Florence Virginia Foose Wilson Mayberry (September 18, 1906 – April 8, 1998) was an American writer and convert to the Baháʼí Faith. After being mostly raised by her grandparents, with her grandfather in particular, having served in the Union Army during the Civil War, she joined the religion at the age of 35. At around the same time, she began writing short fiction, eventually having a long career writing for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In the religion, her service as a speaker was wide-ranging, and soon she advanced from position to position in the religion as first an Auxiliary Board member and then a Continental Counselor and then one serving at the International Teaching Centre – the highest appointed positions of the religion during her later years. Meanwhile, she was a successful writer with almost 20 years of continuous annual appearance in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and almost half her stories were also anthologized even as late as 2012.
Early life Born into the Foose/Foos family, her grandfather claimed the "e" was added by a Union Army clerk to his name. Through her grandmother she claimed relation to President Zachary Taylor. However the family was as proud of traveling preacher John Taylor. In her autobiography Mayberry highlights and praises her aunt Charlotte-Mariah whom her exasperated grandmother would occasionally compare her to. Her feisty personality grew up after an era rife with family based abuse of women save in the case of her grandparents. They lived along the Wabash River in Indiana. The family moved to Missouri where the family spent many years. There is a Foose Missouri "intersection" in the vicinity which might have been the site of the grandfather's store.Google Map location of Foose in Jackson Township, Missouri, west of their home near Conway.
Her mother Myrtle married at 16 to a 27-year-old Scot, Bill Wilson, Mayberry's father. They lived in Lebanon, Missouri, then the town of Sleeper on the other side of Lebanon from her grandparents. Myrtle eventually divorced him and the family held rumors that father Bill tried to kidnap baby Florence and was caught by her grandfather. Bill was a train station agent.
The family then moved to Texas in Deaf Smith County. Her mother married "a cowboy" while she was raised by her grandparents. Oddly Mayberry remembers her mother calling her "Sister" But this too was a short lived marriage. Then the mother and daughter moved to California to wed Wilbur Walton and the family rented out rooms in San Francisco. They alternated housing a couple times and were still living San Francisco in 1912 near the Golden Gate Park Panhandle. The family had connection to an unnamed Protestant denomination and was very anti-catholic.
Mayberry recalls an event in her autobiography in October 1912 when she was about 6 yrs old. While in the park she encountered a group who tried to invite her to meet some referred to as "Him" near a portal of the park – she later came to believe this to have been people who had accompanied ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, then head of the Baháʼí Faith, whose presence at the park in October 1912 was confirmed. However she could not confirm enough details to prove it specifically. But she recalled them as "My people" though she was called away by her mother even if the welcome was warm.
However they soon went back to Missouri where her grandparents had returned and mother went on to work in St. Louis at the Famous-Barr department store but shortly she returned to live with Wilbur while Florence stayed on with her grandparents until she had a little brother and the whole family moved to Waverly, Missouri. The family became friends several African-Americans: Ollie, a neighboring African-American, and insisted an African-American family eat with them at their kitchen table. There was a "visit" from the social ladies of the town who communicated to them that the norm in the area was in favor of maintaining segregated eating – and her grandfather quipped back, as Mayberry recalled, "Tell your menfolks this. As a boy I fought in the Civil War for Abe Lincoln. The idee was to fix things so black folks are free to be like God wanted 'em to be. Free and equal. A colored man or woman is as good as Becky'n me. In my house they eat at my table, because I eat at my table. And tell your menfolks this, too. I keep a loaded shotgun under my bed. And the first man, or men, steps on my land I bought and paid for to force me or my woman to change how we treat folks on our property will get its full blast. And I reload fast. I thank you, Ladies, and good afternoon." However Florence did not pursue the friendship with Ollie and was put off by her strangeness, but came to regret her lack of friendship in later years.
During her 8th year the family was reunited and they moved to Oakland, California together arriving on her 9th birthday in 1915. She attended the Denman School for girls (see John Swett) and was a steady reader of books and magazines. She told her brother, Richard Walton,Richard Walton (1914–2005), askART, from of the mysterious meeting by the portal of the park and recalled going to the De Young Museum. And a search for a church for Sunday School was started around her 9th year. A year later she tried Christian Scientist following her mother seeking to overcome her chronic asthma but didn't see a social fit for her as she advanced in studies there. The first World War broke into her awareness in her 11th year followed by the Spanish flu though she and her family recovered, some neighbors didn't.
At fourteen the family briefly moved to Indiana arriving in Newport of Hoosier County where her grandparents then lived. She entered the eight grade there. Then they moved to Fresno, California and during a spell of illness she began to seek God's guidance on what to believe.
There was another temporary separation of her parents and the kids went to stay with the grandparents in Newport. Florence went as a senior to high school in Indiana and also began to teach Sunday school in nursery class and had finished reading the entire Bible as part of her senior English class. She was upset that the church's Sunday school taught that the Bible was literally true. She remembered particularly the Adam-and-Eve story being trouble and was "brought to a half" by the rendering of the story of Jonah. She confronted the local minister that she couldn't accept it as literal "And furthermore" she recalled saying "I will never join any church which leave out any people. Because I believe God made the whole world and all the people in it. I will only join a church which doesn't divide by denominations, color, heathens, nothing, just one for everyone. So I can't teach Sunday School class here any longer."
Encountering the Baháʼí faith Next her family moved to live with a cousin near Santa Paula, California when Florence was 18 and initially she got a job teaching ballet but switched to joining the local newspaper as a 'society editor' reporter. When she worked there a Baháʼí couple asked to have an article published on 'The unity of mankind'. However the editor's wife working at the newspaper took it from her after they left and tore it in half and threw it away; 'Baháʼís! Crazy kooks!' Florence later recalled her saying. She retrieved the papers and read them herself noting the informational meeting was going to be a C. E. Carpenter's home with a speaker from Los Angeles coming. Elizabeth Carpenter kept offering articles and despite they weren't published she and Florence became friends. During a break in the editor's wife presence Florence was able to get one piece in the paper and it continued after her return initially without comment. And news came a daughter was to marry a Persian, Sheikh Ali Yazdi, in 1926."Sheik" is often a title but in this case it was actually a name.See Santa Paula girl weds, Press-Courier (Oxnard, California)3 Sep 1926, Fri • Page 4
Eventually the editor's wife asked Florence to do a piece on the religion. However Florence could not remember any details when or what she wrote when she wrote her autobiography. However see a newspaper story appeared only a few months later.New religion stars in 69 U.S. cities, Press-Courier (Oxnard, California)31 Jan 1927, Mon • Page 3
Florence's mother and brother rejoined Wilbur Walton in Stockton, California. Around then her grandfather-cum-father died in Indiana. It was also around this time when the family met the Kanno Takisha Japanese family who it turned out later had met ʻAbdu'l-Bahá in Oakland in 1912. Soon after the family including Florence moved to Las Vegas around the time the Boulder Dam (later renamed Hoover Dam) was being built, (roughly 1930–1935.) And then they moved to Reno, Nevada. Richard went to Los Angeles to attend an art school. At this time she had a Catholic friend but she couldn't reconcile down to a denomination that excluded others.
Then the family moved to Hollywood, California while her brother was in art school and she had an under-study part in a play. But lacking an economic connection they moved back to Santa Paula where she learned short-hand, and then she moved to Reno Nevada again.
Reno Her spiritual search remained unfocused and unguided though she prayed for it. Soon she was working at the post office and met David Mayberry whom she married four weeks later. His grandparents were Mormon converts but he had no great personal attachment to the denomination. They were married July, 1935. Later while visiting her mother in Santa Paula, she and her mother engaged in conversation on a serious pursuit of religion and she recalled encountering the Baháʼí Faith to her mother. They found the Carpenter family and went to a fireside informational meeting by the family's daughter-in-law, Marzieh Gail. This was the daughter of well known Baháʼí, Ali Kuli Khan. Florence was not convinced on several points but left with a copy of "Bahaʼi Scriptures" but did not read it immediately – indeed she left it for two years. In the meantime the Mayberry family moved outside of Reno into a new home and Elizabeth Carpenter surprised her with a visit having directions from her husband. Carpenter was returning from attending US Baháʼí national convention and after the visit she gave a brief review of a random page. A few months later her husband reported a Baháʼí took a job at the post office and that a traveling Bahaʼi speaker needed help finding a venue in Reno for a talk she would give – this was Mamie Seto. The Mayberry's assisted and appreciated Seto and her talk. Following it they bought a copy of Bahaʼu'lláh and the New Era but it was not a memory of importance that they read it and commented on reading it. This might have been noted in the June 1939 edition of Baháʼí News.National press book report, Baháʼí News, June 1939, no 126, p. 6 A few months earlier Florence published her first known piece – a Christmas story – in Feb 1939 but was thought to have been a man.Frontier and Midland, The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah)5 Feb 1939, Sun • Page 12