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May 9, 2015 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

The First School

God brought Hiram Bingham a woman “he chose himself and bade me take her with a thankful heart, and always remember that God hears prayer. For he had prepared her and her friends to bless the mission with her aid.” (Hiram Bingham to William Jackson, February 1821; Wagner)

“This friend of the heathen was an honor to the town that gave her birth and education. She was a sagacious and successful teacher in Southampton, Mass., Sharon and East Windsor, Conn., Canandaigua, N ., and Honolulu, Sandwich Islands”. (Hiram Bingham to William G. Bates, Westfield, Mass, October 6, 1869; Westfield Jubilee, 1870)

Sybil Moseley Bingham was born September 14, 1792, the daughter of Pliny and Sophia (Pomeroy) Moseley in Westfield, Massachusetts. She was educated at Westfield Academy. By the age of nineteen she had lost both of her parents (1810 and 1811.)

Sybil was a good scholar; and when she arrived at the age of twenty-one, she commenced teaching, in different and distant towns. She was a remarkably mild and gentle person in her manners. (Westfield Jubilee, 1870)

As the eldest of three sisters, she had to work to support herself and her two sisters, who stayed with relatives while she taught school at first at Hartford and later at in Canandaigua, New York.

“The result of her labors there, in conjunction with her fellow-laborers, has been of world-wide importance. Those beautiful islands have been redeemed from heathenism; and, though the population has decreased in its numbers, yet the people have increased in intelligence, and the products of their labor have added to the comforts of the world.”

“I doubt not, but that Mrs. Bingham was not surpassed, in her devotion and zeal, and in her earnest and faithful labors, by any other missionary, who ever went forth to a foreign land. Her whole soul was in the work.”

“She was, in a peculiar manner, fitted for it; and there was a pervading enthusiasm in her mind, which gave to her whole life, the highest impulse of Christian duty.” (Westfield Jubilee, 1870)

Hiram Bingham and his classmate, Asa Thurston, were ordained at Goshen, Ct., September 29, 1819; it was the first ordination of foreign missionaries in the State of Connecticut.

On October 11, Bingham was married, at Hartford, Ct., to Miss Sybil Moseley, who, out of sympathy with the new missionary enterprise, had been led to attend the ordination, and to whom he was first introduced on that occasion. (Congressional Quarterly, 1871)

They sailed for the Hawaiian Islands (then called Sandwich Islands) on October 23, 1819; on March 30, 1820, they anchored off shore of Kawaihae, then sailed to Kailua Kona and anchored there (April 4.) On April 11, King Kamehameha II (Liholiho) gave the missionaries permission to stay. Hiram and Sybil sailed for Honolulu the next day (and arrived April 19.)

It is said that she started the first school in Hawaiʻi in May 1820. (“… Sybil Moseley Bingham, opened the first school in this city in May, 1820, surely an historic date.” (Hiram Bingham II)

Sybil’s June 20, 1820 journal entry notes, “After neglect of my journal for more than two months in a most interesting part of our history too … Very soon I gathered up 12 or 15 little native girls to come once a day to the house so that as early as possible the business of instruction might be commenced. That was an interesting day to me to lay the foundation of the first school ever assembled in this dark land.”

June 21st. “The most which has interested me to-day has been my little school. To see the little things so ready to learn, and so busy with their needles, is very pleasant. I long to know more of their language, that I might be pouring into their tender minds more instruction than ab.”

“I think we make progress in that now. It was impossible to do much on the voyage, as, without books, all our knowledge of it must be acquired as it falls from the lips of the natives. There are a few females who understand a little of English.”

July 20th. “What arrangement we shall make of our family concerns when so large a part has gone, we have not determined. I should like to have this little cottage a few weeks with only my kind husband and pleasant native boy, that so I might attend with more delight to my school which is daily encreasing, and such missionary duties as each day brings with it.”

She did not just teach children, her July 22, 1820 entry notes, “a native woman called Sally in whom we have all been interested. She is the wife of an American – speaks English, and with her two little girls comes regularly every day to learn to read. I earnestly desire to be more faithful in instructing her.”

Sybil was not alone in teaching the native Hawaiians. In 1820, missionary wife Lucy Thurston noted in her Journal, Liholiho’s desire to learn, “The king (Liholiho, Kamehameha II) brought two young men to Mr. Thurston, and said: “Teach these, my favorites, (John Papa) Ii and (James) Kahuhu. It will be the same as teaching me. Through them I shall find out what learning is.”

By 1831, in just eleven years from the first arrival of the missionaries, Hawaiians had built over 1,100-schoolhouses. This covered every district throughout the eight major islands and serviced an estimated 53,000-students. (Laimana)

The proliferation of schoolhouses was augmented by the missionaries printing of 140,000-copies of the pi-ʻapa (elementary Hawaiian spelling book) by 1829 and the staffing of the schools with 1,000-plus Hawaiian teachers. (Laimana)

In 1839, King Kamehameha III called for the formation of the Chiefs’ Children’s School (Royal School.) The main goal of this school was to groom the next generation of the highest ranking Chiefs’ children and secure their positions for Hawaiʻi’s Kingdom. The King asked missionaries Amos Starr Cooke and Juliette Montague Cooke to teach the 16-royal children and run the school.

Interestingly, as the early missionaries learned the Hawaiian language, they then taught their lessons in the mission schools in Hawaiian, rather than English. In part, the mission did not want to create a separate caste and portion of the community as English-speaking Hawaiians. (Sybil Bingham is my great-great-great grandmother.)

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Sybil_Moseley_Bingham

Filed Under: Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings, Schools Tagged With: Hawaii, Sybil Bingham, Pioneer Company, Missionaries, Education, School

May 4, 2015 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Academy of the Sacred Hearts

In the early-1500s, Jean de Joyeuse presented a wedding gift to his young bride, Francoise e Voisins; it was a dark hardwood statue (11-inches tall) of the Blessed Mother, depicted as a dignified Grecian matron with the Christ Child on her left arm and an olive branch in her right hand – it was known as “Virgin of Joyeuse.”

Over the years, the statue was passed down through the family; then, one family member joined the Capuchin Franciscans in Paris and brought the statue with him to the monastery.

Over the next couple of centuries, the statue – with the olive branch in her hand and the Prince of Peace on her arm – was acclaimed (and renamed) Notre Dame de Paix … Our Lady of Peace. On July 9, 1657, before a large crowd (including King Louis XIV,) the papal nuncio to France blessed and solemnly enthroned the Blessed Mother’s statue.

The French Revolution, which started in 1789, put Our Lady of Peace in hiding; when peace had been restored, the statue was given to a priest in Paris (Father Marie-Joseph Pierre Coudrin,) who gave it to a nun (Mother Henriette Aymer de la Chevalerie.)

On May 6, 1806, the statue was enshrined in a convent chapel in the Picpus district of Paris. (In 1800, the priest and nun co-founded a community of sisters, brothers and priests – the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament – members were known more simply as the Picpus or Sacred Hearts.)

In Hawaiʻi, King Kamehameha III donated land for the first permanent Catholic Church; it was named the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace (it’s the oldest Roman Catholic Cathedral in continuous use in the US.) It was dedicated on August 15, 1843; a statue of Our Lady of Peace stands on the mauka side of the cathedral.

On May 4, 1859 the Sisters of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament arrived at Honolulu.

On July 9 of that year, they opened the Sacred Hearts Convent, a boarding and day school for young women, at the Catholic mission. (Initial enrollment was just five girls, but the population increased greatly by the time of the new school building’s opening.)

Five bays of the original 20 bay building remain on Fort Street. The bays included the relief moldings spelling out “AD 1859” to commemorate the year of the sisters’ arrival and the beginnings of the Catholic Church’s school, not the date of construction (it was built in 1901.)

A separate chapel, infirmary and additional classroom spaces were on other parts of the Cathedral grounds. The sisters resided in rooms near the large school house and among the girls in the dormitories located at the rear of the Cathedral property.

Between 1906 and 1909, representatives of the Catholic community acquired a five-and-a-half acre tract of land on the makai side of Waiʻalae Avenue, just off the streetcar line in the growing suburban area of Kaimuki.

In 1909, Bishop Libert Boeynaems, SS.CC., asked the Sisters to establish a Catholic secondary school for women in Kaimuki. Academy of the Sacred Hearts welcomed its first seventy-five students and nineteen boarders on September 12, 1909.

The new Sacred Hearts Academy opened officially with its dedication on September 5, 1909; classes for the first class of 33 boarders and 20 day students began on September 13. Eleven sisters, formerly residing at Fort Street, moved to the new school. Within a short time, the school expanded to include young women from kindergarten to the twelfth grade.

In addition to the Convent and the Academy, the Sisters opened an orphanage, St Anthony’s Home, in 1909. They began St Patrick School, Kaimuki, in 1930; St Theresa School, Liliha, in 1931; Our Lady of Peace School, Nuʻuanu, in 1933; and Immaculate Conception School, Līhuʻe, in 1951.

The building back on Fort Street remained in service until 1937, when the school’s educational functions shifted to other church properties and the resident sisters moved to a new convent at the former Baldwin Estate near School Street in Nuʻuanu.

The new owners converted the building to a more conventional commercial frontage. The mauka side commercial front probably dates from the 1940s, when the new owners stripped the decorative façade and replaced it with a smooth concrete facing.

The makai side became the Ritz Department Store in 1954. The Ritz completed the conversion of the Fort Street façade to a large, stark concrete panel, embellished by a vertical “RITZ” sign and horizontal metal canopy stretching across the entire frontage. (The Catholic Church repurchased the property in 2007, converting a space used by the Church of Scientology into a Catholic museum.)

In 1990, the Sisters passed the administration of Sacred Hearts to a lay staff, but the school continues the traditions of providing a quality Catholic education for Hawaii’s women. The governance of the Academy rests in a Board of Directors, with specific powers reserved to a religious Board of Members.

The school has grown to 1,100 students, in grades preschool to 12th grade. In 2003, the school was recognized as a national service learning school and, in 2007, it was recognized as a national school of character, one of 10 in the nation.

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SacredHeartsAcademy
SacredHeartsAcademy
Sacred-Heart-Academy
Sacred-Heart-Academy
SacredHeartsClass1915
SacredHeartsClass1915
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SacredHearts1943
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Sacred_Hearts_Academy
SacredHeartsAcademy-2013
SacredHeartsAcademy-2013
Our Lady of Peace-Statue-Fort Street
Our Lady of Peace-Statue-Fort Street
Our Lady of Peace Cathedral, Honolulu, 1890
Our Lady of Peace Cathedral, Honolulu, 1890
Cathedral (left)-Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary's School and Convent-(right)
Cathedral (left)-Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary’s School and Convent-(right)
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary School and Convent-Fort Street
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary School and Convent-Fort Street
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary School and Convent-FortStreet
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary School and Convent-FortStreet
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary School and Convent-Fort_Street
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary School and Convent-Fort_Street
Remaining 5-bays of the original convent-Fort Street
Remaining 5-bays of the original convent-Fort Street
Honolulu and Vicinity-Dakin-Fire Insurance- 06-Map-1906-noting cathedral, convent and Sacred Hearts School FortStreet
Honolulu and Vicinity-Dakin-Fire Insurance- 06-Map-1906-noting cathedral, convent and Sacred Hearts School FortStreet
Downtown Honolulu 1938-cathedral and convent noted
Downtown Honolulu 1938-cathedral and convent noted

Filed Under: Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings, Schools Tagged With: Hawaii, Honolulu, Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, Academy of the Sacred Hearts

April 18, 2015 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

General Meeting

The Prudential Committee of the ABCFM in giving instructions to the pioneers of 1819 said: “Your mission is a mission of mercy, and your work is to be wholly a labor of love. … Your views are not to be limited to a low, narrow scale, but you are to open your hearts wide, and set your marks high.”

“You are to aim at nothing short of covering these islands with fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches, and of Christian civilization.” (The Friend)

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863 – the “Missionary Period”,) about 180-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the ABCFM in the Hawaiian Islands.

The missionaries were scattered across the Islands, each home was usually in a thickly inhabited village, so that the missionary and his wife could be close to their work among the people.

In the early years, they lived in the traditional thatched houses – “our little cottage built chiefly of poles, dried grass and mats, being so peculiarly exposed to fire … consisting only of one room with a little partition and one door.” (Sybil Bingham) The thatched cottages were raised upon a low stone platform. Later, they lived in wood, stone or adobe homes.

Very prominent in the old mission life was the annual “General Meeting” where all of the missionary families from across the Islands gathered at Honolulu from four to six weeks.

“The design of their coming together would naturally suggest itself to any reflecting mind. They are all engaged in one work, but are stationed at various and distant points on different portions of the group, hence they feel the necessity of occasionally coming together, reviewing the past, and concerting plans for future operations.”

“Were it not for these meetings, missionaries at extreme parts of the group might never see each other, and in some instances we know that persons connected with the Sandwich Island Mission, have never seen each other’s faces, although for years they have been laboring in the same work.” (The Friend, June 15, 1846)

The primary object of this gathering was to hold a business meeting for hearing reports of the year’s work and of the year’s experiences in more secular matters, and there from to formulate their annual report to the Board in Boston.

Another important object of the General Meeting was a social one. The many stations away from Honolulu were more or less isolated-some of them extremely so. Perhaps a dominant influence in the consumption of so much time was the appreciation of the social opportunity, and the unwillingness to bring it unnecessarily to a speedy close. (Dole)

“Often some forty or more of the missionaries besides their wives were present, as well as many of the older children. … Much business was transacted relating to the multifarious work and business of the Mission. New missionaries were to be located, and older ones transferred.”

“Expenditures upon schools, printing, dwellings, etc., were decided upon. Assignments of work were made in translating, revising and writing books.” (Bishop)

As an example, 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. One of them, Wailuku Female Seminary on the island of Maui, was the first female school begun by the missionaries.

In 1839, the membership discussed “Instruction for the young Chiefs.” The meeting minutes note, “This subject was fully considered in connection with an application of the chiefs requesting the services of Mr. Cooke, as a teacher for their children; and it was voted:”

“That the mission comply with their request, provided they will carry out their promise to Mr. Cooke’s satisfaction; namely, to build a school house, sustain him in his authority, over the scholars, and support the school.”

This became the Chiefs’ Children’s School (later known as Royal School,) founded by King Kamehameha III as a boarding school to educate the children of the Hawaiian royalty (aliʻi). The school was first located where the ʻIolani Barracks stand now.

The annual gathering of the Cousins, descendants of the early missionaries, continues. Our family is part of the Society and Cousins. Hiram and Sybil Bingham (Hiram was leader of the first 1820 group of missionaries to Hawai‘i) are my great-great-great grandparents.

Today, the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, a nonprofit educational institution and genealogical society, exists to promote an understanding of the social history of nineteenth-century Hawai‘i and its critical role in the formation of modern Hawai‘i.

The Society operates the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives, comprised of three historic buildings and a research archives with reading room. The Society also compiles the genealogical records of the American Protestant missionaries in Hawai‘i and promotes the participation of missionary descendants in the Society’s activities.

Through the Mission Houses, the Society collects and preserves the documents, artifacts and other records of the missionaries in Hawai‘i’s history; makes these collections available for research and educational purposes; and interprets the historic site and collections to reflect the social history of nineteenth century Hawai‘i and America.

Guided tours of the house and other parts of the historic site are offered Tuesday through Saturday, starting on the hour every hour from 11 am with the last tour beginning at 3 pm.

Nominal fees include: General – $10; Kamaʻaina, Senior Citizens (55+) & Military – $8 and Students (age 6 to College w/ID) – $6; Kamaʻaina Saturday (last Saturday of the Month) 50% off admission for residents. (Reservations for groups of 10 or more are required.)

The tradition of the annual gathering of cousins continues … today is the annual meeting for the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society. As part of the gathering, the names of the missionary families are called out, in the order of the company that they arrived in the Islands.

Our family is part of the Society and cousins. Hiram and Sybil Bingham (Hiram was leader of the first 1820 group of missionaries to Hawai‘i) are my great-great-great grandparents.

I am honored and proud to serve on the Mission Houses Board of Trustees. Please also consider visiting the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives (on King Street, adjoining Kawaiahaʻo Church.) Take a tour, have a bite to eat in the Mark Noguchi run Mission Social Hall and Cafe, visit the gift shop/book store.

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Old School House-General Meeting-Site-Centennial Book
ABCFM-Missionary_Companies_to_Hawaii
ABCFM-Missionary_Companies_to_Hawaii
Kauikeaouli_Letter_Asking_Cooke_to_Teach_at_Chiefs_Childrens_School_1839
Kauikeaouli_Letter_Asking_Cooke_to_Teach_at_Chiefs_Childrens_School_1839
Commemorative Plaque to Amos and Juliette Cooke - listing students they taught at Royal School
Commemorative Plaque to Amos and Juliette Cooke – listing students they taught at Royal School
Royal School layout
Royal School layout
Photograph_of_the_Royal_School,_probably_after_1848
Photograph_of_the_Royal_School,_probably_after_1848
Wailuku Female Seminary-MissionHouses
Wailuku Female Seminary-MissionHouses
Wailuku Female Seminary-Mission Houses
Wailuku Female Seminary-Mission Houses

Filed Under: Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings Tagged With: Hawaii, American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, ABCFM, Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives, General Meeting

April 16, 2015 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Hoʻomana Naʻauao

Hoʻomana Naʻauao o Hawaiʻi was the first independent Hawaiian Christian organization in the Islands. It was founded by John Kekipi Maia; he named his denomination “Hoʻomana Naʻauao,” which members translate as meaning “reasonable service.”

It started with the help of John Hawelu Poloailehua.

Poloailehua was born in Kukuihaele, Hamakua, Hawaiʻi in about 1838; at the age of 14 he moved to Honolulu. In February of the next year, when he was incapacitated by a violent fever, he asked for and received a Bible; it was placed on his chest.

He prayed while keeping his eyes closed and holding the Bible, as soon as he opened the Bible, read a verse and pledged his faith, he recovered from his illness.

April 16, 1853 (the date which Kekipi considers was the beginning of the church) is when Poloailehua, still a 15-year-old boy, started his mission work after he recovered from his illness.

He stayed in Honolulu to carry out mission work in his neighborhood where smallpox was prevalent at that time; his family was also afflicted with the illness – all died except for Poloailehua. (Inoue)

On April 16, 1881, Poloailehua met John Kekipi Maia of North Kohala and told him “Whatever secret you have within you, you must bring it out.” (Ritz)

Kekipi moved to Oʻahu and joined the Kaumakapili Church; he seemed to develop his work inside the congregation as he had in Kohala, Hawai’i.

However, in 1890, he left Kaumakapili Church, taking his followers with him. He built a meeting house on the seaside of Kālia and started his mission work as an independent group. (Inoue)

On July 31, 1897, a new church building (on Cooke Street in Kaka’ako) was sanctified and named Ke Alaula O Ka Mālamalama. With this church as a mother church, more than ten sister churches were founded on Hawaiʻi, Maui, Lānaʻi and Molokaʻi.

It was officially recognized as a religious organization on February 16, 1911 whose purposes “are purely those of religion, charity, education and general relief” and that “its main church and mission is at Koula, near King and South Streets in said Honolulu, with branch missions and churches at various places throughout the Territory of Hawaii.”

Hoʻomana Naʻauao was established on the concept of “reasonable service,” based on the passage in Romans: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” (Ritz)

Church members believed that Hawaiians were descended from Hebrews and Egyptians and that ancient Hawaiian religion evolved from the same source as Christianity. Teaching that the causes of illness and misfortune could be discerned after praying and fasting, the church gained many adherents among prominent individuals in the Hawaiian community.

The church emphasized repentance as a premise to salvation. In the practices of Hoʻomana Naʻauao, the importance of visions was one of the main characteristics.

Another significant characteristic of the practices of Hoʻomana Naʻauao was the opening of the Bible to a random page to see the divine will in sacred phrases on the page. (Inoue)

Some may call this “the Hawaiian Christian science,” and others say the teachings most resemble that of the Congregationalist Church. But at its simplest form, Hoʻomana Naʻahuao is a mixture of Protestant Christianity and Hawaiian. Members espouse a belief in the trinity and follow the Bible, as well as Hawaiian values. (Ritz)

It was the largest independent Hawaiian Church; several offshoot churches broke away in the 1930s and the 1940s.

Other Hoʻomana Naʻauao o Hawaii churches include Ke Kilohana oka Mālamalama in Hilo, Ka Hoku oka Malamalama, Paipaikou, Ka Nani oka Malamalama, Kohala, Ka Elele oka Malamalama, Kapoho, and Ka Mauloa oka Malamalama in Kurtistown, and Ka Lanakila oka Malamalama and Ka Lokahi oka Malamalama on the island of Lanaʻi (there were others.)

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John_Kekipi
John_Kekipi
John_Poloailehua
John_Poloailehua
Ke Alaula O Ka Malamalama Ka Ho'omana Na'auao Church - side
Ke Alaula O Ka Malamalama Ka Ho’omana Na’auao Church – side
Ke Alaula O Ka Malamalama Ka Ho'omana Na'auao Church - Kakaa'ako
Ke Alaula O Ka Malamalama Ka Ho’omana Na’auao Church – Kakaa’ako
Ke Alaula O Ka Malamalama Ka Ho'omana Na'auao Church - sign
Ke Alaula O Ka Malamalama Ka Ho’omana Na’auao Church – sign
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Ka_Lanakila-Church_(AFAR)
Ka_Lanakila_Church-(Abroad)
Ka_Lanakila_Church-(Abroad)
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Ka_Lanakila_Church-(Abroad)
Ka Mauloa oka Malamalama in Kurtistown
Ka Mauloa oka Malamalama in Kurtistown
Ka Mauloa oka Malamalama in Kurtistown
Ka Mauloa oka Malamalama in Kurtistown
Ka Lokahi oka Malamalama church at lodge_at_koele
Ka Lokahi oka Malamalama church at lodge_at_koele
Ka Lokahi oka Malamalama church - lodge_at_koele
Ka Lokahi oka Malamalama church – lodge_at_koele
Ka Lokahi oka Malamalama church - koele
Ka Lokahi oka Malamalama church – koele

Filed Under: Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings Tagged With: Hawaii, Kaumakapili, Ka Lanakila O Ka Malamalama Hoomana Naauao O Hawaii Church, Ke Alaula oka Malamalama, Hoomana Naauao, Ke Kilohana Oka Malamalama

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
Wailuku Female Seminary-Mission Houses
Wailuku Female Seminary-Mission Houses
Wailuku Female Seminary-Mission Houses
Bailey_House-(right)-Seminary_(left)_painting-(NPS)-1880
Bailey_House-(right)-Seminary_(left)_painting-(NPS)-1880
Bailey_House-(NPS)
Bailey_House-(NPS)
Bailey_House
Bailey_House
Bailey_House_Maui
Bailey_House_Maui
Bailey-House-(NPS)
Bailey-House-(NPS)
Bailey-House-(NPS)
Bailey-House-(NPS)
Welcome_to_Bailey_House
Welcome_to_Bailey_House
Edward_Bailey_painting_of_Wailuku_and_Iao_Valley-1900
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
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-(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-(HSA)-PPWD-10-14-012
Wailuku, Maui, looking toward 'Iao Valley-(HHS-1946)
Wailuku, Maui, looking toward ‘Iao Valley-(HHS-1946)

Filed Under: Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings, Schools Tagged With: Wailuku Female Seminary, Reverend Bailey, Bailey House, Hawaii, Maui, Wailuku

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Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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