Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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Engraved at Lahainaluna – Pick Up Your Copy May 30

Join the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives tomorrow, May 30, at 5:30 pm to celebrate the launching of “Engraved at Lahainaluna”!
Lahainaluna Seminary (now Lahainaluna High School) was founded on September 5th 1831 by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions “to instruct young men of piety and promising talents”.
In December, 1833, a printing press was delivered to Lahainaluna from Honolulu. It was housed in a temporary office building and in January, 1834, the first book printed off the press was Worcester’s Scripture Geography.
Besides the publication of newspapers, pamphlets and books, another important facet of activity off the press was engraving.
A checklist made in 1927 records thirty-three maps and fifty-seven sketches of houses and landscapes, only one of which is of a non-Hawaiian subject.
That brings us to a newly printed book “Engraved at Lahainaluna,” offered through the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives.
It’s here and being processed for sales – if you like things of Hawai‘i, this is something you will want to add to your collection.
Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives invites the public to celebrate the launching of Engraved at Lahainaluna, on Wednesday, May 30, at 5:30 p.m. at Hawaiian Mission Houses.
For more information on the book launch, or to purchase Engraved at Lahainaluna, please call 447-3923 or visit www.missionhouses.org.

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Lahainaluna Printing-Engraving

Lahainaluna Seminary (now Lahainaluna High School) was founded on September 5th 1831 by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions “to instruct young men of piety and promising talents”.
Out of this training came many of Hawaii’s future leaders and scholars including David Malo (1835,) Samuel Kamakau (1837) and others (Keali‘i Reichel graduated in 1980.)
In  December,  1833,  a  printing  press  was  delivered  to  Lahainaluna  from  Honolulu.  It was  housed  in a temporary office building and in January,  1834,  the  first book  printed  off  the  press  was  Worcester’s  Scripture Geography.
On February 14, 1834 came  the  first newspaper, ‘Ka Lama Hawaii,’ ever  printed  in  the  Islands  in  any  language, also  the  first newspaper  published  west of the Rocky Mountains.
Besides the publication of the newspapers, pamphlets and books, another important facet of activity off the press was engraving.
A checklist made in 1927 records thirty-three maps and fifty-seven sketches of houses and landscapes, only one of which is of a non-Hawaiian subject.
That brings us to a newly printed book “Engraved at Lahainaluna,” offered through the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives.
It’s here and being processed for sales, soon … and if you like things of Hawai‘i, this is something you will want to add to your collection. 
The Mission Houses store is open Tuesday through Sunday 10 am through 4 pm – it’s located at the Historic site at 553 South King Street (Diamond Head side of Kawaiahaʻo Church.
Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives invites the public to celebrate the launching of Engraved at Lahainaluna, on Wednesday, May 30, at 5:30 p.m. at Hawaiian Mission Houses.
For more information on the book launch, or to purchase Engraved at Lahainaluna, please call 447-3923 or visit www.missionhouses.org.
The image shows a drawing of Lahainaluna (ca. 1838, drawn by Bailey and engraved by Kepohoni;) in addition, Missions Houses has given me permission to post some of the engravings and I added a few other Lahainaluna engravings in a folder of like name in the Photos section.  (I’ll add some more later.)
But don’t rely on these, get you own copy of the “Engraved at Lahainaluna” (I’ve already ordered mine.)

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Henry Opukahaʻia’s Influence on Missionaries Coming to Hawaiʻi

The history and growth of Christianity in Hawaiʻi include Henry Opukahaʻia, a native Hawaiian from the Island of Hawaiʻi.
In 1809, at the age of 16, after his parents had been killed, he boarded a sailing ship anchored in Kealakekua Bay and sailed to the continent.
On board, he developed a friendship with a Christian sailor who, using the Bible, began teaching Opukahaʻia how to read and write.
Once landed, he traveled throughout New England and continued to learn and study.
Opukahaʻia’s life in New England was greatly influenced by many young men with proven sincerity and religious fervor that were active in the Second Great Awakening and the establishment of the missionary movement.
These men had a major impact on Opukahaʻia’s enlightenment in Christianity and his vision to return to Hawaiʻi as a Christian missionary.
By 1817, a dozen students, six of them Hawaiians, were training at the Foreign Mission School to become missionaries to teach the Christian faith to people around the world.
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.)
Opukahaʻia died suddenly of typhus fever in 1818.  The book about his life was printed and circulated after his death.
Opukahaʻia’s book inspired 14 missionaries to volunteer to carry his message to the Sandwich Islands. 
On October 23, 1819, a group of missionaries from the northeast United States, set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.)
There were seven couples sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to convert the Hawaiians to Christianity.
These included two Ordained Preachers, Hiram Bingham and his wife Sybil and Asa Thurston and his wife Lucy; two Teachers, Mr. Samuel Whitney and his wife Mercy and Samuel Ruggles and his wife Mary; a Doctor, Thomas Holman and his wife Lucia; a Printer, Elisha Loomis and his wife Maria; a Farmer, Daniel Chamberlain, his wife and five children.
Along with them were four Hawaiian youths who had been students at the Foreign Mission School, Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, John Honoliʻi and Prince Humehume (son of Kauaiʻi’s King Kaumuali‘i and also known as Prince George Kaumuali‘i.)
After 164 days at sea, on April 4, 1820 (192-years ago, today,) the Thaddeus first arrived and anchored at Kailua-Kona on the Island of Hawaiʻi.
Hawai‘i’s “Plymouth Rock” is about where the Kailua pier is today.
The Thurstons remained in Kailua-Kona, while their fellow missionaries went to establish stations on other Hawaiian islands.
Hiram Bingham, the leader of the group, went to Honolulu to set up a mission headquarters; Whitney and Ruggles accompanied Prince Kaumuali‘i on his return to Kaua‘i.  (Hiram is my great-great-great grandfather.)
By the time the missionaries arrived, Kamehameha I had died, Liholiho (his son) was king and the kapu system had been abolished.
I have added a folder of like name in the Photos section of my Facebook page of images from Hiram Bingham’s book, “A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands” and other related images.  Several of the illustrations show missionary work across the islands.

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Kawaiaha‘o Church

Prior to the missionaries arriving in the islands, the flat plain just south of the village of Honolulu was a barren, windswept dust bowl – little more than a desert.  However, in the midst of this sun-parched land there was an oasis, a spring whose waters were reserved exclusively for the land’s high chiefs and chiefesses.
One such noble who frequented this pool was the chiefess Ha‘o. Eventually these waters, and the surrounding land, came to be known as Ka Wai a Ha‘o – the freshwater pool of Ha‘o.
In 1820, the first missionaries arrived in Hawai‘i, and found themselves well-accepted by royalty as well as the general populace.  They were granted land at Kawaiaha‘o for the purpose of establishing their residence and church.
The missionaries, less the group left on the Big Island, landed at Honolulu on April 19, 1820.  Four days later, Hiram Bingham, the leader of the group, preached the first formal Protestant sermon in the islands.  Initial services were in thatched structures.  Later, a more permanent church was built.
The church, constructed between 1836 and 1842, was in the New England style of the Hawaiian missionary and has been restored and altered several times since first erected.  The “Kauikeaouli clock,” donated by King Kamehameha III in 1850, still tolls the hours to this day.
Revered as the Protestant “mother church” and often called “the Westminster Abbey of Hawai‘i” this structure is an outgrowth of the original Mission Church founded in Boston and is the first foreign church on O‘ahu (1820).
Within its walls the kingdom’s royalty prayed, sang hymns, were married, christened their children and finally laid in state.  As the state church, it was the scene of many celebrated events associated with the Hawaiian Kingdom – inaugurations, funerals, weddings, thanksgiving ceremonies.
The “Stone Church,” as it came to be known, is in fact not built of stone, but of giant slabs of coral hewn from ocean reefs.  These slabs had to be quarried from under water; each weighed more than 1,000 pounds.  Natives dove 10 to 20 feet to hand-chisel these pieces from the reef, then raised them to the surface, loaded some 14,000 of the slabs into canoes and ferried them to shore.
Following five years of construction, The Stone Church was ready for dedication ceremonies on July 21, 1842.  The grounds of Kawaiaha‘o overflowed with 4,000 to 5,000 faithful worshippers.  King Kamehameha III, who contributed generously to the fund to build the church, attended the service.
Kawaiaha‘o Church was designed and founded by its first pastor, Hiram Bingham, my great-great-great grandfather.  Hiram left the islands on August 3, 1840 and never saw the completed church.  Kawaiaha‘o Church is listed on the state and national registers of historic sites.
Kawaiaha‘o Church continues to serve as a center of worship for Hawai‘i’s people, with services conducted every Sunday in Hawaiian and English.  Approximately 85% of the services are in English; at least one song and the Lord’s Prayer (as a congregation) are in Hawaiian.
The image shows Kawaiaha‘o Church, as drawn by Bingham, and a centennial memorial to Hiram Bingham, mounted on its entrance wall.

(I have also uploaded several old and new images of Kawaiaha‘o Church in a folder of like name in the Photos section of my Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/people/Peter-T-Young/1332665638)