Betsey Stockton was born in about 1798; the exact year is not clear. Her mother was most likely an enslaved African-American woman in the Princeton household of Robert Stockton, one of New Jersey’s most politically-prominent families of the Revolutionary era. Her father may have been white.
“The Rev. Dr. Ashbel Green, later President of the (Princeton) College, (1812-’21) married Mr. Stockton’s eldest daughter, and Betsey became a part of his household at a time which cannot now be determined.”
“She became a thoroughly trained domestic nurse, seamstress and cook, acquiring an invaluable practical education so that she could do skilfully whatever was assigned her. It is understood that Mr. Green did not favor educating his servants in books, but she was so desirous to learn that his sons, who appreciated her natural intelligence and her merit, helped her in her study.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, May 12, 1906)
Her apparent religious conversion led to Stockton’s admission to full membership in Princeton’s First Presbyterian Church in September 1816, when the church records identified her as “a coloured woman living in the family of the Revd. Dr. Green.” Around 1817, Ashbel Green freed her, “and have since paid her wages as a hired woman.” (Nobles; Princeton)
Becoming an American Protestant Missionary
Stockton and Stewart were part of the Second Company (First Reinforcements) of American Protestant missionaries to Hawai‘i.
The Second Company destined for the Hawaiian Islands Mission assembled at New Haven for the purpose of taking passage in the ship Thames, captain Closby, which was to sail on the November 19, 1822. (Congregational Magazine)
“On the 11th (April, 1823) Mrs. Stewart presented us with a fine boy (Charles Seaforth Stewart), which I consider as my charge. The little fellow beguiles many of my lonely hours; and you must excuse me if my journal is now weekly instead of daily.”
“From the first moment that I saw the little innocent, I felt emotions that I was unacquainted with before. This, no doubt, arose from the peculiar situation in which I was placed, and from my attachment to his parents.”
“On the 24th (April 1823,) we saw and made Owhyhee. At the first sight of the snow-capped mountains, I felt a strange sensation of joy and grief. It soon wore away, and as we sailed slowly past its windward side, we had a full view of all its grandeur.”
Landing at Honolulu, O‘ahu – Assigned to Lahaina, Maui
They landed on Oʻahu. “The Mission is in prosperous circumstances, and the hopes of its supporters here were never brighter. Truly the fields are already ripe for the harvest, and we may add, ‘The harvest is great, but the labourers are few.’”
“We have been received with open arms by the government and people, and twice the number of missionaries would have been joyfully hailed.” (Charles Samuel Stewart)
“On Saturday, the 10th of May (1823), we left the ship, and went to the mission enclosure at Honoruru. We had assigned to us a little thatched house in one corner of the yard, consisting of one small room, with a door, and two windows—the door too small to admit a person walking in without stooping, and the windows only large enough for one person to look out at a time.”
“On the 26th of May we heard that the barge was about to sail for Lahaina, with the old queen and princes; and that the queen (Keōpūolani) was desirous to have missionaries to accompany her; and that if missionaries would consent to go, the barge should wait two days for them.”
Teacher of the Maka‘āinana on Maui
“It was there, as (Betsey said,) that she opened a school for the common people which was certainly the first of the kind in Maui and probably the first in all Hawaii; for at the beginning the missionaries were chiefly engaged in the instructions of the chiefs and their families.” (Maui News, May 5, 1906)
“After service the favourite queen (Ka‘ahumanu) called me, and requested that I should take a seat with her on the sofa, which I did, although I could say but few words which she could understand. Soon after, biding them aroha I returned with the family. In the afternoon we had an English sermon at our house: about fifty were present, and behaved well.”
“In the morning one of the king’s boys came to the house, desiring to be instructed in English. Mr. S(tewart) thought it would be well for me to engage in the work at once. Accordingly I collected a proper number and commenced. I had four English, and six Hawaiian scholars. This, with the care of the family, I find as much as I can manage.” (Stockton)
Stockton has asked the mission to allow her “to create a school for the makaʻāinana (common people.) Stockton learned the Hawaiian Language and established a school in Maui where she taught English, Latin, History and Algebra”. (Kealoha)
“She wrote to Ashbel Green in 1824: ‘I have now a fine school of the … lower class of people, the first, I believe, that has ever been established.’ Charles Stewart wrote that these Common folk had made application for books and slates and a teacher.”
“So, beginning with about thirty individuals, this school was formed in the chapel, meeting every afternoon under the supetintendence of Betsey, who, he said, ‘is quite familiar with the native tongue.’ Other missionaries had established the first schools in the islands, usually attended by the upper classes. Betsey, the former slave, was the first to organize a school for the disadvantaged.” (Moffett)
Leaving the Islands
“After only two and a half years in Hawaii, Mrs. Stewart became so ill that their whole family, including a new little daughter born to the Stewarts during that time, found it necessary to return to America … Betsey chose to leave with them. They were offered a gratuitous passage to England by Captain Dale of the English whaleship Fawn.”
“After a six-month voyage, from October 15, 1825, until April, 1826, they arrived at the English port of Gravesend. Following a layover of several months in London, they continued the return journey to America, arriving at New York in August.”
“Following her return from the Sandwich Islands, Betsey kept an infant school for black children for a while in Philadelphia. But because of Harriet Stewart’s continuing frail health, she stood ready and went on a number of occasions to help care for Harriet and the children. Charles Stewart had been forced to resign his missionary commission because of his wife’s health and had joined the navy chaplaincy.”
“When Harriet Stewart died in 1830, just four years after they had returned from Hawaii, ‘Aunt Betsey’ answered a call again and went to Cooperstown, New York, to care for the (by now) three motherless children. Their father soon had to leave again, as he so often did for long stretches of time when his ship was away at sea.”
“In 1833 Betsey decided to move the children and herself back to Princeton, even though Dr. Green and his household had been living again in Philadelphia for the past eleven years. Tames Green, her childhood family tutor, had married and established a notable law practice in Princeton.”
“Charles Stewart, the children’s father, remarried in 1835 and they went back with him to New York. But Betsey stayed on in Princeton. She was truly alone for the first time in her life and had some depressing bouts of illness.”
“She helped to found a Sabbath school for children and young people in connection with the church and was its most faithful teacher for twenty-five or thirty years. (Moffett)
She never married but stayed in touch with Stewart and his son, Charles Seaforth Stewart, the baby born at sea. In 1860 the son bought her a house in Princeton, “a one-story white cottage on a lot near the northeast comer of Green and Witherspoon, now built upon. The grounds and building were always neat and attractive and the interior of the house was a model of cleanliness and order.” (Dodd)
For people whose right to equal education, or education of any sort, had been so long questioned, denigrated, and disdained, this tribute to their teacher also served as a tribute to their own achievement. By giving Betsey Stockton a prominent place in the black community’s main church—her window in the Witherspoon Street Church is still visible today on walking tours of the town.
Betsey Stockton made pioneering endeavors as a missionary in Hawaii, but her legacy is not well known. Still, Stockton’s school “set a new direction for education in the Islands … (It) served as a model for the Hilo Boarding School.”
Her teaching program have influence Samuel C Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute, who also worked as a missionary in Hawaii during this period. After a full and productive life of service for the Lord, Betsey Stockton passed away in October of 1865 in Princeton, New Jersey. (Johnson)
Click HERE for more information on Betsey Stockton.
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