Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Richard Armstrong

By the time the Pioneer Company of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) Protestant missionaries arrived in 1820, Kamehameha I had died and the centuries-old kapu system had been abolished.

The missionaries first lived in the traditional Hawaiian hatched house, the hale pili.  In addition to their homes, the missionaries had grass meeting places and, later, churches.  One of the first was on the same site as the present Kawaiahaʻo Church.

On December 31, 1820, Levi Sartwell Loomis, son of Elisha and Maria Loomis (the first white child born in the Sandwich Islands) and Sophia Moseley Bingham, daughter of Hiram and Sybil Bingham (the first white girl born on Oʻahu) were baptized.

Within a year, Hiram Bingham began to preach in the Hawaiian language.  4-services a week were conducted (3 in Hawaiian and 1 in English.)    Congregations ranged from 100 – 400; by the end of the year, the thatched church was expanded.

Between 1836 and 1842, Kawaiahaʻo Church was constructed.  Revered as the Protestant “mother church” and often called “the Westminster Abbey of Hawai‘i” this structure is an outgrowth of the original Mission Church founded in Boston and is the first foreign church on O‘ahu (1820.)

Kawaiahaʻo Church was designed and founded by its first pastor, Hiram Bingham.  Hiram left the islands on August 3, 1840 and never saw the completed church.  Reverend Richard Armstrong replaced Bingham as pastor of Kawaiahaʻo.

Richard Armstrong was born in 1805 in Pennsylvania, the youngest of 10-children; he attended three years at Princeton Theological Seminary.  He married Clarissa Chapman, September 25, 1831; was ordained at Baltimore, Maryland, October 27, 1831; and sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts, November 26, 1831 for Hawaiʻi.

Armstrong was with the Fifth Company of missionaries (which included the Alexanders, Emersons, Forbes, Hitchcocks, Lymans, Lyons, Stockton and others. They arrived on May 17, 1832.

Shortly after arrival, Clarissa wrote about a subject most suspect was not a part of the missionary lifestyle … On October 31, 1832, she noted, “Capt Brayton has given me a little beer cask – it holds 6 quarts – Nothing could have been more acceptable.”

“I wanted to ask you for one, but did not like to. O how kind providence has been & is to us, in supplying our wants. The board have sent out hops – & I have some beer now a working. I should like to give you a drink.”

Armstrong was stationed for a year at the mission in Marquesas Islands; he then replaced the Reverend Green as pastor of Kaʻahumanu Church (Wailuku) in 1836, supervised the construction of two stone meeting houses one at Haiku, and the other at Wailuku.  Reverend Green returned to replace Armstrong in 1840.

He was pastor of the Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu from 1840 to 1848.  “Mr. Armstrong preached to congregations of twenty-five hundred and often three thousand people. The ground about the church looked like an encampment when the people came from valley and shore on horseback and spent their noon hour in the rush-covered basement awaiting the afternoon session.”  (The Friend, July 1932)

Following the re-raising of the Hawaiian flag above the Islands on July 31, 1843 for Ka La Hoʻihoʻi Ea – Sovereignty Restoration Day, religious services were held that evening in Kawaiahaʻo Church.

A sermon apropos of the occasion was preached by Rev. Richard Armstrong, the text being taken from Psalms 37, 3 – ‘Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.’ There could have been no question but that his hearers had been fed on that day.  (Thrum)

In 1848 Armstrong left the mission and became Minister of Public Instruction on June 7, 1848, following the death of William Richards. Armstrong was to serve the government for the remainder of his life. He was a member of the Privy Council and the House of Nobles and acted as the royal chaplain.

He set up the Board of Education under the kingdom in 1855 and was its president until his death.   Armstrong is known as the “the father of American education in Hawaiʻi.”

The government-sponsored education system in Hawaiʻi is the longest running public school system west of the Mississippi River.  To this day, Hawaiʻi is the only state to have a completely-centralized State public school system.

Armstrong helped bring better textbooks, qualified teachers and better school buildings.  Students were taught in Hawaiian how to read, write, math, geography, singing and to be “God-fearing” citizens. (By 1863, three years after Armstrong’s death, the missionaries stopped being a part of Hawaiʻi’s education system.)

The Armstrongs had ten children. Son William N Armstrong (King Kalākaua’s Attorney General) accompanied Kalākaua on his tour of the world, one of three white men who accompanied the King as advisers and counsellors (Armstrong, Charles H Judd and a personal attendant/valet.)

Armstrong and Judd were Kalākaua’s schoolmates at the Chiefs’ Children’s School in 1849.  (Marumoto)  “Thirty years afterward, and after three of our schoolmates had become kings and had died (Kamehameha IV & V and Lunalio) and two of them had become queens (Emma and Liliʻuokalani,) it so happened that Kalākaua ascended the throne, and with his two old schoolmates began his royal tour.”  (Armstrong)

Another Armstrong son, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, became a Union general in the American Civil War and was founder of Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School (later called the Hampton Institute, then Hampton University.)  (King Kalākaua visited Hampton Normal and Agricultural School on one of his trips to the continent.)

Among the school’s famous alumni is Dr Booker T Washington, who became an educator and later founded Tuskegee Institute.  President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was read to local freedmen under the historic “Emancipation Tree,” which is still located on the campus today.

Richard Armstrong’s home was a stone building on Beretania adjoining Washington Place (called “Stonehouse,” named after the residence of Admiral Richard Thomas in England.  It later served as temporary facilities at different times for what became St. Louis and Punahou Schools.

Reverend Richard Armstrong died on September 23, 1860; on his way to preach in Kāneʻohe “he had been thrown from his horse and seriously hurt. He was a good rider, but the horse had been suddenly startled and a girth gave way.”

He is buried “in the shadow of the great Kawaiahaʻo church where he had preached for so many years.”  Clarissa, moved to California in 1880; she died in 1891 (the reverse of her tombstone says “Aloha.”)

The image shows Richard Armstrong.  In addition, I have added others similar images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC

by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Children of the Missionaries

The children of nineteenth-century American missionaries … Hawaiian nationality by birth, white by race and American by parental and educational design.  (Schultz)

There were seven American couples sent by the ABCFM to convert the Hawaiians to Christianity in this Pioneer Company.  These included two Ordained Preachers, Hiram Bingham and his wife Sybil and Asa Thurston and his wife Lucy.

Joining them were two Teachers, Mr. Samuel Whitney and his wife Mercy and Samuel Ruggles and his wife Mary; a Doctor, Thomas Holman and his wife Lucia; a Printer, Elisha Loomis and his wife Maria; and a Farmer, Daniel Chamberlain, his wife Jerusha and five children (Dexter, Nathan, Mary, Daniel and Nancy.)

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.)  For the most part, the couples were newlyweds; here is a listing of their wedding dates:

Hiram and Sybil Bingham were married October 11, 1819
Asa and Lucy Thurston were married October 12, 1819
Samuel and Mercy Whitney were married October 4, 1819
Samuel and Mary Ruggles were married September 22, 1819
Thomas and Lucia Holman were married September 26, 1819
Elisha and Maria Loomis were married September 27, 1819
(Daniel and Jerusha Chamberlain, with five children, were the only family in the Pioneer Company.)

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.

Starting a few short months after their arrival, the new missionary wives became mothers.

The first child was Levi Loomis, son of the Printer, Elisha and Maria Loomis; he was the first white child born in the Islands.  Here is the order of the early missionary births:

July 16, 1820 … Honolulu (Oʻahu) … Levi Loomis
October 19, 1820 … Waimea (Kauaʻi) … Maria Whitney
November 9, 1820 … Honolulu (Oʻahu) … Sophia Bingham
December 22, 1820 … Waimea (Kauaʻi) … Sarah Ruggles
March 2, 1821 … Waimea (Kauaʻi) … Lucia Holman
September 28, 1821 … Honolulu (Oʻahu) … Persis Thurston

More missionaries and more children came, later.

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 established schools associated with their missions across the Islands. This marked the beginning of Hawaiʻi’s phenomenal rise to literacy. The chiefs became proponents for education and edicts were enacted by the King and the council of Chiefs to stimulate the people to reading and writing.

In 1820, missionary 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.”

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.

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)

By 1853, nearly three-fourths of the native Hawaiian population over the age of sixteen years was literate in their own language. The short time span within which native Hawaiians achieved literacy is remarkable in light of the overall low literacy rates of the United States at that time. (Lucas)

This was fine for the Hawaiians who were beginning to learn to read and write, but the missionary families were looking for expanded education for their children.

“During the period from infancy to the age of ten or twelve years, children in the almost isolated family of a missionary could be well provided for and instructed in the rudiments of education without a regular school …  But after that period, difficulties in most cases multiplied.” (Hiram Bingham)

Missionaries were torn between preaching the gospel and teaching their kids.  “(M)ission parents were busy translating, preaching and teaching. Usually parents only had a couple of hours each day to spare with their children.”  (Schultz)

From 1826, until Punahou School opened in 1842, young missionary parents began to make a decision seemingly at odds with the idealizing of the family so prevalent in the 19th century; they weighed the possibility of sending them back to New England.  The trauma mostly affected families of the first two companies, and involving only 19 out of 250 Mission children.  (Zwiep)

“(I)t was the general opinion of the missionaries there that their children over eight or ten years of age, notwithstanding the trial that might be involved, ought to be sent or carried to the United States, if there were friends who would assume a proper guardianship over them”.  (Bingham)

“This was the darkest day in the life history of the mission child.  Peculiarly dependent upon the family life, at the age of eight to twelve years, they were suddenly torn from the only intimates they had ever known, and banished, lonely and homesick, to a mythical country on the other side of the world …”

“… where they could receive letters but once or twice a year; where they must remain isolated from friends and relatives for years and from which they might never return.”  (Bishop)

The parents in the first company demonstrate the range of options available: going home with all the children (as did the Chamberlains and Loomises;) keeping all the children to be educated by the mother (the Thurstons’ choice;) or sending some or all of the children home, not knowing when or if they would be reunited (the course taken by the Binghams, Ruggleses and Whitneys.)

In 1829, Sophia Bingham was sent back to the continent.  Mail was so slow that her mother Sybil waited a year and a half for her first letter from Sophia. “This poor, waiting, anxious heart,” she confessed, “has been made so glad by your long, crowded pages, that it would not be easy to tell you all its joy.”  (Zwiep)

Sophia, the first white girl born on Oʻahu (November 9, 1820,) is my great great grandmother.  The image shows Sophia Bingham.

© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC

by Peter T Young 5 Comments

Tauʻā

William Ellis (August 24, 1794 – 1872) applied to train as a Christian missionary for the London Missionary Society and was accepted to the school.  After attending Homerton College he was ordained in 1815; later that year, he married Mary Mercy Moor (November 9, 1815.)  He served the London Mission in the Society Islands, Hawaiian Islands and Madagascar.

From 1816, when he first entered on his missionary career, until 1825, he devoted himself to “service of the Lord as a missionary” among the South Pacific Islands.

“It was the morning of the Sabbath when we embarked.  Our friends in Gosport were preparing to attend public worship, when we heard the report of a signal-gun. The sound excited a train of feeling, which can be understood only by those who have been placed in similar circumstances. It was a report announcing the arrival of that moment which was to separate, perhaps for ever, from home and all its endearments, and rend asunder every band which friendship and affection had entwined around the heart.”  (Ellis on departing for the South Pacific)

First landing in Eimeo (Moorea,) and travelling throughout the area, he served the London Mission for the next 6-years in the Society Islands (so named by Captain James Cook in honor of the ‘Royal Society,’ “as they lay contiguous to one another.”)

After an initial brief visit in 1822 to Hawaiʻi, arrangement were made between the American Board of Commissions for Foreign Mission, London Missionary Society and local chiefs, Ellis returned to Hawaiʻi to join the American mission there.

On April 16, 1822, the schooner Mermaid, arrived at Honolulu from Tahiti; on board were Ellis, other English missionaries and Auna and Matatore, Tahitian chiefs and teachers. After providing support for a few months to the American missionaries in the Islands, they returned to Tahiti, giving up their original plan of visiting the Marquesas Islands.

February 4, 1823, Ellis returned to the Islands, bringing his wife with him as well as Tahitian teachers, including Tauʻā. (Ellis remained at this time for about eighteen months; then returned to England, with his family.)

Tauʻā, originally known as Matapuupuu, was born in about 1792 and was by birth a raʻatira or landowner.  He had been a principal Arioi (secret religious order of the Society Islands,) and succeeded his elder brother as chief priest of Huahine.  (Gunson)

In August 1813 he joined John Davies’s school at Papetoʻai, and later accompanied Ellis to Huahine, where he became a prominent church member and was appointed deacon. He was also appointed first Secretary of the Huahinean Missionary Society.  His speeches at prayer meetings and May meetings were reported with some pride.  (Gunson)

Shortly after Ellis and Tauʻā arrived in Hawaiʻi, the Second Company of American missionaries arrived, bringing the Reverend William Richards and the Reverend Charles Stewart (April 1823.)

About this time, Queen Mother Keōpūolani (mother of Kamehameha II and III) began to accept many western ways.  She wore western clothes, she introduced western furniture into her house and she took instruction in Christianity.

But her health began to fail, and she decided to move her household from the pressures of the court circle in Honolulu to the tranquility of Waikīkī. With her she took Hoapili (her husband) and Nahiʻenaʻena (her daughter.)

Each Sunday the missionaries walked across the hot plain from Honolulu to Waikīkī to hold divine service and to instruct the Queen Mother in Christian doctrine. Keōpūolani decided, however, that these Sunday meetings did not suffice; she asked that a religious instructor be attached to her household. Her choice was Tauʻā; the mission approved.  (Sinclair)

In May of 1823, Keōpūolani decided to make her last move, this time back to the island of her birth, Maui.  She chose Lāhainā, with its warm and sunny climate – another place traditionally a favorite with the chiefs.  (Sinclair)

Before leaving, Keōpūolani requested the Americans to assign teachers to go with her. She wanted a mission established in Lāhainā, and further instruction in reading and writing for herself; she also wished to have a man of God to pray with her. The Honolulu mission selected Charles Stewart and William Richards to accompany the queen.  (Sinclair)

Immediately on their arrival in Lāhainā, she requested them to commence teaching, and also said, “It is very proper that my sons (meaning the missionaries) be present with me at morning and evening prayers.”

They were always present, and sung a hymn in the Hawaiian language.  Often in conversation she would introduce the subject which had been discussed, and ask important questions respecting it.  (Memoir of Keōpūolani)

She became more attentive to the Gospel as she was resting. It was Tauʻā who became the teacher she relied on as perhaps they were able to converse with each other in the Polynesian language.  (Mookini)

Tauʻā proved a faithful teacher, and he did much to establish her in the Christian faith.  He answered several of her questions on the subject of Christianity.

She said to Tauʻā, “My heart is much afraid I shall never become a Christian.” He replied, “Why, what is in the way?”  She said, “I think I am likely to die soon.”  He replied, “Do you not love God?” She answered, “O yes, I love – I love him very much.”  Tauʻā then communicated farther instruction to her. At the close of the conversation she said, “Your word, I know, is true.  It is a good word; and now I have found, I have obtained a Saviour, and a good King, Jesus Christ.”

She asked him for advice about her having two husbands (at the time she was married to Kalanimōku and Hoapili.) Tauʻā  answered: “It is proper for a woman to have one husband, man to have one wife.”   She then said: “I have followed the custom of Hawaiʻi, in taking two husbands in the time of our dark hearts. I wish now to obey Christ and to walk in the right way. It is wrong to have two husbands and I desire but one. Hoapili is my husband, hereafter my only husband.”  (Memoir of Keōpūolani)

To Kalanimōku she said: “I have renounced our ancient customs, the religion of wooden images, and have turned to the new religion of Jesus Christ. He is my King and my Savior, and him I desire to obey. I can have but one husband. Your living with me is at an end. No more are you to eat with my people or lodge in my house.”  (Mookini)

She was asked, “How do you feel, as you are about leaving the world?”  She answered, “I remember what my teachers told me.  I pray much to Jesus Christ to be with me and take me to himself.  I am now about to leave my three children, my people and my teachers.  But it is not dark now.  It would have been, had I died before these good times.  You must pray for me, and all the missionaries must pray for me. I love you. I love them. I think I love Jesus Christ, and I trust he will receive me.”  (Memoir of Keōpūolani)

In Keōpūolani’s earnest inquiries after truth, and the increasing experience of its power on the heart, Mrs. Ellis had, in common with other members of the Mission, ever taken a lively interest, and she shared with her companions at Lāhainā in the hallowed joy which was felt by the growing meetness for heaven which the first convert in Hawaiʻi had manifested, as the signs of her approaching dissolution became more frequent and decisive.  (Mary Mercy Ellis Memoir)

In the presence of the royal family and the chiefs, Ellis delivered a short address to explain the meaning of baptism; he sprinkled Keōpūolani with water in the name of God – Ellis administered the rite of baptism to Keōpūolani. She had earlier chosen Harriet, the name of Mrs. Stewart, to be her baptismal name.  (Sinclair)

The King (Liholiho, her son) and all the heads of the nation listened with the most profound attention, and when they saw that water was sprinkled on her in the name of God, they said, “Surely she is no longer ours, she formerly gave herself to Jesus Christ.  We believe she is his, and will go to dwell with him.”  (Memoir of Keōpūolani)

The ceremony was performed at five in the afternoon of September 16, 1823; at six o’clock the Queen was dead.

The funeral ceremonies, after the Christian manner, were held two days later with chiefs, missionaries and foreigners surrounding the corpse. (Mookini)

It was a season of much spiritual enjoyment to all present, it was peculiarly solemn and impressive; especially from the number of native chiefs and others who were present, some of whom were among the most earnest inquirers after truth, and all of whom seemed much affected, and anxious to ask the meaning of an observance to them so new and strange.  (Mary Mercy Ellis Memoir)

After her death, Tauʻā joined the household of Hoapilikane and remained with that chief until his death in 1840. He then joined the household of Hoapiliwahine.  (Tauʻā died in about 1855.)

The image shows the initial burial tomb for Keōpūolani; she was later reburied there in Waineʻe Church cemetery (now known as Waiola Church) in Lāhainā.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook  

Follow Peter T Young on Google+    

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn   

© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The Stitching

Since I started these summary posts, I have received a variety of questions and comments (from many) asking about this or that.

One such included a call from someone at Punahou School who had received the stitching noted in the image; someone saw it for sale in a store on the continent, bought it and gave it to Punahou.

They felt there were Punahou ties.  They asked me what I thought.

First, the center poem: “Friends are like melons; shall I tell you why? To find one good, you must one hundred try.”

I found it was written by Claude Mermet, a French poet who was born in Saint-Rambert-en-Bugey a little before 1550 and died in Saint-Rambert en Bugey in 1620.  (Obviously this is about friends and friendship, but no obvious Hawaiʻi tie … but is there?)
 
Then, the names … who is listed, who put this together and why was it done?

Some obvious Hawaiʻi ties come up – and lots of association back to Kauai with the likes of Rice, Wilcox and Isenberg … including their connections to Punahou.

It is still an untold story.

So, through this, hopefully more can be known of the Who, Why and When of the piece.  Let us know what you know about this.

It’s interesting … someone finds a piece of stitchery on the continent, sees connections to the Islands, but a mystery remains as to Who, Why and When ….

Here’s a summary and interconnecting linkages between the people noted on the stitchery we have seen thus far:

Wm H Rice
William Hyde Rice (born at Punahou,) son of William Harrison Rice (October 12, 1815-May 27, 1862) (business manager of Punahou School) and Mary Sophia Hyde Rice; husband of Mary Waterhouse Rice)

Mary W Rice
(Mary Waterhouse (July 26, 1846-June 28, 1933;) married William Hyde Rice; Punahou 1861 and 1862) John Thomas Waterhouse Sr., father of Mary.

Mary E Scott
(Mary Eleanor Rice (November 25, 1880-January 22, 1923;) daughter of William Hyde Rice and Mary Waterhouse Rice; married Walter Henry Scott

Anna C Wilcox
(Anna Charlotte Rice (1882- 😉 daughter of William Hyde Rice and Mary Waterhouse Rice; married Ralph Lyman Wilcox (son of Samuel Whitney Wilcox and Emma Washburn Lyman Wilcox))

Emily D Rice
(Emily Dole Rice (May 1844 – June 14, 1911;) daughter of William Harrison Rice (1813–1863), and Mary Sophia Hyde; married George De la Vergne) (Punahou 1863 and 1864)

R L Wilcox
(Ralph Lyman Wilcox (1876–1913;) son of Samuel Whitney Wilcox and Emma Washburn Lyman Wilcox;) married Anna Charlotte Rice)

Dora R Isenberg
(Mary Dorothea “Dora” Rice (1862-1949) Maria Rice, sister of William Hyde Rice married Paul Isenberg; Paul and Maria Isenberg had two children, Mary Dorothea Rice Isenberg and Daniel Paul Rice Isenberg (1866-1919).

Emma Wilcox
(Emma Washburn Lyman (September 16, 1849 – July 28, 1934;) daughter of David Belden Lyman (1803–1868) and Sarah Joiner (1806–1885;) married Samuel Whitney Wilcox) (her son, Ralph Lyman Wilcox, married Anna Charlotte Rice)

Susan S Fisher
Harry Fisher (1903-1905) (?)

Rebecca W Watt
Rebecca Waterhouse (?)
Rebecca Wilcox (?)
Rebecca Watt (1803-1915)

It’s ‘all in the family,’ kind of; and, it’s interesting how a piece of fabric can start to call attention to and remind us of stories about people and life in the Islands, especially on Kauai and at Punahou … but, there is still more to be known about the piece.

I have already done some posts on some of the people noted here, and will be doing some more in the future.  There is an obvious link to Punahou and Kauaʻi.

Any help others can provide on Who, Why and When (or anything more) this was done is appreciated.

The image shows the stitching.  In addition, I have added other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook  

Follow Peter T Young on Google+    

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn   

© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Waialua Female Seminary

Education in the US at the beginning of the 19th-century was primarily triggered by the need to train the people to help grow the relatively new nation.

Back then, 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)

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 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)

The founders of the female seminaries were at first men who were committed to providing education for women, but as time went by, more of the founders were women. The financial backing for these seminaries was typically from private sources and the tuition charged the students. Their enrollment varied between 50 to 100-students; they preferred girls between the ages of 12 and 16.  (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.)  Before the 1850s, both of these schools had closed.

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.

The first female seminary to be established on the island of Hawaiʻi was the Kaʻū Seminary. In 1862, Orramel Hinckley Gulick and his wife, Ann Eliza Clark Gulick (a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary,) began the school. Both were the children of missionaries (Peter Johnson Gulick and Fanny Hinckley Thomas Gulick; Ephraim Weston Clark and Mary Kittredge Clark.)

Due to the isolated location of the seminary, it was difficult to attract many students to the school. As a consequence, tuition and board were free, as long as the girls were placed under the parental care of the teachers of the school until the girls were married or obtained employment.

In 1865, after struggling to fill the school, it was decided to move the school to Waialua, Oʻahu, on the Anahulu Stream.  It opened there on August 7 with 50-students, ranging in age from 11 to 15.  As with other schools at the time, the students were instructed in the Hawaiian language.

The girls are selected by the pastors, from among the most promising girls of the parishes; and every major district in the islands had one or more representatives in the school. It was hoped that this institution would raise up a class of educated women, who might make teachers, and suitable partners for native Hawaiian ministers and missionaries.  (The Missionary Herald)

The large two-story building, surrounded by a veranda, housed the girls, their four teachers, one temporary assistant and two children of the teachers. A second large building was the school-house, the lower floor of which was a spacious school-room, while the upper story was divided into recitation rooms. (The Missionary Herald)

The girls at Waialua Female Seminary came from families where the traditional Hawaiian culture was still practiced. However, at school the girls were dressed in calico, as opposed to their usual holoku; they slept in beds, rather than on mats on the floor; and they ate at a table with silverware, instead of on the floor using their fingers.

The schedule for the day began with breakfast, followed by each girl reading from the Hawaiian Bible; after the principal offered a prayer in Hawaiian, they were dismissed to begin the routine work, which included all the work necessary to maintain the school (except for carting and carrying firewood and baking and pounding the taro for poi.)

The older girls put the food away, washed the dishes and swept the floor. The younger girls did various tasks, which included sweeping and dusting the parlor, the sitting-room or the schoolroom, gathering up the litter of leaves and branches from the yard and garden paths, or putting the teachers’ rooms in order. Some of the girls were involved with preparing the meals; all the girls washed and ironed clothes once a week.

The academic work took place between 9 am and noon and 1 pm and 4 pm.  The curriculum included geography, arithmetic, surveying, astronomy, singing, Bible history and the Bible in general. Manual training consisted of instruction in cutting and sewing dresses, in washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning house and painting; an hour and a half was spent on gardening and farming.

The school kept the girls until they graduated (40 percent of the enrollment,) married (34 percent of the enrollment,) were employed (4 percent of the enrollment,) left for health reasons (6 percent of the enrollment) or were dismissed for not applying themselves or for bad behavior (16 percent of the enrollment.)

In December of 1870, the school closed when the Mission sent the Gulicks to evangelize in Japan.  Waialua Female Seminary reopened on April 3, 1871, under the direction of Miss Mary E Green (another missionary descendent and graduate of Punahou and Mount Holyoke Seminary.)

Miss Green ran the school until 1882, when she became ill and could no longer run the school. The property was sold and the money was given to the trustees of Kawaiahaʻo Seminary in Honolulu to make further improvements there.  (Lots of information here from Beyer and Missionary Herald.)

The school was called ‘Hale Iwa’ by the girls (the first use of the name for this area.)  Later, that name came back to this area when OR&L opened the Haleiwa Hotel (1899;) when the hotel closed (1943,) the name of the area remained as Haleiwa, and it continues to be called that today.

The image shows Waialua Female Seminary (1865.)  In addition, I have added other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook 

Follow Peter T Young on Google+ 

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn   

© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC