Keith Ransom-Kehler died on 23rd October 1933. (Baha’i News,
November 1933) Born in 1876, Keith became a Baha’i in 1921, and after the death
of her second husband in 1923 became increasingly active as a Baha’i speaker
and teacher. In 1929 she travelled to the Caribbean, and in 1930 began an
extensive world tour to promote the Faith. Shoghi invited her to Haifa in 1932,
and gave her a special mission to go to Iran on behalf of the American National
Spiritual Assembly to petition the shah to ease or lift the restrictions on the
Baha'is. She stayed in Iran for over a year, but her efforts were unavailing.
Exhausted and in poor health she eventually succumbed to smallpox, and was
buried in Isfahan, Iran, near to the graves of the King and Beloved martyrs.
Shoghi Effendi named her posthumously as a Hand of the Cause, and as the first
American to have the spiritual station of a martyr. (Adapted from A Concise
Encyclopedia of the Baha’i Faith)
