Some Iowa Baha’i History by Marjie Baker, 1991

NOTE: As best Marjie Baker can remember, this article was commissioned for a longer publication about Iowa’s Baha’i history. She wrote it with help and details from her mother, Henrietta Kroll. At some point, a copy was given to Marie Scheffer, who forwarded it to Diane Findlay for this Project. I share it here after a lovely phone conversation with Marjie Baker, who was happy to have us share it and offered that context. The photos below are of Henrietta and then of her daughters: Back row Katie Verbrugh, Judi Williams. Front row Marjie Baker, Janet Johnson, Rosemary Goebel. The picture of the sisters is the last of them all together, taken in 2006.

1991 brought about a happy homecoming and family reunion. Henrietta Kroll, a Plymouth County, Iowa Baha’i since 1951 was joined by her five daughters for a week’s visit which included attending the Iowa Baha’i Summer School.

From the far north; Whitehorse? Yukon Territory, Canada came Katie and Albert Verbrugh, from the far west; Moses Lake, Washington, Janet Johnson came, and from the south; Memphis, Tennessee, Marjie Baker and her daughter Tonya.

Without so many miles to travel, and sharing along with their mother the bounty of providing accommodations for the travelers, were Henrietta’s daughters Rosemary Goebel, who resides with her husband Bill, and their two children, Harley and Nichole, near Hinton, Iowa, and Judi Swanson, who lives in Sioux City with her two children, Audrey and Adem.

During the closing ceremonies of Summer School, it was announced that Nichole Goebel had declared her faith in Baha’u’llah–Henrietta’s first grandchild to declare!

Henrietta and her five daughters had not all been together since May,1982– NINE years! It was joyous time creating many happy memories of classes and meals together, a walk on the Iowa Prairie adjacent to Briar Cliff College for some, and visits and pictures for all on the lovely and tranquil Briar Cliff Campus. It was impossible not to want to linger on the campus, wishing it wasn’t coming to a close.

A year or so after Henrietta, her husband Ralph W. Kroll declared. Of their ten children, the five daughters have all become Baha’is.*

Henrietta’s sister, Frieda Elam, a Bah’ai since before 1950, lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Henrietta’s and Frieda’s mother, Sophie (Luehr) Hays, and two of Sophie’s sisters, Pauline Luehr and Frieda (Luehr) Hays became Baha’is in the very early part of the century, probably before 1910.

Sophie Luehr had married David Hays in 1913. Sophie was widowed in 1917, and raised her girls, Henrietta and Frieda, by doing housework and later did laundry in her home. Even though she had very little contact with other Baha’is, she tried to teach her children about the Baha’i Faith, and lived an
exemplary life herself. Somewhere in the mid ’40’s she moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where she was one of the first Baha’is. Years later, when Council Bluffs was able to form an Assembly, she was one of the nine. She remained on the assembly until, forced by age and health, she had to leave. In August, 1973, she went to live with her daughter, Henrietta, near Sioux City. She died in a Sioux City nursing home on September 11, 1977, and had a Baha’i funeral.

Frieda Luehr married John F. Hay in a Baha’i ceremony and lived her life in Michigan. Frieda died April 21, 1969.

Pauline Luehr lived for many years in California, where she had the opportunity of seeing and being with Baha’is. She never married. In the 1930’s she came to Nebraska to keep house for her parents in Waterbury. After their deaths, she kept her home in Waterbury. Besides her parents, she at various
times helped take care of two daughters and a son of her sister, who had died, and also took care of her aunt, Emma Sebade, during her last years. Pauline’s final years were spent with a niece in Fremont, Nebraska and then in a nursing home, where she died on October 10, 1979. She had a Baha’i funeral, and is buried at Wakefield, Nebraska.

Sophie, Pauline and Frieda were three of fourteen children and the only ones of the ten who lived to adulthood to become Baha’is. Their mother, Pauline (Jugel) Luehr, was born September 6, 1863, in Wisconsin and was about three years old when the family moved to Nebraska. Pauline married Henry Luehr on March 7, Pauline had accepted the Faith of Baha’u’llah, learning of it from her sister Emma Jugel.

Emma Jugel was born June 1, 1864, to Hugo Jugel and Johanna (Werener) Jugel in Wisconsin. She accepted the Baha’i Faith in 1897 while working in Chicago. She was a true seeker, and had investigated other new movements before hearing about the Baha’i Faith from some of the earliest teachers who came to this country. It was she who introduced the faith to other relatives, both in the Chicago area and back in Nebraska, where her parents and their family were living by that time.

Emma married later in life and never had any children herself, but was a loving mother to her husband’s children by a previous marriage. It is not certain where she and her husband, Herman Sebade, lived, but Emma lived for some time after her husband’s death in Wall, South Dakota. She died in a nursing home in Ponca, Nebraska, on April 11, 1960. Although she did not have a Baha’i funeral, Baha’i prayers were read at the funeral home by her Baha’i relatives. Her body is buried in Graceland Park; Sioux City, Iowa.

I am exceedingly happy and thankful for my wonderful mother, Henrietta Kroll, and for the steadfast example she has lived

-Marjie Baker, July, 1991

* Marjie Baker and Judi Williams tell us that two of Henrietta & Ralph’s sons, Leonard and David, also became Baha’is. Leonard is deceased and David is still managing the family farm near Sioux City, as of September 2024.