Peter T Young

April 9, 2015 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Wailuku Female Seminary

Back in the beginning of the 19th-century, it was believed that women should be educated to understand domestic economy, because they were to play the major role in educating the young, primarily in their homes, and later (as the school population grew and there was a shortage of teachers) as school teachers. (Beyer)

Gender segregated schools were established. Although schools for upper-class women were in existence prior to the 19th-century, the female seminary for middle-class women became the prevailing type of institution from 1820 until after the Civil War.

The most prominent female seminaries on the continent were Troy Seminary (1821,) Hartford Seminary (1823,) Ipswich Seminary (1828,) Mount Holyoke Seminary (1837) and Oxford Seminary (1839.)

The seminary’s primary task was professional preparation: the male seminary prepared men for the ministry; the female seminary took as its earnest job the training of women for teaching and motherhood. (Horowitz, Beyer)

Western-style education did not begin in Hawai’i until after members of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) arrived in 1820.

Because the primary educators responsible for developing the education system of Hawai’i were Americans, the educational practices for Hawaiian girls tended to mirror, but not necessarily duplicate, what was taking place on the continent. (Beyer)

In 1835, at the general meeting of the Mission, a resolution was passed to promote boarding schools for Hawaiians; several male boarding schools and two female boarding schools were begun (Wailuku Female Seminary on the island of Maui and the Hilo School for Girls on the island of Hawai’i.)

Wailuku Female Seminary (or the Central Female Seminary, as it was first called) was the first female school begun by the missionaries. It received support at a time when the missionaries were experimenting with both boarding schools and a manual labor system.

In 1837 the missionaries opened the Wailuku Female Seminary to educate girls to be “good Christian wives” for the graduates of Lahainaluna a school for boys at Lahaina. A boarding school, they thought, would have a deeper influence than day classes.

The opening of the school raised some concern by the Wailuku missionaries: “It will be remembered that our station is really on West Maui, and now may be considered as having only one man to attend to the appropriate missionary work of the station.”

“The Seminary about to go into operation is for the benefit of the islands generally & will occupy the whole time of its teacher. So that E Maui with a population of some 20,000 has really no missionary”. (Wailuku Station Report, 1837)

Rev. Jonathan Green, his wife Theodosia and Miss Maria Ogden were the first teachers, followed by Edward Bailey and his wife Caroline.

Green noted, “the object of our Seminary is to impact to the pupils, and through them to the entire population of Hawaii, a thorough going Christian education.”

The missionaries felt that in order to run “a good Christian household”, the girls needed to learn domestic skills: housekeeping, washing and ironing, sewing and mending. They also learned how to spin cotton and weave cloth.

A strict schedule was considered to be an important part of their education. An hour of gardening before breakfast, each girl having her own little plot, was added to relieve the stress. (MHS)

As to their studies, “They have attended to Reading, Writing, Mental and Written Arithmetic, Geography Sacred and Civil, Exhibition of Popery, Gallaudet’s Book on the Soul, and Natural Theology.” (General Meeting Minutes, 1841)

The plan for the school included a two story stone building, used for classes but including a room for a chapel and a dining room, which was completed in 1837; and an adobe building, used as a dormitory, also completed in 1837.

An additional building was added before the end of 1839. It was made of stone, attached to the original two story building, and used as a dining hall. It is the only building of the Wailuku Female Seminary that is still standing today (part of what is now known as the Bailey House.)

No sooner was the Seminary open than a letter arrived from the Missions’ headquarters asking that no more money be spent on the school. By 1849, however, the Mission Board was unable to raise money, and the Wailuku Female Seminary was closed after its 12th year. (MHS)

Edward Bailey and his wife Caroline Hubbard Bailey arrived in Honolulu April 9, 1837. Not long after their arrival, the couple was transferred to Wailuku to head the Wailuku Female Seminary.

Bailey worked at the Wailuku Female Seminary until its closure in 1849. At that time he purchased the fee simple title to the Girls’ boarding school, the house and lot, and began his interest in what was to become Wailuku Sugar Company.

Edward and Caroline lived in their Wailuku home for 50-years; at the time of his death in 1903 Edward Sr was the oldest living missionary sent to Hawaiʻi.

The Bailey House is now the Maui Historical Society’s Hale Hō‘ike‘ike (House of Display) showcasing Hawaiian history and culture, as well as paintings and furnishings from nineteenth-century Maui.

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Wailuku Female Seminary-Mission Houses

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Illustration of Wailuku, Island of Maui, from Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands by Charles Nordhoff-1870s

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Wailuku, Maui, looking toward ‘Iao Valley-(HHS-1946)

April 5, 2015 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Happy Easter

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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