Phoebe Hearst’s Family and Upbringing
Phoebe Apperson Hearst was born on December 3, 1842, in Franklin County, Missouri to farmers Randolph Walker Apperson and Drucilla Whitmire Apperson. Although it wasn’t as common for women to be educated at the time and it took until 1840 for a woman to be able to earn a bachelor’s degree in the United States, Hearst was able to go to school six months a year and earned a certificate to become a teacher in the Missouri school system.
Soon after she began teaching, she met George Hearst, and they got married on June 15, 1862. After their honeymoon, Hearst and her husband moved to San Francisco, and she gave birth to their son, William Randolph Hearst the following year. In 1887, her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate and they moved to Washington, D.C., so he could fulfill his political responsibilities. Their political life was cut short, however, when George Hearst unexpectedly died in 1891.
The Baha’i Faith: Phoebe Hearst’s Greatest Inspiration
After her husband's death, Hearst moved back to California to be near her son who had already begun building his newspaper empire. She later met a Baha’i named Lua Getsinger, who taught her about the Bahá’í Faith—a world religion that believes in the truth of all religions and the oneness of humanity. The principles of the Baha’i Faith include the equality of women and men, the abolition of all forms of prejudice, the independent investigation of truth, and the agreement of science and religion. In 1898, she became a Baha’i and traveled to ‘Akká, Palestine (now present-day Israel) on pilgrimage to meet Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah—the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith.
Hearst spent three days on pilgrimage and said that her “greatest blessing in this world” was to be in Abdu’l-Baha’s presence. She shared that those three days were the “most memorable days'' of her life. When Abdu’l-Baha traveled to North America in 1912, Hearst invited him to stay at her estate in Pleasanton during his visit to California. Abdu’l-Baha accepted her kind invitation. Throughout his travels in the Golden State, he spoke at numerous gatherings with thousands of attendees at places such as Stanford University, the Hotel Sacramento, and the Temple Emanu-El.