“It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” (James Brown)
“Coverture is a long-standing legal practice that is part of our colonial heritage. Though Spanish and French versions of coverture existed in the new world, United States coverture is based in English law.”
“Coverture held that no female person had a legal identity. At birth, a female baby was covered by her father’s identity, and then, when she married, by her husband’s.”
“The husband and wife became one–and that one was the husband. As a symbol of this subsuming of identity, women took the last names of their husbands. They were “feme coverts,” covered women.”
“Because they did not legally exist, married women could not make contracts or be sued, so they could not own or work in businesses. Married women owned nothing, not even the clothes on their backs. They had no rights to their children, so that if a wife divorced or left a husband, she would not see her children again.” (Catherine Allgor)
“Coverture was disassembled in the United States through legislation at the state level beginning in Mississippi in 1839 and continuing into the 1880s. The legal status of married women was a major issue in the struggle for woman suffrage.” (Britannica) (US women did not get the right to vote until 1920.)
On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries set sail on the Thaddeus for Hawai‘i. Over the course of a little over 40-years, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) sent twelve companies of missionaries, support staff, and teachers – about 184-men and women – to carry out the mission of the ABCFM in the Hawaiian Islands.
During the Missionary Period (1820-1863), 84 missionary men and 100 women were sent to the Islands. There was no more than a total of 89 missionaries (men and women) in the Islands at any given them – of that, there were no more than 42 missionary men across the Islands at any given time.
The average number of missionaries in the Islands over the years was about 56 missionaries (men and women) per year; of that, an average of only 27 missionary men were in the Islands each year.
The first missionaries to the Islands needed to receive permission to land and stay. Discussions and negotiations (between the missionary men and the King and Chiefs) to allow the missionaries to stay went on for days.
One of the earliest efforts of the missionaries, who arrived in 1820, was the identification and selection of important communities (generally near ports and aliʻi residences) as “stations” for the regional church and school centers across the Hawaiian Islands.
By 1850, eighteen mission stations had been established; six on Hawaiʻi, four on Maui, four on Oʻahu, three on Kauai and one on Molokai. (So, the missionaries (men and women) were spread out across the Islands.)
The Mission Prudential Committee 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)
After the missionaries were serving in the Islands, the King and Chiefs asked for more to come and they sought their counsel. On August 23, 1836, King Kamehameha III and fourteen of the highest chiefs in the Islands wrote …
“We hereby take the liberty to express our views as to what is necessary for the prosperity of these Sandwich Islands. Will you please send to us additional teachers to those you have already sent, of such character as you employ in your own country in America?”
Shortly after, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) sent the largest company of missionaries to the Islands; including a large number of teachers.
A few of the missionaries left the mission at the request of the King and Chiefs and worked for the Hawaiian Government. These included William Richards, Gerritt P Judd, Lorrin Andrews, and Richard Armstrong.
In addition, King Kamehameha III and Chiefs Hoapili Kane and Kekāuluohi sent a letter, “We ask Mr. [Amos] Cooke to be teacher for our royal children. He is the teacher of our royal children and Dr. Judd is the one to take care of the royal children …” when forming the Chiefs’ Children’s School (Royal School).
The missionaries, “Though in many cases married to hastily found mates shortly before sailing, lived marital lives that were exemplary in their fill of love and devotion; their families parents and children were models for affection and mutual helpfulness …”
“… with mere pittances of salaries or rations, often unable to obtain suitable food, living at first for years in cramped, leaky, floorless thatched houses, with little privacy, often ill or child-bearing with no doctor available, and no end of calls for self-sacrificing services, they were marvels of patience and faithfulness.”
“They had to be all-round mechanics and farmers, building houses and churches of stone, adobe or wood and thatch, making furniture, and raising fruits, vegetables, flowers, and dairy and poultry products, not to mention surveying, doctoring, and peace-making …”
“… in their ministering they had the courage of their convictions, not hesitating to discipline chiefs especially when the latter oppressed the common people, for they were very democratic champions of the rights of man.”
“Realizing that religion alone was not sufficient, they introduced the school and the press, as well as the church, established manual training schools, the first of their kind, taught new industries, mechanical and agricultural …”
“… incessantly inculcated the rights of the common people with the result that in approximately a quarter of a century this handful of zealous, intelligent, practical workers, with their sympathizers, largely Christianized the nation …”
“… and made it one of the least illiterate, transformed the government from absolutism to constitutionalism, secured to the masses personal and property rights and enabled them to acquire homes of their own, preserved the independence of the nation against great odds …”
“… and, what perhaps may prove to be the crowning feature, planted the seeds which have fruited in the world’s best object lesson of interracial brotherliness.” (Frear, 1920)
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