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April 5, 2015 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

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April 3, 2015 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Kaluaʻaha Congregational Church

Harvey Rexford Hitchcock sailed as a missionary with the Fifth Company of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. They sailed aboard the Averick, leaving New Bedford, November 26, 1831 and arriving in Honolulu, May 17, 1832.

He was assigned to Molokai and established the first permanent Mission Station on the Island at Kaluaʻaha in 1832. Rebecca Hitchcock noted shortly after their arrival that there was not a foreigner on the island and no horses except for a lame one belonging to a chief. (Curtis)

Hitchcock preached his first sermon in Hawaiian the last week of September 1832 in the open air.

The Hawaiian Association, meeting in Lāhainā, Maui, on June 19, 1833, adopted a resolution stating: “Resolved that the native Hawaiian members of the Church resident at Kaluaʻaha, Molokai, be a particular Church with the Reverend Harvey Rexford Hitchcock as pastor.”

In the Molokai Station Report, Hitchcock wrote, “in about two months a meeting house was finished 30 feet by 120.” It was probably built of thatch. (HABS)

“There is a delightful cluster of shade trees before our door, which was formerly a favorite resort of the chiefs; and under it, for several successive weeks, we met for the worship … On our arrival, there was no house of any importance, and few of any kind in the vicinity.”

“During the year, however, many comfortable houses have been built, with sleeping apartments, and other accommodations which give to them an air of neatness and comfort hitherto unknown on the island.” (Smith; Missionary Herald)

In 1834, the Hitchcocks received additional help with the arrival of Rev and Mrs Lowell Smith (Smith was a college mate of Hitchcock – who arrived on the Sixth Company in 1833.)

The expanding mission was growing close to 500 members and two outstations, one in the east and one in the west, had been established.

In 1835, a second meeting house was of a more permanent nature, “The meeting house … has been completed. It is built of stone laid up in mud mixed with grass. The walls are three feet thick; It is 90 feet long and 42 wide and 12 feet high plastered and whitewashed outside an in.”

“The frame of the house is of the first rate. The thatching is of the leaf of the spiral pandanus, surmounted at the ends and ridgepole by a thick border of the ki leaf. The framework inside is concealed by large light-colored mats nailed to the underside of the beams, and the floor consists of a carpet of the same material. The pulpit is three feet high made perfectly plain.”

“The base is a block of masonry. It accommodates probably between 1,200 and 1,300 hearers. It could not have been built by contract for less than $2000 but has cost the mission little more than $100. It was dedicated December 6 when Mr. Richards preached … The house was crowded and hundreds could not get in.” (HABS)

By 1836 the membership of the church had increased to 655, then doubled by 1843. The need for a larger building and the probability that repairs on the 1835 building were imminent were reported in the Molokai Station Report which continued, “it (the new building) has been commenced and the stone work about 1/4 or a little more up.” This was the third and present church. (HABS)

In the mid-1840s, they were working on building a new church; “Our main work the past year has been the erection of a permanent house of worship … Preparing most of the timber and getting it onto the ground from the distance of ten miles or more, procuring many of the stones for building …”

It was dedicated on April 3, 1844; “The house has been completed nearly two months. It is 100 feet long by 50 broad outside; walls 2-1/2 feet thick and 18 feet high”.

“The thatching is pilimaoli. It leaks but little; has 4 doors three of which are 7 feet high and about as wide…” (Hitchcock; HABS) (In 1908, it was reportedly the largest building outside Honolulu.) (Hawaiian Evangelical Association, 1908)

The structure was constructed out of fieldstone, walls plastered on both sides. A double row of 14-inch wood columns with 17-inch wood beams supported the interior trusses, and matching columns were also added along each side wall. The interior was a single large open space with raised lectern and choir platform across the east end. (NPS)

Kaluaʻaha Church, known as the Mother Church on Molokai, is the oldest Congregational Church on the island. It is also one of the largest churches built in its time in Hawaiʻi.

The dilapidated condition of the church building was reported in 1897, but it appears that it was not re-roofed and replastered until 1899. After this there was apparently a period of “disuse” until 1908 as noted by the church report for that year.

“The installation of Rev. Isaac D. Iaea as pastor of the long vacant Kaluaʻaha Church was an occasion of great joy and satisfaction to the people of this sidetracked island. The fine old church was filled.” (Hawaiian Evangelical Association, 1908)

By 1917 the membership of the church had dropped to 60. Used off and on; modestly repaired, on May 15, 1967 the steeple, which had tilted for years, fell from its base to the ground. (Remnants of the church are still there; in 2009, a new roof was built inside the walls of the existing church.)

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March 31, 2015 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

William Lowthian Green

“William Lowthian Green was born in Doughty street, London, September 13, 1819. He received his early education in Liverpool, which was completed at King William’s College in the Isle of Man.”

“As a boy he was fond of athletic sports. He was a famous rider and gymnast. His cleverness as well as his thoroughly reliable character made him a favorite with his teachers and school-fellows.”

“He was by profession a merchant. His family for two generations had been engaged in commercial pursuits in the north of England.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 21, 1900)

Green, “was a man of middle height, with delicate features, pale complexion, & broad and high forehead and curly, dark brown hair. The curls he used to scrupulously straighten when a boy; it was considered “girlish” in those days to have curly hair.”

“The hair, as well as a nervous, active temperament, he inherited from his mother, who was partly of Scottish descent. On the paternal side of his house, Mr. Green had Italian blood in his veins. This mixture of nationalities is common in the genealogies of commercial people.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 21, 1900)

He worked for his father’s company in Liverpool and as part of that sailed to Buenos Ayres. On his return (1843,) he got the idea of building a screw steamer and self-start some shipping in South America. That failed.

He then joined the rush to California to try his luck finding gold (some of his friends were fortunate, there.) He wasn’t.

Green’s health failed after some time in the goldfields and in 1850 he determined to go to China. The ship called at Honolulu, and Green, unable to withstand the hardships of a sailor’s life, and having letters to prominent residents of Honolulu, presented his credentials. (Nellist)

“On his arrival at Honolulu he had to attend firstly to material wants. He happened to be most kindly received by a merchant, Mr Robert Cheshire Janion”. (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 21, 1900)

A few years later, Green was made a partner with Janion and the firm name became Janion, Green & Co. During this period, Green took a leading part in establishing the Honolulu Iron Works.

Some years later the partnership of Janion and Green was dissolved and Green entered business on his own account. (The Janion firm later became Theo H Davies, one of Hawaiʻi’s ‘Big 5’ companies.)

In 1852, the British first opened the “Mess” rooms (a club;) it started in a one-story wooden building off of Maunakea street, which was reached by a lane leading to the rear of the premises known as Liberty Hall (also known as Bugle Alley.) Green was the head of the Mess. (Today, it is known as Pacific Club.)

But Green’s passion was not business, social or political.

“During the intervals of leisure in his several occupations as merchant, founder of the now prosperous iron works, sugar planter, Deputy British Commissioner, Senator and at times Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, his mind, we may be certain, was fixed upon the working out of the geological theory of the conformation of the earth’s crust.”

“Independently of his business occupations he had to contend with the difficulty of pursuing his scientific studies thousands of miles distant from Europe and out of the immediate reach of books, the papers of learned societies, and, above all, of daily converse with men of kindred ideas in his own country.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 21, 1900)

Mr. Green is best known abroad as a geologist, having made a special study of volcanoes and volcanic phenomena. His published volumes, ‘The Vestiges of the Molten Globe,’ have attracted wide attention, and have established for him a permanent name in scientific circles all over the world. (Nellist)

“Part I of Mr Green’s ‘Vestiges of the Molten Globe’ was published by Stanford in London in 1875.” It didn’t fare well. The publisher wrote to him “that he wants to get the remaining copies of the ‘Vestiges of the Molten Globe’ out of his way. They will not realize much as waste paper, as there is not much paper about them.’”

“Part II of the “Vestiges of the Molten Globe” was printed and published in Honolulu in 1887 under Mr. Green’s own superintendence, but at a time when his health was beginning finally to give way. Only a few copies of the work reached England, and these were sent by him personally to leading scientific men.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 21, 1900)

“His second volume, urging his theory of hydrostatic pressure as the main uplifting force of lava columns from below, is also of great popular interest from its graphic as well as systematized accounts of the phenomena of our volcanoes of Kīlauea and Mokuʻaweoweo.”

“This eminent gentleman closed his long and serviceable life, at his home on the 7th of December (1890,) at the ripe age of 72 years, and after more than a year of physical prostration, during which, however, his mind was clear and active.”

“The deceased leaves a widow, a daughter of the late Dr McKibben, and one child, the wife of Mr JNS Williams, the accomplished manager of the Union Iron Works of this city.” (The Friend, January 1, 1891)

The image shows William Lowthian Green.

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March 29, 2015 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Kahikolu Church

Kahikolu means three in one, or the trinity.

As is common in many Hawaiian words, this one carries two meaning. The one refers to the traditional Christian connotation of the father, son and holy ghost trinity, which the other relates to the fact that this was the congregation’s third house of worship. (PS)

In February 1824, Chiefs Kapiʻolani, Naihe and Kamakau built the first church in South Kona at Kaʻawaloa, near the site where Captain Cook was killed. They offered this thatched church and parsonage to the Reverend James Ely and his family. (Asa Thurston reportedly gave the dedication sermon for the Kaʻawaloa Church on March 29, 1824.)

“Under the auspices of the governor of the island, and the friendly influence of the present chief of the place, Naihe, and his wife Kapiʻolani, who are steady, intelligent, discreet, and one, if not both, it is to be hoped, pious persons …”

“… a missionary station has since been formed in this village, a school opened, and a house erected for Christian worship; and that the inhabitants of the neighbourhood are instructed in the elements of learning and the principles of religion.” (Ellis)

Rev Ely, the resident pastor lived with his family at Kaʻawaloa until being replaced by Rev. Samuel Ruggles four years later. Due to ill health Ruggles left in June 1833 when Rev. Cochran Forbes from Hilo assumed missionary responsibility.

In 1839, under the direction of Chiefess Kapiʻolani, Forbes moved the mission to the south side of Kealakekua Bay, in an area called Kepulu, just inland from the village now called Napoʻopoʻo.

In 1840 Forbes, oversaw the building of a grand edifice of stone and adobe block, which measured 120 feet x 57 feet. In 1841 the Kealakekua Church was finished, and used until June 1845, when Forbes resigned because of his wife’s ill health. The church had no pastor for the next six years.

Then in 1852, the third church was started by Reverend John D Paris (and completed in 1855.) Paris went on to build eight other churches in the kingdom, making him one of the most prolific builders of his time.

“The first church which I erected in South Kona was the Kahikolu, or Trinity, Church near Kealakekua Bay. This church is on the site of the immense stone and adoby building erected in 1840 under the supervision of Brethern Forbes and Ives.”

“The new Kahikolu Church was built of lava rock (with 35-inch thick walls,) taking the width of the old building for the length of the new one. For the lime, coral was cut from the bottom of the ocean by the Hawaiians. I had a hole dug and built a lime kiln where the coral was burned.”

“The lime thus obtained was of good quality and was used for making mortar as well as for finishing the interior of the building. The heavy timbers were dragged from the forest, and the koa shingles and lumber for pulpit and pews were brought from the koa forest a number of miles up the mountain side.” (Paris; The Friend May 1926) This is the church that still stands today.

Kahikolu Church was the Mother Church for the South Kona area; however, with the passage of time its significance declined as branch churches grew larger and the population of the Kealakekua Bay area dwindled.

The church was abandoned in 1953 following a series of earthquakes. The congregation later reorganized and repaired the church and in August 1984, Kahikolu Church re-opened its doors. (Kahikolu is one of two surviving stone churches on Hawaiʻi.) (NPS)

The corrugated iron roof replaced an earlier koa shingle roof. The interior walls are covered with a coral lime plaster over which a skim coat was applied in 1925. Also in that year James Acia painted stencil designs on the walls at the ceiling and over the windows. (NPS)

A memorial and burial site for Henry ʻOpukahaʻia is located on the grounds of Kahikolu Church. He was born in Kaʻu; as a teenager left the islands on a fur trading ship and eventually settled and lived in New Haven, Connecticut.

He learned to read and write, embraced Christianity and developed a commitment to its ideals and principles, and helped other Native Hawaiians who came from Hawai‘i to seek a Christian education.

He improved his English by writing the story of his life in a book called “Memoirs of Henry Obookiah” (the spelling of his name prior to establishment of the formal Hawaiian alphabet, based on its sound.)

ʻŌpūkahaʻia died suddenly of typhus fever in 1818; he was buried there in Cornwall, Connecticut. ʻOpukahaʻia’s book inspired the first Protestant missionaries to volunteer to carry his message to the Sandwich Islands.

In instructions from the ABCFM, the Pioneer Company of missionaries were told, “You will never forget ʻOpukahaʻia. You will never forget his fervent love, his affectionate counsels, his many prayers and tears for you, and for his and your nation.”

“You saw him die; saw how the Christian could triumph over death and the grave; saw the radient glory in which he left this world for heaven. You will remember it always, and you will tell it to your kindred and countrymen who are dying without hope.”

A year after his death, the Pioneer Company of missionaries, comprised of both Americans and Native Hawaiians, among them the Reverend Hiram Bingham and Reverend Asa Thurston, was dispatched to Hawai‘i to begin the work that Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia had longed to do.

On August 15, 1993, ʻOpukahaʻia’s remains were returned to Hawai‘i from Cornwall and laid in a vault facing the ocean at Kahikolu Church.

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Opukaha’ia’s gravesite at Kahikolu Church overlooking Kealakekua Bay

March 24, 2015 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

St Catherine’s Church

The original name of the peninsula “Moku-Kapu” was derived from two Hawaiian words: “moku” (island) and “kapu” (sacred or restricted.) “Mokapu” is the contraction of “Moku Kapu” which means “Sacred or Forbidden Island.”

Mokapu Peninsula was divided into three ahupua‘a – Kailua, Kaneʻohe and Heʻeia – these were extensions of the ahupua‘a across the large basin of Kaneʻohe Bay. Dating back to 1300-1600 AD, three fishponds separated Mokapu Peninsula from the rest of Kaneʻohe.

Hawaiians lived on Mokapu Peninsula for at least 500 to 800 years before Western Contact. Farmers cultivated dryland crops like sweet potato for food, and gourds for household uses.

There were at least two small villages on the peninsula, as well as scattered houses along the coastline. They tended groves of hala trees (pandanus) for the leaves to weave into mats and baskets, and wauke plants for kapa (paperbark cloth.)

The highly prized wetland taro might have been grown in the marshy area at the center of the peninsula. Mokapu people fished in the protected waters of Kaneʻohe Bay, in Kailua Bay, and in the deep ocean to the north; and took advantage of the rich shore resources. (MCBH)

On July 7, 1827, the pioneer French Catholic mission arrived in Honolulu. Their first mass was celebrated a week later on Bastille Day, July 14, and a baptism was given on November 30, to a child of Don Francisco de Paula Marin.

The American Congregationalists encouraged a policy preventing the establishment of a Catholic presence in Hawaiʻi. Catholic priests were forcibly expelled from the Islands in 1831. However, on June 17, 1839, King Kamehameha III issued the Edict of Toleration permitting religious freedom for Catholics.

When the Vicar Apostolic of Oriental Oceania was lost at sea, Father Louis Désiré Maigret was appointed the first Vicar Apostolic of the Sandwich Islands (now the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu.) They sought to expand the Catholic presence.

Maigret divided Oʻahu into missionary districts. Shortly after, the Windward coast of Oʻahu was dotted with chapels.

A Catholic church was established on Mokapu peninsula in the late-1830s or early-1840s. According to the records of the Catholic diocese, the first baptismal ceremony at Mokapu took place in 1841. (Tomonari-Tuggle)

Parish tradition suggests a village chief had gone to a Protestant Missionary asking for lamp oil. The missionary could not give him any oil. The chief then went to the Catholic mission (at that time located at Mokapu Point) and received his oil. In gratitude, the chief gave the missionaries a piece of property. (St Ann’s)

In the mid-1840s Father Robert Martial Janvier, the Catholic missionary in Heʻeia, built St Catherine’s Church on top of the Mokapu heiau. (Klieger)

In 1844, the stone edifice of St Catherine’s Church rose on the high ground of Keawanui on the western edge of Mokapu (in the area now called Pali Kilo.) The Catholics were attracted to Mokapu because it had a large population. (Devaney)

St Catherine’s was abandoned in the late-1850s after plague and migration decimated the peninsula population. The church was moved to a location at Heʻeia across the bay.

Church members, friends, and family carried coral stones and blocks by hand and canoe from the Mokapu site to the new church, what is now St Ann’s Church. (Tomonari-Tuggle)

Saint Ann’s Catholic Church and schoolhouse grounds included “a large priest house, comprising 13 small rooms, a kitchen, a dining room and a community room”.

It is also noted, “… the little monastery was ideally situated in a large French garden replete with flowers, green shrubbery, and a great variety of trees ….” (Cultural Surveys)

“The schoolhouse was built near the church. On the outskirts of the five acre property …Catholic Hawaiians had dug four large ponds in which taro was raised in sufficient quantity to feed the 150 schoolchildren and a number of women occupied in the workshop.”

“Father Martial’s first work was to build a school, native style, and also a hall 70 feet long, which he opened as a workshop for women…The success of the womens workshop was very encouraging for Father Martial, so much …(he) planned a similar shop for men and boys.”

A new schoolhouse was built in 1871 close to St Ann’s Catholic Church. The new St Ann school became “the best school in Koolau District”. After 1927, five classrooms were added to the schoolhouse, which had consisted of two classrooms plus one small building. (Cultural Surveys)

The US military first established a presence on the Mokapu peninsula in 1918 when President Woodrow Wilson signed an executive order establishing Fort Kuwaʻaohe Military Reservation on 322-acres on the northeast side of Mokapu.

The Army stayed there until August 1940 when the Navy decided to acquire all of Mokapu Peninsula to expand Naval Air Station Kaneʻohe; it included a sea plane base, it began building in September 1939 and commissioned on February 15, 1941.

Between 1939 and 1943, large sections of Kaneʻohe Bay were dredged for the dual purposes of deepening the channel for a sea plane runway and extending the western coastline of the peninsula with 280-acres of coral fill.

As of December 1941, two of five planned, steel hangars had been completed, each measuring 225-feet by 400-feet.

On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, two waves of Japanese Imperial Navy aircraft bombed and strafed Kaneʻohe Naval Air Station, several minutes before Pearl Harbor was attacked.

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