in the summer of 1911, saying it would enable "the betterment of conditions affecting children and women particularly." Religion Hearst was raised a member of the Christian Cumberland Presbyterian community in the 1840s. In 1898 she declared her belief in the Baháʼí Faith, and helped play a key role in the spread of the religion in the United States. Hearst had already been an early investor in the initiative of Sarah Farmer using the Greenacre Inn as a summer center of cross-religion gatherings and cultural development shortly after the 1893 Parliament of Religions. In November 1898, Hearst, with Lua Getsinger and others, briefly stopped off in Paris, on their way to Palestine, and was shocked to see May Bolles (later Maxwell), later a well known American member of the Baháʼí Faith, bedridden with the chronic malady with which she had been afflicted. Hearst invited Bolles to travel to Palestine with her, believing that the change of air would be conducive to her health. Getsinger disclosed to Bolles the purpose of the journey: a pilgrimage to visit the then head of the Baháʼí Faith: ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. The group travelled to Akka and Haifa in Ottoman Palestine on pilgrimage, arriving on December 14, 1898. They were the very first Westerners to make the pilgrimage and meet ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. Hearst later wrote, "Those three days were the most memorable days of my life." Yet after the first pilgrimage attempts at correspondence on behalf of Hearst by Lua Getsinger were leaked naming her involvement in the religion at a time of rising considerations of her son’s political activities and so Hearst dismissed the Getsingers from their stay at her home in 1901.Kindle:6195 Still in the spring of 1901 Hearst also met with Sarah Farmer again, and invested again in Green Acre, as it came to be called, in 1902, and, further, an agent of Hearst acted for Sarah Farmer when she changed her will in 1909 to bequeath Green Acre to the Baháʼís in the event of Farmer's death. Hearst had also been a victim of an incident seeking to extort money from her, which had caused her estrangement from some Bahá'ís. In October 1912, she invited ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, who was travelling throughout the United States, to stay at her home for a long weekend, even though at that time she had become estranged from the Bahá'í community. During his stay, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá mentioned that anyone who tried