisement for
> a Bahá'í meeting he and Fitzgerald were holding that evening.
> Clara perceived that the two men had not eaten for some time, and
> invited them to share her supper. She listened to their message,
> and some time after became a Bahá'í. She was then living alone in
> Washington. She had been born Clara Holder, on 12 May 1869, and
> had married, at the age of 16, a man named Davis and left Ireland
> for Canada, but had lost her husband in an accident before the
> birth of her son. Unable to both raise the child and earn a
> living, the baby was cared for by her late husband's family.
> 
> Hyde had taught the Bahá'í Faith enthusiastically in
> California and was among the first to teach it in Nevada. Hyde's
> enquiring and earnest letters to Thornton Chase, enquiring into
> the deeper teachings of the Faith, prompted his mentor to write
> several pages, addressing such themes as the nature of fear, the
> station of the Persian martyrs in comparison with the American
> Bahá'ís, the resurrection of Christian teachings through the
> Bahá'í revelation, the mistaking of the holy spirit for the
> spirit of man; and prompted Chase to write to Hyde Dunn in
> February 1911: "Your letters are such a pleasure to me. I
> see shining through them the earnest soul, which has tasted of
> heavenly food and found it so delicious that it ever hungers for
> the Table of the Lord."
> 
> Both Hyde Dunn and Clara Davis met 'Abdu'l-Bahá when he
> visited California in October 1912. Hyde attended as many
> addresses by the Master that he could. The impact of being in his
> presence gave both he and Clara strength for the remainder of
> their lives. Hyde's first wife Fanny died in 1916, and a year
> later he and Clara married. In Berkeley, they lived close to
> Kathrine Frankland, and Clara knew well Kathryn's sister Hazel
> Tomlinson of Santa Rosa. They knew Imogene Hoagg well, and spoke
> in the homes of Dr Woodson and Frances Allen, the first Bahá'ís
> in Berkely, and of Jesse Vance Matteson in Fruitvale, Oakland.
> Agnes Alexander dined at their home in Oakland.
> 
> When, in 1919, Clara and Hyde learnt of the call Abdu'l-Bahá
> had made in his "Tablets of the Divine Plan" for
> teachers to take the message of Bahá'u'lláh to the many lands
> that he himself was now unable to visit, they shared the same
> immediate thought: Hyde is reported to have looked up and said
> "let us go where 'Abdu'l-Bahá wished to go". They
> decided to go, despite being low in funds. Hyde was always a
> successful salesman, but spent his income readily on his teaching
> activities - whether on travel and Bahá'í literature, on fine
> clothes, or food, with which to serve the many who attended the
> Dunn's firesides. They invariably rented a well-appointed
> apartment or cottage, rather than a simple one, in order to have
> the best surroundings in which to present the Faith.
> 
> When Clara suggested that Hyde might go alone to Australia to
> save the expense, a cable was sent to 'Abdu'l-Bahá, who replied
> that both should go, thus settling the matter. When some among
> the San Francisco Bahá'ís expressed concerned that an "old
> couple" intended travelling so far to spread the Bahá'í
> message, Hyde is reported to have replied that he would sooner
> die than not respond to 'Abdu'l-Bahá's call. After a two month
> sojourn in Hawaii, and a short stop in Samoa, the Dunns arrived
> in Sydney on 10 April, 1920. Their lack of funds brought distress
> in the first few months, during which Clara was able to find
> work. Within a year, however, Hyde acquired a position as
> travelling salesman for the Bacchus Marsh Milk Company (soon
> after acquired by Nestles Milk Co), initially within New South
> Wales. Typically, he travelled to country towns during the week
> while Clara remained in a rented cottage in the state-capital,
> inviting people to weekend meetings for which Hyde returned home
> and spoke. When he out-performed all other company salesmen in
> the first year, he requested that he be made an
> "interstate" man. In the subsequent decade his work
> took him to every state, and to every major city and town in the
> country.
> 
> Post-war skepticism, in addition to increasing disillusion
> with the sectarianism and dogmatism of the major churches,
> contributed to growing interest in alternate religions and
> philosophies in Australian society, and Hyde continued to speak,
> as he had done in North America, to "new thought" and
> new-age religious groups. In Melbourne in 1923, for instance, he
> spoke on Friday evenings in the home of a herbalist to audiences
> of over one-hundred, and on another visit to the Victorian state
> capital the Dunns spoke by invitation to an audience at a
> Theosophical lodge, and at Spiritualist churches, an Occult
> church, and the Lyceum Club. After two years of travelling and
> meeting people, Sydney optometrist Oswald Whitaker, who had been
> interested in Theosophy, accepted Hyde Dunn's definition of
> "love" as being "the whole law and power of the
> Great Universe" and became the first Australian Bahá'í. Soon
> after, photographer and model-maker Effie Baker accepted Dunn's
> message immediately after hearing it at Melbourne's New
> Civilisation Centre. By July 1923 Hyde had visited 225 towns, an
> average of one new town for each four and a half days work since
> commencing with Nestles.
> 
> Clara had a charitable nature, and gathered others around her
> to rally to a just cause. The suffering in her early years had
> developed her sense of compassion, whether for those close to
> her, or for others whose plight she came to know. Hyde had a
> friendly disposition, and a distinguished, upright appearance. He
> retained an English accent, and spoke in an engaging and inspired
> manner. "With the heart filled with the flame of the love of
> God," he once explained to a New Zealand friend, "we
> can stand on any platform, turn our faces to Bahá'u'lláh and
> deliver His Message of Gladtidings to all peoples, with a
> conviction and power, through His help that will reach the hearts
> of the hearers and penetrate their understandings, through the
> power of the Spirit - It gives the power to the audience to see
> with the eye of the heart, which is all embracing." With
> business acquaintances, Hyde was a keen observer of economic and
> political conditions, although felt he lacked the training to
> fully express himself, and referred at one time to the bounty of
> having friends who helped him "for want of training and
> technique". In conversation and in correspondence with his
> Bahá'í friends, however, he spread his enthusiasm for the close
> study of scripture. The "Hidden Words", he once wrote
> to Gretta Lamprill, had been to his "thirsty longing soul
> like a balm or pure water on the hot desert of search and
> longing".
> 
> It was with this attitude that the Dunns fostered small and
> isolated Bahá'í communities across Australia and New Zealand, and
> guided them toward the establishment of a National Spiritual
> Assembly. The first Local Assembly was established in Melbourne,
> in December 1923, followed by others in Perth, in July 1924, and
> Adelaide, in December 1924. Assemblies were also established in
> Sydney in April 1925, and in Auckland early in 1923. These
> assemblies lacked firm foundations, and declined when the Dunns
> moved to another city. Subsequent visits were required to revive
> them.
> 
> When Clara Dunn met Shoghi Effendi in the course of her
> pilgrimage in 1932, the Guardian stressed the necessity of
> forming a National Assembly, and this was achieved in 1934, with
> delegates coming from Adelaide, Sydney and Auckland (New Zealand)
> Assemblies. Hyde served on the Assembly during its first year. He
> was now in his seventies, and Shoghi Effendi instructed the
> national body to provide for the comfort of the pioneers, to whom
> the Australian and New Zealand Bahá'í communities owed so much.
> The Guardian had great affection for Hyde Dunn. In God Passes By
> he referred to him as "great-hearted and heroic"; and
> he included the Dunns among the pioneers he wrote of in Advent of
> Divine Justice who had "won the eternal distinction of being
> the first to raise the call of Yá Bahá'u'l-Abhá in such highly
> important and widely scattered centres and territories as....the
> Islands of the Pacific...Australia and New Zealand...".
> Those who had become Bahá'ís after hearing the Dunns numbered
> above one hundred, and this hundred, in turn, had assisted in
> firmly establishing Bahá'í communities throughout the South
> Pacific. Such notable Bahá'ís as Gretta Lamprill, Bertha Dobbins,
> and Harold and Florence Fitzner - all of whom became Knights of
> Bahá'u'lláh in the World Crusade - were among those attracted to
> the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh in the 1920s by Clara and Hyde Dunn. By
> 1933, when Hyde retired aged nearly 80, he had worked for some
> eleven years in Australia. He died in Sydney on 7 February 1941.
> 
> Clara had always regarded Hyde as the better speaker. But
> after his passing, the friends turned to her, and fully expected
> her to speak in his stead. She invariably commenced her talks
> with 'Abdu'l-Bahá's question: "do you know in what day you
> are living?". In later years her speech was suffused with
> supplication, as she frequently recited the prayers which began
> "O Thou incomparable God!...", and "O God! O God!
> This is a broken-winged bird and his flight is very
> slow...". When the National Assembly called for pioneers at
> the commencement of a new phase of teaching in 1943, Clara
> settled in Brisbane for several months. Subsequently she
> recommenced the visits to the major centres which had ceased in
> the years of Hyde's last illness. She visited the Bahá'ís in
> Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, and Hobart, as well as numerous
> smaller towns, always ensuring that she returned in
> December-January to participate in summer schools at the
> Yerrinbool Bahá'í school property south of Sydney - as the school
> committee's guest, in a room adjacent to the Hyde Dunn Hall.
> Participants at many schools in the 1940s and 1950s were
> privileged to hear "mother" Dunn recount how she meet
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and tell of her many years of travel with Hyde. She
> attended her last summer school in 1959.
> 
> On 29 February 1952 Clara Dunn was appointed by Shoghi Effendi
> as one of the Hands of the Cause. Now in her late years, she
> gathered her strength to fulfil her far-reaching spiritual and
> administrative responsibilities. At the commencement of the World
> Crusade the Guardian directed her to travel amongst the Bahá'í
> communities in Australia and New Zealand, and in October 1953 she
> attended the New Delhi conference. In April 1954 the Guardian
> appointed her as Trustee for the Continental Fund for
> Australasia, and at the same time, Shoghi Effendi requested that
> she appoint two members to the newly established "Auxiliary
> Boards". At national convention, Clara appointed H. Collis
> Featherstone and Thelma Perks. Mr Featherstone was later
> appointed as Hand of the Cause, and Thelma subsequently served on
> the Continental Board of Counsellors for Australasia. Both
> assisted Clara greatly in her duties, often writing reports to
> the Guardian on her behalf. Her companion on many inter-state
> visits, Thelma had acted as a daughter to the Dunns from as early
> as the 1940s, before she had herself become a Bahá'í, and was now
> privileged to assist Clara in her work as a Hand of the Cause.
> 
> Clara ventured several times to be with the New Zealand Bahá'í
> friends. She attended their summer school in 1954, and
> represented the Guardian at their inaugural national convention,
> in 1957. Although physically frail, she remained robust in
> spirit. Later in the year she insisted on taking her place at the
> meeting of the Hands of the Cause which followed the sudden
> passing of the Guardian. From early years in which she
> experienced intense personal suffering, Clara Dunn lived to see
> her pain transmitted into spiritual joy, the result of a life
> lived in service, prayer, and dedication. She died in Sydney on
> 18 November 1960.
> 
> Bibliography
> 
> Australian Bahá'í Bulletin (various, 1934-1960).
> 
> Hassall, Graham, "Outpost of a World Religion: the
> Bahá'í Faith in Australia 1920-1947", Journal of
> Religious History, 16:3, June 1991.
> 
> Shoghi Effendi, Advent of Divine Justice, Bahá'í
> Publishing Trust, Wilmette, 1990.
> 
> - God Passes By, Bahá'í Publishing Trust, Wilmette,
> 1970.
> 
> Alexander, Agnes, History of the Bahá'í Faith in Hawaii
> 1902-1942.
> 
> Australian Bahá'í Bulletin (various numbers
> 1944-1990)
> 
> Dunn Papers, Australian Bahá'í Archives.
> 
> New Zealand Bahá'í Archives. MS 22.12.02.
> 
> Thornton Chase Papers. M4 Bos 2/13. US Bahá'í Archives.
> 
> METADATA
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> Views22065 views since posted 2000-01; last edit 2024-08-02 15:51 UTC;
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> previous at archive.org.../hassall_clara_hyde_dunn;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> — *Dunn, Clara and Hyde (Used by permission of the curator)*