Mary Hanford Ford (née Finney; November 1, 1856 – February 2, 1937) was an American lecturer, author, art and literature critic and a leader in the women's suffrage movement. She reached early notoriety in Kansas at the age of 28 and soon left for the Chicago World's Fair. She was taken up by the society ladies of the Chicago area who, impressed with her talks on art and literature at the Fair, helped launch her on a new career, initially in Chicago and then across some States. Along the way she was already published in articles and noticed in suffrage meetings. In addition to work as an art critic and speaker she wrote a number of books, most prominently a trilogy Message of the Mystics. Circa 1900-1902 Ford found the Baháʼí Faith through Sarah Farmer and Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl, and helped form