This first symposium sponsored by the Wilmette Institute focuses on the early Bahá’í history of three states. Duane L Herrmann explores the beginnings of the Faith in Kansas, which had the second local Bahá’í community in the United States, in the town of Enterprise starting in 1897. While that community did not endure, members of it moved to other cities and remained active Bahá’ís. Behrad Majidi has explored the founding of the Faith in Missouri, beginning with the relocation of an Enterprise Bahá’í and Thornton Chase’s visit to a Bahá’í group in St. Louis in 1905. Newspapers in both states, however, published articles about the Faith in Persia as far back as 1846. Finally, Steve Kolins will describe the early history of the Faith in North Carolina, beginning with newspaper articles in the 1850s, Bahá’ís visiting the state by 1902-03, and the gradual building of a community that elected its first local Spiritual Assembly in 1943.