Julia Lynch Olin (October 21, 1882 – March 11, 1961) was an American author and Bahá'í who co-founded the New History Society in New York City, and was later expelled from the religion by Shoghi Effendi around 1939. Through marriage, she was a member of the Astor and Dudley–Winthrop families.
Julia Olin was born on October 21, 1882 in Glen Cove, New York. She was the daughter of Stephen Henry Olin (1847–1925), the acting President of Wesleyan University from 1922 to 1923, and Alice Wadsworth Barlow (1853–1882). Her sister was Alice Townsend Olin (1881–1963), who married Tracy Dows (1871–1937) in 1903. After her mother's death in 1882 at the age of 29, her father remarried to Emeline Harriman (1860–1938), the former wife of William Earl Dodge III, in 1903. Emeline was the daughter of Oliver Harriman and the sister of Anne Harriman Vanderbilt, Oliver Harriman, Jr., J. Borden Harriman, and Herbert M. Harriman.
Her maternal grandparents were Samuel Latham Mitchill Barlow (1826–1889) and Alice Cornell Townsend (1833–1889). Her paternal grandparents were Julia Matilda Lynch Olin (1814–1879) and Rev. Dr. Stephen Olin (1797–1851), 2nd President of Wesleyan University and the son of Henry Olin (1768–1837), a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Vermont.
Olin was first introduced to the teachings of the Bahá'í Faith about 1925, as she states in her autobiography. Becoming intimately associated with Mirza Ahmad Sohrab they together with her second husband, Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, started the New History Society. This Society, based in the home that Olin and Lewis owned in New York, (later called Caravan House), published several books, into the late 1950s. It apparently became defunct after Sohrab and/or Olin had died.
In 1929, he and Olin formed an educational organization called Caravan of East and West with a quarterly magazine called The Caravan. This magazine is where Sohrab's partial autobiography first appeared, also in 1929.
Also that year, an article appeared in which the engagement of her daughter Elsie Benkard to Charles H. Clarke was announced. The marriage announcement appeared on February 27, 1930, stating that ".....they were married with a Bahai ceremony. It was the first time that such a ceremony..... has been used at a society wedding in New York. Mirza Ahmad Sohrab officiated."
The New History Society was addressed by several luminaries, including Albert Einstein in 1930. Another speaker was Margaret Sanger in January 1932. In 1934, she described Baha'i membership as: "To be a Baha'i simply means to love all the world; to love humanity and try to serve it; to work for universal peace and universal brotherhood". In 1936, Julia translated the French version of Seven Valleys into English.
She was expelled from the Bahá'í community in 1939 along with Lewis and Sohrab after they refused to allow the Local Spiritual Assembly of New York oversight over the operations of the New History Society. They went on to support the efforts of Mírzá Muhammad `Alí, and at one point petitioned the President of Israel for Muhammad `Alí's property rights when he tried to assert his control over the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh.
As part of its mission, the New History Society, for many years sponsored an essay-contest. At least one of the winners of this, Jaja Wachuku, became famous in his own right, for his essay "How Can the People of the World Achieve Universal Disarmament?" written while at the New Africa University College.
On December 11, 1902, Olin married John Philip Benkard (1872–1929) of New York City, a financier and the son of James Benkard. Before their divorce in December 1920, they had two daughters:
On May 23, 1921, she married Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler (1869–1942), the ex-Lieutenant Governor of New York and a former Democratic candidate for Governor, in Paris. He was the fifth son of John Winthrop Chanler and Margaret Astor Ward and the great-grandson of the first John Jacob Astor.
She died on March 11, 1961, at the age of 78. In her obituary she was described as "spiritual leader of the Reform Baha'i movement..."
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