Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings | Page 129

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.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Wailuku Female Seminary-Mission Houses

Bailey_House-(right)-Seminary_(left)_painting-(NPS)-1880

Bailey_House-(NPS)

Bailey_House

Bailey_House_Maui

Bailey-House-(NPS)

Welcome_to_Bailey_House

Edward_Bailey_painting_of_Wailuku_and_Iao_Valley-1900

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

Wailuku-(DAGS_1261-portion)-1882-GoogleEarth-Bailey_House-former_Wailuku_Female_Seminary-location

Wailuku, Maui looking toward Iao Valley-(HSA)-PPWD-10-14-012

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

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.)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Kalauaaha-Congregational-Church-MissionHouses

Molokai_Kaluaaha_KaluaahaChurch-HHF

Kalauaaha-Congregational-Church-LOC-1912

Molokai_Kaluaaha_Church-MarkWasson

Kalauaaha-Congregational-Church-1

Kalauaaha-Congregational-Church-4

Kalauaaha-Congregational-Church-5

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.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Kahikolu Church

Kahikolu Church-HHF

Kahikolu-Church

Kahikolu-Church-WHT

kahikolu-congregational-dominic-piperata

Kahikolu_Church

Kahikolu Church-HVCB Warrior Marker

Kahikolu Church-sign

Cheifess_Kapiolani

Samuel_Ruggles

Cochran_Forbes

John_Davis_Paris

Opukaha’ia_Cornwall-prior_burial_site

Opukaha’ia_at_Cornwall-prior_burial_site-plaque

Henry_Opukahaia’s_grave_in_Cornwall,_Connecticut-(he_was_later_moved to Kahikolu Church, Kealakekua)

Henry_Opukahaia’s_grave_memorial

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.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Mokapu_Heiau-Columns on left believed to be remains of St Catherines Church-MCBH

Ruins of St Catherine Church-BM-Klieger-1908

Extract is from a topographic map of Oahu by the U.S. Geological Survey, 1938

Mokapu-DAGS-1140-noting general area of St Catherine’s

Mokapu-DAGS-1848-noting general area of St Catherine’s-1892

St Ann’s Church-Heeia-(StAnns)

St Ann’s Church-Heeia

March 9, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘Tennooe’ – William Kanui

“William Kanui, who had been placed at Kailua, having in a few short months violated his vows by excess in drinking (and) was excluded from Christian fellowship, but still performed some service for the chiefs for a time, then became a wanderer for many years.” (Bingham)

Let’s look back …

“He was born on the Island of Oʻahu, about the close of the last century. His father belonging to the party of a defeated chief, fled with his son to Waimea, Kauai, while there (1809,) an American merchant vessel … touched for supplies.” Kanui and his brother caught a ride on the ship and ended up in Boston. (The Friend, February 5, 1864)

By 1815, many divinity school students at Yale were fascinated with the prospect of evangelizing what were considered the “heathen” (a person who does not belong to a widely held religion) in far-off lands. Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia had been befriended by members of the church community, and was held up as an example of the intelligence and propensity for spirituality that could be found among the Hawaiian people. (Warne)

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ (ABCFM) Foreign Mission School at Cornwall, Connecticut opened in the spring of 1817. Kanui was among seven Hawaiians in the opening class. Three other “heathen” included two boys from Calcutta and one Native American.

“Soon after their arrival, they attracted the attention of the friends of foreign missions, and when the mission school was opened … they were received as pupils (Kanui, ʻŌpūkahaʻia, Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, and Prince Humehume (son of Kauaʻi’s King Kaumuali‘i”.)) (The Friend, February 5, 1864)

The coming of ʻŌpūkahaʻia and other young Hawaiians to the continent had awakened a deep Christian sympathy in the churches. “The arrival in this country of several youth from the Sandwich Islands, and the leadings of Providence respecting them, have been viewed from the first, by those acquainted with the facts, as an indication of some important design…”

“… under this impression, several individuals undertook to assist and patronize these youth. Their efforts have been crowned with unexpected success.” (Five Youths from the Sandwich Islands, 1815)

The boys were taught to read and write, but the only available textbooks were in the English language – there was not yet an appropriate alphabet, nor was there a single printed page in Hawaiian. For 2 ½ years, Kanui was totally immersed in studies. (Warne)

In the fall of 1819, the brig Thaddeus, was chartered to carry the Pioneer Company of missionaries to the Islands. There were seven American couples sent by the ABCFM to convert the Hawaiians to Christianity (two Ordained Preachers, Hiram & Sybil Bingham and Asa and Lucy Thurston; two Teachers, Samuel & Mercy Whitney and Samuel & Mary Ruggles; a Doctor, Thomas & Lucia Holman; a Printer, Elisha & Maria Loomis; and a Farmer, Daniel Chamberlain (and his family.))

Kanui was among four native Hawaiians selected to accompany the group. He, along with Hopu and Honoliʻi, had progressed in their Christian studies to the point of being accepted as “pious” and baptized into the church. The fourth was Prince Humehume. (Warne) (Unfortunately, ʻŌpūkahaʻia died suddenly of typhus fever in 1818 and did not fulfill his dream of returning to the islands to preach the gospel.)

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries from the northeast US set sail on the Thaddeus for the Islands.

After 164-days at sea, on April 4, 1820, the Thaddeus arrived and anchored at Kailua-Kona on the Island of Hawaiʻi. Hawai‘i’s “Plymouth Rock” is about where the Kailua pier is today.

By the time the Pioneer Company arrived, Kamehameha I had died and the centuries-old kapu system had been abolished; through the actions of King Kamehameha II (Liholiho,) with encouragement by former Queens Kaʻahumanu and Keōpūolani (Liholiho’s mother,) the Hawaiian people had already dismantled their heiau and had rejected their religious beliefs.

In the Kailua mission at Kona Lucy Thurston noted, “In the morning the two Hawaiian youth walked away to see the gentry; and having an eye to influence, they put on their best broadcloth suits and ruffled shirts, their conspicuous watch chains, of course, dangling from the fobs of their pants.”

“Their hair was cut short on the sides and back of the head, but left long on top, to stand gracefully erect. Their style was the same as if again about to enter the capacious drawing rooms of Boston where they had been received with much éclat.” (Thurston, 1882)

After the Thaddeus departed, Kanui was severely put to the test. For the first time in years he was back in a culture that he had loved in his childhood – the dress, or lack thereof, the chants and dances, swimming in the ocean, fishing, games of bowling with the ‘ulu maika stones.

However, it was Kanui’s close association with Liholiho that posed the most serious temptation for the young Kanui. Liholiho “loved his liquor, and was often recorded as being extremely intoxicated. It was not long until Kanui began to drink with Liholiho and his court – an action that surely led to severe admonitions from the pastor, Asa Thurston.” (Warne)

July 23, 1820, Kanui was the first to return to the “old ways.” Bingham excommunicated Kanui from the church. Thus, a mere 4-months after his arrival home, Kanui was on his own – he served for a time in the court of Liholiho, worked in a Honolulu grog shop and signed aboard various whaling vessels.

He left the Islands and joined the California gold rush in 1848; he was successful in gold digging, but lost all (about $6,000) when the bank where he had his deposits, Page, Bacon & Co, of San Francisco, failed. He reconnected with the church, joining the Bethel Church in San Francisco, under the charge of the Rev. M. Rowell. (The Friend, February 5, 1864)

Kanui later returned to the Islands and the first person he looked up was Hiram Bingham. Kanui was welcomed back, but told he would be treated as an outsider for a considerable period until he proved to the missionaries he was truly “pious.”

But Kanui, now 45-years of age, was a changed man. He obtained permission from local Chiefs to establish a school on a small plot of land at the foot of Palolo Valley and called it “William Tennooe’s English School.” (Although the newly-standardized alphabet would spell his name as “Kanui,” he retained the old anglicized spelling, “Tennooe.”)

It was a subscription school, charging parents were 12 ½ to 25 cents per week. Textbooks included the Bible in English, Webster’s Spelling Book and Adam’s Arithmetic. After a slow start the school grew to about 50-students. (Warne)

“Of the fourteen pioneers, I gratefully record it, after twenty-seven years, four men and the seven women are still living to praise God for his faithfulness to them, and for his surpassing favor to that mission and that nation. Wm. Kanui, after wandering twenty years, has returned to his duty as a teacher.” (Bingham)

Kanui died at Queen’s Hospital, January 14, 1864, at the age of about 66 years. “(H)e departed this life leaving the most substantial and gratifying evidence that he was prepared to die. His views were remarkably clear and satisfactory. Christ was his only hope, and Heaven the only desire of his heart.”

“It was peculiarly gratifying to sit beside his bedside and hear him recount the ‘wonderful ways’ in which God had led him. He cherished a most lively sense of gratitude towards all those kind friends in America who provided for his education … a stranger in a foreign land.” (The Friend, February 5, 1864)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger