Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings | Page 131

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 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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Kahikolu Church

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

March 24, 2015 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

St Catherine’s Church

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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

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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)

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William_Tenooe-Tennooe-(Kanui)

Kanui Headstone

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Four_Owyhean_Youths-Thomas Hoopoo, George Tamoree, William Tenooe and John Honoree

Foreign Mission School (CornwallHistoricalSociety)

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February 2, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Old Mission School House

“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”. (Sybil Bingham)

“Mother Bingham … teaching at first in her own thatched house, later in one room of the old frame house still standing on King Street … until the station report of 1829 finally records, in the Missionary Herald of September, 1830:”

“As evidence of some progress among the people, we are happy to mention the erection of a large school house, 128 feet in length by 37 feet in breadth, for the accommodation of our higher schools, or classes, on the monitorial plan.” (The Friend, December 1, 1924)

“That such structures of native thatch were frail and temporary is evidenced by the next mention of this huge school house which was more than twice as long as the present one, its successor.”

“The fine large school house built at our station was blown down last fall and all the benches, doors, etc., were crushed in the ruins. It was altogether too large, 120 feet long – badly lighted, having no glass windows, the seats and desks of the rudest kind imaginable”.

“Mr Bingham has succeeded in inducing the natives to rebuild it, and when I left home, the work had commenced. It will he almost 66 feet by 30. It will be more permanent than before, and as it is for the accommodation of the weekly meetings, it will be a very useful building.” (Judd, October 23, 1833; The Friend)

“When I was little, very little, I mean, we always spoke of that adobe school house as Mrs Bingham’s school house. The Hawaiians and everybody always thought of it and spoke of it as her school house, because she was the only one of the mission mothers who could manage to carry on school work even part of the time.” (The Friend, December 1, 1924)

“I cannot tell you when the old school house was first opened for a Hawaiian school. It must have been when I was very little, perhaps even before I was born. But I do know that Mrs Bingham and occasionally some of the other ladies taught the Hawaiian Mission School there all the year, until it came time for the general meeting of the Mission in May or June.”

“That was the time when the whaleships might be expected from around the Horn, and if there was to be a reinforcement of the mission, it was appropriate to have it arrive when all the members of the mission were gathered at Honolulu.” (Henry Parker, Pastor of Kawaiahaʻo Church; The Friend)

“We have a very good school house built of mud and plastered inside and out with lime made of coral. It is thatched with grass, has a floor, seats and benches in front to write upon… All our scholars assemble in it and after prayers the native teachers take their scholars into the old grass meeting house, leaving us with about 60, which we manage ourselves.” (Juliette Cooke; The Friend)

“(T)his old room speaks so unmistakably of other days, of other modes of building as of other modes of thought, that one is led instinctively to make inquiry into its origins.” (Ethel Damon; The Friend)

“The desks were long benches, running from the center aisle to the side of the long single room of the building. Attached to the back of each seat or bench was the sloping desk or table, at a proper height for the sitter, and under this desk, was a shelf for books, slates, etc.”

“The school furniture was all made of soft white pine and it was not long before it began to show that not even missionary boys with sharp knives could resist the temptation to do a little artistic carving.” (William Richards Castle; The Friend)

The early Mission School House, built about 1833-35 was also the regular meeting place of the annual missionary gathering, known as the “General Meeting.” This building stood south of Kawaiahaʻo Church, at the foot of a lane. (Lyons)

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.” (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. (Dole)

Later (1852,) the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society (HMCS – members were typically referred to as ‘Cousins’) was formed in the Old Mission School House as a social organization, as well as to lend support for the Micronesian mission getting started at the time. (Forbes)

At its first annual meeting its president spoke of its year’s survival as having been “amid the sneers of a few, the fears of some, and the ardent hopes and warm good wishes of many.” It is pleasant to feel that sneers have been hushed, fears have been banished and that hopes have been largely realized. (Annual Report of HMCS, 1892)

In 1855, Ann Eliza Clark became a bride in the old school house to young Orramel Gulick, the second president of HMCS. “I was only seven or eight, too little to be allowed to take any part; but I can tell you it was the most wonderful wedding I ever saw in all my life.”

“I can remember all of the bride’s party. There was Charles Kittredge and William Gulick, and Caroline and Sarah Clark. The two girls wore little leis of papaia buds in their hair. I had worked hard all day stringing those leis, so that they should be just right, without any broken petals.”

“I was too little to be privileged to adorn the bride with jasmine buds and her veil, but I remember her lei, too, just as well as if I had strung it myself – it was made of jasmine, of the just-opening buds. And that wedding was the most wonderful one I ever saw in all my life.” (Julia Ann Eliza Gulick, sister of the groom; The Friend)

In 1895, the Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Association was formed, one of Hawaiʻi’s first eleemosynary organizations. It offered the first teacher training program and free kindergarten to all of Hawaiʻi’s children.

Some of the children were taught in the old Mission School House, “the great single room … on Kawaiahaʻo Street. Cool, spacious, dignified, generous in the proportions of its ample length and breadth, of its lofty ceiling, of its deeply recessed windows….” (The Friend, December 1, 1924)

The teacher training program was eventually moved to what became the University of Hawaiʻi, and the kindergartens were taken over by the Territorial Department of Education. The image shows the Old Mission School House.

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