Paris, France: 1899-1902 – a nucleus of 25 to 30 people (some later became Hands of the Cause) who were drawn to the Faith and nurtured by May Bolles (Maxwell)

Merely to register the names of those who, from 1899 to 1902, were drawn by her "personal fascination... so fragile, so luminous... and the most delicate, perfect beauty, flower-like and star-like;" and who, through this spell, attained to its origin in her rapturous love for 'Abdu'l-Baha - is to compel astonishment. The first to believe was Edith MacKaye, and by the New Year of 1900, Charles Mason Remey and Herbert Hopper were next to follow. Then came Marie Squires (Hopper), Helen Ellis Cole, Laura Barney, Mme. Jackson, Agnes Alexander, Thomas Breakwell, Edith Sanderson, and Hippolyte Dreyfus, the first French Baha'i. Emogene Hoagg and Mrs. Conner had come to Paris in 1900 from America, Sigurd Russell at fifteen returned from 'Akka a believer, and in 1901, the group was further reinforced by Juliet Thompson, Lillian James, and "the frequent passing through Paris of pilgrims from America going to the Master... and then again returning from the Holy Land." These are but a few, for "in 1901 and 1902 the Paris group of Baha'is numbered between twenty-five and thirty people with May Bolles as spiritual guide and teacher." 

(The Baha’i World 1940-1944)