Laura Clifford Barney

Laura Clifford Barney (1879–1974), married name Laura Dreyfus-Barney (b. Cincinnati, O., 30 November 1879, d. Paris, 18 August 1974) became a leading American Bahá'í teacher and philanthropist.

She was the daughter of Albert and Alice Pike Barney. Albert Clifford Barney was the son of a manufacturer of railway cars and was of English descent. Alice was of French Dutch and German ancestry, and was a socially prominent artist from Washington, D.C. Laura and her elder sister Natalie Clifford Barney were educated by private tutors. Laura became a leading American Bahá'í teacher and philanthropist. She is best known for having compiled the Bahá'í text Some Answered Questions from her interviews with `Abdu'l-Bahá during her visit to Acca between 1904 and 1906.

She attended Les Ruches, a French boarding school founded by feminist Marie Souvestre. While continuing her studies in Paris, Laura met May Bolles (later Maxwell), a Canadian Bahá'í, and was converted to the faith in about 1900. Her mother converted soon afterward. In 1911, she married Hippolyte Dreyfus () (married name Hippolyte Dreyfus-Barney).

Laura Barney financed the visit of the Persian Bahá'í scholar Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl-i-Gulpáygání to the United States in 1901-04, in order to propagate the faith there, and helped to publish the translation of his Ḥojaj al-bahīya (Cairo, 1342/1925; tr. Ali-Kuli Khan as The Bahá’í Proofs, New York, 1902; 2nd ed., ed. J. R. I. Cole, Wilmette, Ill., 1983). In 1904 she visited `Abdu'l-Bahá in ʿAkkāʾ, Palestine, where she remained about two years, acquiring a working knowledge of Persian and becoming an intimate of his household. During that time she arranged to have `Abdu'l-Bahá’s answers to her questions, mainly on philosophy and Christian theology, recorded by his secretaries. She collaborated with her future husband, Hippolyte Dreyfus, on the editing and translation of this work (al-Nūr al-abhā fīmofāważāt `Abdu'l-Bahá, Leiden, 1908; tr. L. C. Barney and H. Dreyfus as Some Answered Questions, London, 1908; tr. H. Dreyfus as Les leçons de Saint Jean d’Acre, Paris, 1909). In 1905-06 she visited Persia, the Caucasus, and Russia with Dreyfus. After their marriage in April 1911, when they both adopted the surname Dreyfus-Barney, she traveled extensively with him.

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