Sybil Bingham | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

Hiram_and_Sybil_Moseley_Bingham,_1819-head of Pioneer Company

February 27, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sybil’s Bones

Sybil Moseley’s mother died in 1811 – leaving 19-year old Sybil an orphan to support herself as a schoolteacher, while other relatives took care of her younger sisters. (Bingham)

“At first her school was at Hartford and later at Canandaigua in western New York, which village was then in the far west. After three years at Canandaigua she determined to visit her friends and relatives and the people whom she was leaving tried to make her promise to return.”

“Her answer was, ‘I will, unless the Lord opens another door.’ She little imagined what that door would be. … She was interested in missions and had even desired to be a missionary.” (Restarick)

She met Hiram Bingham in Goshen Connecticut at his ordination. “He was introduced to Miss Moseley and he recalled a conversation with a fellow student at Andover who had said if he got an appointment as missionary he would ask a Miss Moseley to go with him as his wife.”

“Before he left Windsor he had asked her to go with him to the Sandwich islands as his wife. Their common desire to work in some mission field drew them together in affectionate sympathy and she told him she would be his co-worker among people whom they supposed were savages.”

“The ordination took place on September 29 (1819), and, as there was no time to lose they were married on October 11. On October 23 they sailed from Boston on the Thaddeus in company with six other missionaries and their wives.”

“Sybil Moseley Bingham wrote to her sister: ‘Since that memorable evening when I was introduced to him, I find that he has secured my love. God did indeed choose for me.’” (Restarick)

A couple weeks into the trip (November 9, 1819). Sybil’s journal entry notes, “Have been seventeen days on board. Hitherto the good hand of our God has been upon us. … Sea-sickness has been severe upon most, yet not so much so as upon many who have gone before us.” (Sybil)

“For the first month out, the sea was rough, and the winds not favorable, and most of the passengers felt the inconvenience of their new mode of life; and some suffered much and long from sea-sickness.” (Hiram) Sea sickness continued for her and the others throughout the 18,000-mile voyage.

“Life in the Paradise of the Pacific was anything but healthy in the years when Honolulu was a village of grass huts on a dusty plain.”

“Sybil was frail to begin with, if one can judge from her likeness in the portrait of the Binghams painted by Samuel FB Morse (of the Morse code and telegraph) before their departure for the Pacific: where an idealized Hiram gazes confidently from the little oval frame, Sybil’s long thin nose and watery blue eyes make her look as if she had a cold.” (Bingham)

“For twenty years she worked with him and for him and bore his children, but the cost to nature was a wasted body that finally came to seem to Hiram more important than his mission.”

“Hiram anticipated that a few months rest in what they considered the more healthful climate of New England would put her on her feet, and they would return to carry on the great work with which the Mission Board had originally charged them.” (Bingham)

On August 3, 1840, they sailed back to the continent on the Flora. “The cabin of the Flora is very small, having three state-rooms, one of which belonging to the captain is the only one whose dimensions were intended, for comfort.” (Olmstead)

They returned to New England. “Sybil’s health did not improve. … (she went to) Hartford to be nursed by her sister. She had a chronic cough. Whether she or Hiram knew it, she was dying of the prevailing malady, ‘consumption.’” Then “Hiram and Sybil had found a ‘refuge’ in Easthampton (Massachusetts) with ‘kind friends.’”

“She seemed most comfortable sitting in her rocking chair, the chair he had lovingly fashioned for her on their arrival in Honolulu twenty-eight years before -as a Vermont farm boy he had been handy with tools—and then brought back around Cape Horn. Now, as it became clear the end was near.” (Bingham)

“(I)n accordance with her former request to be in her chair when God should send the summons, we placed her there, and sustained her head and hands and feet. I asked, how do you feel now, ‘I feel a little rested’ (or ‘exhausted’) not quite distinctly.”

Sybil’s rocking chair, “which a thousand times rested her weary frame & gave her much comfort … proved to be remarkably easy as to its form & balance, light, strong and durable having now been in use about 30 years”. (Bingham letter to H Hill, March 12, 1850)

“I said again, ‘do you feel exhausted?’ ‘Not as much as I should expect,’ she said, and soon repeated ‘Let His name be praised’. ‘Be bold to speak the truth’ – ‘The Lord cares for me’ – then, in a low tone ‘Stop, Stop – I live.’”

“Then passed into a comatose state and spoke no more, but appeared to sleep.” (Hiram) “(Daughter) Lydia, thirteen years old, in her later account, shortened the time to ‘a few more throbbings of her loving heart’ …”

“while ‘father prayed, commending her to God,’ and sang two verses of a hymn beginning: Go, pilgrim, to thy Saviour; On joyful wings ascend.” (Bingham)

Sybil died in her rocking chair on February 27, 1848 in Easthampton, Massachusetts. “For Hiram, Jr., finally helping his father lift his mother out of the rocking chair, her death must have been deeply affecting. But he was young and strong.”

A generation later he wrote to his own son (Hiram III), ‘If ever there was in this world a woman who was noble, honest, generous, loving, tender-hearted and sympathetic, that woman was your grandmother.” (Bingham)

“Sybil was buried in the Williston family plot in the old cemetery not far from the Academy (a school her children had attended).” (Bingham)

Hiram later remarried. “In an age when housework was not yet a male occupation, few men willingly remained widowers. It was natural for Sybil’s husband to remarry, and all the more if Sybil had known and approved the new wife.” (Bingham)

Hiram and his second wife (Naomi) were buried in the New Haven City Burial Ground. Later, Hiram III took it upon himself to reunite Hiram and Sybil by disinterring Sybil’s bones and placing them next to Hiram in New Haven.

Hiram III “provided a suitable box 3 ft x 16 in x 18 in and had his man ready to make the exhumation. … After digging down about three feet through a sandy soil we came upon the remains. They lay together directly in front of the stone. There was no trace of any box or container of any sort except two old fashioned brass handles which were probably on the coffin.”

“The bones were all together. The skull, leg bones and ribs were all within a few inches of each other. We looked very carefully for traces of a box but found none. … The gravedigger searched very thoroughly, and I believe that all of the remains that lay there were safely removed.”

Ultimately, Hiram III “brought them with him in his personal luggage when he had come to Yale as a freshman”. (Bingham) (Much of the information here, as well as the title, comes from Alfred Bingham, son of Hiram III.)

Sybil Bingham-Naomi Bingham – Hiram Bingham headstones

Sybil Binghams Headstone

August 3, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Barque Flora

Francis Allyn Olmsted took a voyage to Hawai‘i, to which he noted, “During the latter part of my collegiate course, my health became very much impaired by a chronic debility of the nervous system, and soon after graduating, the cold air of Autumn admonished me to seek a milder clime for spending the winter.”

“While deliberating upon what would be most desirable in accomplishing the purposes I had in view, a favorable opportunity was offered me to go out as passenger in the whale-ship ‘North America,’ which was fitting out at New-London for a voyage to the Pacific.” (Olmstead)

He sailed as a passenger on the whale-ship ‘North America,’ that sailed from New-London, Connecticut, leaving on October 11, 1839 and arriving at O‘ahu on May 22, 1840, “having sailed more than five thousand miles in a leaky ship, with the pumps going night and day.”

After spending a little over 3-months in the Islands, on August 3, 1840, Olmstead, “bade a long adieu to many kind friends at Honolulu, and established myself in my quarters aboard the barque ‘Flora,’ Captain Spring, bound for New York.” (Olmstead)

“The Flora, is a barque of about two hundred and ninety-three tons burden, nearly a hundred tons smaller than the ‘North America’, and in many other respects is her inferior. She is a merchant vessel, and arrived at Honolulu a short time since, with stores for the Exploring Expedition (Wilkes Expedition).”

“The Flora, is chartered by one of the mercantile houses at Honolulu, and is principally freighted with sugar and molasses, novel exports from the Hawaiian Islands to the United States, a distance of eighteen thousand miles. …”

“The cabin of the Flora is very small, having three state-rooms, one of which belonging to the captain is the only one whose dimensions were intended, for comfort.”

“As the other two are situated upon each quarter of the ship, they are conformed to the shape of the vessel, and are somewhat triangular in their outlines, which renders them very inconvenient; for with the large sea chest I am obliged to admit into mine, there is hardly room enough left to stand up securely.”

“There are twenty passengers in all, who, with the exception of two or three that are to be left at the Society Islands, are to constitute a community by ourselves for many a month, while roving the ocean, in the long voyage to our native land. …” (Olmstead)

Among the passengers were Hiram and Sybil Bingham (and family); Mrs Lucy Thurston and children; and Caroline Armstrong, 9-year-old daughter of missionaries Richard and Clarissa Armstrong).

“The character of the passengers, gives the fairest promises of a happy and profitable voyage. Mr. and Mrs. Bingham, after a residence of twenty years at these remote isles of the sea, during which, amid toils and privations of which we have no adequate conception …”

“… they have seen the christian religion established among a race of idolaters, and have given permanency to a language existing but from generation to generation, have now embarked with their family of three young children, to revisit the land of their fathers, for the recovery of their health …”

“… and then to return again to these islands, after bidding farewell forever to their children, and committing them to the care of a benevolent public.”

“The tide of contending emotions that agitate their hearts can only be imagined. With the thousand perplexities and cares attendant upon making preparation for so long a voyage …”

“… and in separating themselves perhaps forever from a people that had grown up under their instruction, and to whom they had become tenderly attached, they were almost exhausted, and it seemed like a renewal of that depressing sorrow that attended their departure from their native land.”

“The poor natives accompanied them in crowds as they came down to the ship, and thronged the dock, with sorrow depicted in their countenances.”

“Soon the voice of wailing, which had been heard from one or two, became general, and a note of wild lamentation burst forth in a deafening chorus, until by the efforts of two or three of the missionaries, the sorrow of the people was restrained to a more quiet demonstration of their grief.”

“I could not but admire the heroic fortitude with which Mrs. Thurston tore herself away from her affectionate husband, to voyage with her family, consisting of two sons and three daughters, to a far distant country, which had almost become a foreign land, after an exile of twenty years.”

“Poor Mr. Thurston! When he returns to his home upon the rocky shore of Hawaii, how heavily must the lonesome hours pass by, which are no longer enlivened by the presence of his beloved family.”

“There are a father and mother too, who with bursting hearts, commit their little daughter (Caroline Armstrong), of only nine years of age, to the care of Mrs. Bingham, to be borne far away from their presence to a land of strangers.” (Olmstead)

Caroline Armstrong, looking at her father on the shore, the distance between them widening every moment … “Oh, father, dear father, do take me back!” (Judd)

Her plea echoed in the hearts of the community. In June of that year the mission voted to establish a school for the missionary children at Punahou. (Emanuel)

“Such are some of the heart-rending scenes that are often exhibited in the missionaries’ rife, who not only exile themselves from all they hold dear in their native land, but are ready to sunder every tie of affection, if required by a sense of duty.” (Olmstead)

“We stood alone in thus making the experiment of retaining children on heathen ground. At this time, when the mission was in its twentieth year, more than forty missionaries’ children have been conveyed away by parents, that have retired from this field of labor.”

“Eighteen have been scattered about in the fatherland without parents.” (Lucy Thurston) She was on the trip with her children to provide them with educational opportunities.

“Divine Providence seemed to indicate that one or both of the ordained pioneers of the mission should leave the ground temporarily, at least, though both could not well be spared at once.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Thurston, who thought it their duty to convey their children to the United States, myself, and Mrs. B., with health much impaired had permission to visit our native land. Mrs. B. was too much worn out to go without her husband.”

“Mr. T. chose to stand at his post at Kailua, and send his family with mine, and trusted the arrangement for their children with Mrs. T., the Board, and private friends. Mr. Armstrong took my post at Honolulu.” (Hiram Bingham)

They first headed to Tahiti, then headed to Cap Horn – Friday, January 1, 1841. Land ho! At four bells in the forenoon watch, the dim outline of the coast of South America, was just discernible through the gloom resting upon it, the first sight of terra-firma that has greeted our eyes since leaving Tahiti, a period of three months.”

Then, Wednesday, February 3. At daylight, this morning, the low outline of the coast of the United States, was seen stretching along to the westward of us, not more than ten or twelve miles off. … (February 4, 1841) we came to anchor off Sandy Hook, in six months from the Sandwich Islands.” (Olmstead) (Image shows the North America.)

North America

February 23, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Going to “the land of our fathers”

Among the passengers were Hiram and Sybil Bingham (and family); Mrs Lucy Thurston and children; and Caroline Armstrong, 9-year-old daughter of missionaries Richard and Clarissa Armstrong).

“Mr. and Mrs. (Asa) Thurston, who thought it their duty to convey their children to the United States, myself, and Mrs. B(ingham), with health much impaired had permission to visit our native land. Mrs. B. was too much worn out to go without her husband.”

“Mr. T(hurston) chose to stand at his post at Kailua, and send his family with mine, and trusted the arrangement for their children with Mrs. T., the Board, and private friends. Mr. Armstrong took my post at Honolulu.” (Hiram Bingham)

“Time passes rapidly on, and brings near the day of our departure from the land of our childhood. Our family, which has so long lived together, is soon to be separated.”

“Probably we shall not all meet again on earth; but it will be but a short time before we shall meet in a better, brighter world, if prepared. Our passage is engaged in the Flora, Captain Spring, bound to New York. The Captain is a pious man, and we are much pleased with him.”

“I hope you will write us whenever you can. We shall desire very much to hear from the Sandwich Islands. We shall always think of you with interest; and shall long remember the many pleasant visits we have made at your house, and the many kindnesses we have received at your hands. The Lord reward you for them all.”

“We shall often think of the many friends we leave behind, when far away. Pray for us. I hope you will often visit Kailua, and comfort our father in his lonely home at Laniakea.” (Lucy G Thurston to Mrs Forbes, July 29, 1840)

“Mrs. Thurston, with her family, arrived in New York on the 4th of February, 1841. She delayed going immediately on to the home of her kindred, in the eastern part of Massachusetts, in order to have the company and protection of a friend who was expecting to make the same journey.”

Upon arrival, young Lucy writes, “Brooklyn, Feb. 16th, 1841. “My Dear Father, We learn that a vessel is to sail for the Sandwich Islands in about a week, and I take my pen to inform you of our safe arrival in the land of our fathers.”

“We were six months and one day from the S. Islands to this place. Stopped a fortnight at the Society Islands, and three days at Pernambuco. We have been remarkably favored in our passage, and all enjoyed good health.”

“The captain has been as a father to us, and by his kind attentions we have felt your loss much less than we otherwise should have done.”

“Mr. B(ingham) has very kindly invited our whole family to remain at his house till we leave the place. We feel under great obligations to him for his kindness. ….”

“We have been thronged with visiters, who call to see us from morning till night. Mother has a trunk of curiosities, which she shows them, and thus excites a good deal of interest in the mission.”

“P(ersis) has several times dressed herself in native style, and marched about the room, much to the amusement of the company. We have received more kindness than we expected – far more than we deserved. …”

The Thurston children reached the continent, a new and different place – as written by young Lucy Thurston, ‘the land of our fathers’ – having left ‘the land of our childhood’.

Shortly after arriving, young Lucy Thurston ‘was taken sick.’ She noted in a letter she was drafting “… We visited the City Hall – a splendid building, where in the Governor’s room, we saw the full length portraits of all the Governors of the State of New York. They were elegant paintings; In the evening –”

Her sister Persis wrote to their father thereafter, explaining the abrupt ending of the letter “… Company calling, she was interrupted in the middle of a sentence, and never again resumed her pen.”

“Lucy was in most vigorous health; but she was seized with inflammation on the lungs just two weeks after their arrival, and on the morning of her coming to the family with whom she passed the last week of her life – the only week of physical pain and distress she ever experienced.”

“She told her mother, a day or two after the commencement of her illness, that she had no choice about its result. … ‘Mother, dear mother,’ many, many times repeated, still continued, and ‘Father, father,’ were the last that fell upon the ear.” Young Lucy Thurston died February 24, 1841.

“At the age of seventeen, she landed upon our shores, with the expectation of enjoying, for a season, the advantages of the society and institutions of Christian America; but within three weeks after the time of her arrival, she found a place in our sepulchres.” (Thurston) A book was written, her memoir, ‘The Missionary’s Daughter or Memoir of Lucy Goodale Thurston’.

The Missionary’s Daughter Cover

September 29, 2017 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

When Hiram Met Sybil

For a while, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) prohibited unmarried persons from entering the mission field. The Board believed that married missionaries could cope better with hardships and resist sexual temptations.

Thus, they required young men to be engaged at least two months before entering the mission field. To help the would-be missionaries find wives, the ABCFM had an ongoing list of “missionary-minded” women who were considered “young, pious, educated, fit and reasonably good-looking.” (Christian History Institute)

“Missionaries are ambassadors of Jesus Christ, beseeching people to be reconciled to God. Their business is not with believers, but unbelievers; they are not pastors or rulers, but evangelists.”

“Their first duty is to gather a local congregation. They will be spiritual leaders to it, but will leave it to a native minister and move on to preach the gospel in some other place. The sole exception is when a church is organized and there is no suitable native pastor available.”

“The missionary should raise up ministers and give them responsibility. Too many missionaries in any area will retard the development of the churches. Missionaries should be married, and their home will be a model of Christian family life.” (Legacy of Rufus Anderson; Beaver)

“How to improve the social life of a nation so demoralized and degraded, was a problem not easy of solution. Uncouth manners were to be corrected, and modes of dress and living to be improved. Only married missionaries could do this. Living models of domestic Christian life were indispensable.” (Anderson, 1872)

Augustine George Hibbard, in his history of the town of Goshen (where the ordination took place), notes the description of the time that Hiram met Sybil (his future wife), at the ordination (September 29, 1819) of then-single missionary Hiram Bingham (as told by Reverend AC Thompson).

“Nor was there wanting a touch of romance. Next to the singing of Melton Mowbray, the incident which lingered most vividly in the recollections of the people is one which they rightly regarded as a marked interposition of God’s good providence.”

“Oral traditions in regard to it have so many slight variations of detail, that I give what will be accepted as authentic and final, an extract from a letter written, at my request, by Mr. Bingham, many years since:”

“On leaving Andover, at the close of my course there, I took a rough journey to Goshen, and as the friends were gathering thickly there, in the afternoon previously to my ordination, Mr. Thurston and myself submitted to the requisite examination which was somewhat extended to meet the rising interest in the cause of our contemplated mission.”

“I was quartered at the Rev. Mr. Harvey’s. He and others attended, in the evening, a Bible Society meeting; but fatigued with closing all up at Andover, my journey and examination, I chose to stay quietly at the house of Mr. Harvey.”

“In the course of the evening, a gentleman, Rev. Mr. Brown, called and asked for lodgings for himself and a young lady, whom he had brought with him from the valley of the Connecticut. I stepped over to the meeting, and privately asked Mr. Harvey what should be done with them.”

“He replied laconically, and with little interruption to the routine of Bible meeting business, ‘Take them to Deacon Thompson’s.’ I offered, therefore, to accompany them thither.”

“Mr. Brown went to the public house, and brought out the young lady, introduced her to me, and took us into his vehicle, and, at my direction, drove to Deacon Thompson’s.”

“I had taken cold by a night’s ride over the mountains, and I wrapped a handkerchief about my neck, chin, and mouth, that cold evening, and this awakened ready sympathy in the sensitive heart of the young lady, who had for years been warmly interested in the missionary cause.”

“Mr. Brown had introduced her as Miss (Sybil) Moseley, the name of a lady teacher at Canandaigua, NY, whom Rev. Levi Parsons had mentioned to me as a most amiable, and thoroughly qualified companion for a missionary.”

“During the whole interview, the ride, and the call at your father’s, my mind was intently querying whether this could be the very same.”

“When introduced by your kind parents into the parlor, and seated by a hospitable fire, we sat and conversed for a few minutes. I measured the lines of her face and the expression of her features with more than an artist’s carefulness, and soon took leave of her, and Mr. Brown, and the family, receiving some very generous cautions from her respecting my cold.”

“The next day I learned that she was the young lady of whom Brother Parsons had spoken so highly. I saw her in the course of the next day most intensely interested in the missionary cause, and learned a good deal about her from Mr. Harvey, Brother S. Bartlett and wife, and Brother Ruggles and wife, about to embark for the Sandwich Islands.”

“I mentioned the case to Dr. Worcester, Mr. Evarts, and my brother, and asked their counsel. A prayer-meeting was arranged at Mr. Harvey’s while I authorized Dr. Worcester to ascertain from her whether a private and special interview with me would be allowed.”

“He saw her while prayers were offered for Divine guidance. He stated my case, held up the great work at the Islands with which her soul was already filled, and left her with the words, ‘Rebecca said, I will go.’”

“Returning to Mr. Harvey’s, he told me I could see her. I gave her some account of myself, put into her hands a copy of my statement to the Prudential Committee, in offering myself to the work, asked her to unite with me in it, and left her to consider till the next day whether she could give me encouragement, or not.”

“The next day she said she would go with me to her friends, and, if they did not object, she thought she should not. It was arranged for us to ride in a chaise to Hartford. The result you know (they married less than 2-weeks later).” (Hiram Bingham)

On October 23, 1819, Hiram and Sybil, and the rest of the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries, set sail on the Thaddeus for Hawai‘i. By the middle of the trip, four of the wives were pregnant.

Sybil was pregnant when they arrived at Kailua-Kona on April 4, 1820. That first child of Hiram and Sybil, Sophia Mosely Bingham, is my Great-Great Grandmother.