Julia Lynch Olin

Julia Lynch Olin (October 21, 1882 – March 11, 1961) was an American author and Bahá'í who co-founded the New History Society in New York City, and was later expelled from the religion by Shoghi Effendi around 1939. Through marriage, she was a member of the Astor and Dudley–Winthrop families.

Her parents were Stephen Henry Olin and Alice Wadsworth Barlow. Julia first married J. Philip Benkard of New York City, a financier, in December 1902, and had two daughters: Phyllis and Elsie. In December 1920 they divorced and on May 23, 1921, she married Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, the ex-Lieutenant Governor of New York and a former Democratic candidate for Governor. He was the fifth son of John Winthrop Chanler and Margaret Astor Ward.

Julia was first introduced to the teachings of the Bahá'í Faith about 1925, as she states in her auto-biography. Becoming intimately associated with Mirza Ahmad Sohrab they together with her second husband, started the New History Society. This Society, based in the home that Julia and Lewis owned in New York, (later called Caravan House), published several books, into the late 1950s. It apparently became defunct after Sohrab and/or Julia had died.

In 1929, he and Julia formed an educational organization called Caravan of East and West with a quarterly magazine called The Caravan. This magazine is where Sohrab's partial autobiography first appeared, also in 1929.

Also that year, an article appeared in which the engagement of her daughter Elsie Benkard to Charles H. Clarke was announced (New York Times, Dec 12, 1929 pg 27). The marriage announcement appeared on February 27, 1930, stating that ".....they were married with a Bahai ceremony. It was the first time that such a ceremony..... has been used at a society wedding in New York. Mirza Ahmad Sohrab officiated."

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