Sara Rumford (b. Way) (1830-1887) was born in New York and died in Oakland, California. In Delaware in 1870 she married Isaac B. Rumford, a former bricklayer who became a nurseryman and fruit farmer. In 1881 the Rumfords, who were active in the temperance and suffrage movements, adopted an "Edenic" diet consisting of raw, vegetarian food, and in 1884 they founded a utopian colony in Joyful, California, based on this diet and on what they believed to be the pre-Fall lifestyle of the biblical Adam and Eve. Around the same time they started the Joyful News Co-operator newspaper, and in 1885 they co-authored and published a book entitled The Edenic Diet: The Path to Health and Freedom. Although the colony disbanded within a year, the Rumfords continued their fruit farming business on the property, and by the mid-1880s they also owned property in Oakland. Rumford was acquainted with Joseph A. Adams, a student of Mary Baker Eddy's, naming him executor and trustee of her Oakland estate property.

See more letters.