Hawaiian Mission Childrens Society | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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Mission Houses

April 25, 2020 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

General Meeting

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863 – the “Missionary Period”,) about 184-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission (ABCFM) in the Hawaiian Islands.

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.

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. Meeting houses were constructed at the stations, as well as throughout the district. Initially constructed as the traditional Hawaiian thatched structures; they were later made of wood or stone.

By 1850, eighteen mission stations had been established; six on Hawaiʻi, four on Maui, four on Oʻahu, three on Kauai and one on Molokai.

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. Annual General Meetings of the mission fixed policy – “the majority ruled”.

The General Meeting was held in an adobe school house (constructed during the period 1833-1835) still standing south of the Kawaiaha‘o Church, on Kawaiaha‘o Street.

An 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.” (Bishop)

Mission Houses Annual Meetings

The annual gathering of the Cousins, descendants of the early missionaries, continues. 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 annual gathering of the Cousins, descendants of the early missionaries, continues. Hawaiian Mission Houses will be holding its annual meeting on April 25, 2020; however, due to present circumstances it will be held via video conference and not on the Mission Houses grounds, a stone’s throw from the old General Meeting house across Kawaiahaʻo Street.

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 Site and Archives, 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. Lots of stuff is online – click HERE.

When we are allowed to reopen, we plan to continue the guided tours of the houses and other parts of the historic site, Tuesday through Saturday, starting on the hour every hour from 11 am with the last tour beginning at 3 pm.

Old School House-General Meeting-Site-Centennial Book

October 24, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Bingham Girls Return

“Honolulu Female Academy (is) another of the schools provided by Christian benevolence for the benefit of the children of this highly favored land. This institution will, it is hoped, supply a felt need for a home for girls, in the town of Honolulu, yet not too near its center of business.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 13, 1867)

“The inception of this school emanated from Mrs Halsey Gulick. In 1863, when living in the old mission premises on the mauka side of King street, she took several Hawaiian girls into her family to be brought up with her own children … The mother love was strong in that little group as some of us remember.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 23, 1897)

The usefulness of such a school became evident; as the enrollment grew, the need for a more permanent organization was required. It became known as Kawaiahaʻo Female Seminary.

In 1867, the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society (HMCS – an organization consisting of the children of the missionaries and adopted supporters) decided to support a girls’ boarding school.

HMCS invited Miss Lydia Bingham (daughter of Reverend Hiram Bingham, leader of the Pioneer Company of missionaries to Hawaiʻi) to return to Honolulu to be a teacher in this family school; she was then principal of the Ohio Female College, at College Hill, Ohio.

“Her love for the land of her birth and Interest for the children of the people to whom her father and mother had given their early lives, led her to accept the position, and in March, 1867, she arrived on the Morning Star via Cape Horn.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 23, 1897)

In January 1869, her sister, Miss Elizabeth Kaʻahumanu (Lizzie) Bingham, arrived from the continent to be an assistant to her sister. Lizzie was a graduate of Mount Holyoke and, when she was recruited, was a teacher at Rockford Female Seminary. (Beyer)

Later, Lydia and Lizzie’s niece (daughter of Hiram’s first child Sophia Bingham), Clara Lydia Moseley (later Sutherland), joined them at Kawaiaha‘o.

“It was my sister Mary that my aunt first asked for, and this was at least two years before she asked for me. But while Mary was considering the matter, along came a fine young man from Boston by the name of Charles Crocker. … He was a man of such fine character that we came to like him more and more, so how could my sister refuse him when he asked her to marry him?”

“It was quite natural that she should choose to marry him rather than go off to some little Island in the middle of the Pacific which very few people knew anything about at that time.”

“(B)efore I was fifteen, a wonderful thing happened to me which probably changed the whole course of my life. Two of my mother’s sisters, Aunt Lydia and Aunt Lizzie, returned to Honolulu, the home of their birth and engaged in teaching in a school for Hawaiian girls which was called Kawaiahaʻo Seminary.”

“It was located at that time on King St. just opposite the Old Mission house where the Mission Memorial Building now stands.”

“My Aunt Lydia was Principal of this school and she wrote to my mother asking if she couldn’t spare me and let me come out and teach music to her girls, knowing that I was musically inclined.”

“When my aunt wrote asking for me, she said she wanted me to have a teacher for a few months intervening before I should leave home, and she would pay for my lessons, so I took lessons … for about three months.”

“Of course my parents were willing to let me go, knowing it was too fine an opportunity for me to miss. A friend of my aunt’s, Miss Julia Gulick, was coming to the states that year so it was planned that I should go back with her.”

“Uncle Hiram (II) met us at the wharf that Sunday morning we arrived, and when we reached the house my three aunts gave me such a warm and cordial welcome that I was no longer homesick, but oh! so glad to be here on terra firma.” (Clara Lydia Sutherland)

It started with boarders and day students, but after 1871 it has been exclusively a boarding school. “Under her patient energy and tact, with the help of her assistants, it prospered greatly, and became a success.” (Coan)

“To those of us who were then watching the efforts of these Christian ladies the school became the centre of great interest. The excellent discipline, the loving care, the neatness and skill shown in all departments of domestic life …”

“… the thoroughness of the teaching and the high Christian spirit which pervaded it all caused rejoicing that such an impulse had been given to education for Hawaiian girls.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 23, 1897)

“Every Sunday one of the teachers accompanied the Girls to Kawaiahaʻo Church diagonally across the street to the morning service.” (Sutherland Journal)

“Just across the driveway from the main house and close to the old Castle home was a long narrow adobe building known as the ‘Bindery’ as that is what it was originally used for by the early missionaries.”

“There were three rooms down stairs and these were occupied by my Uncle Hiram and Aunt Clara. At the head of the stairs, which were on the outside of the building was my Aunt Lydia’s room; then a dormitory where eight or ten of the older girls slept, and at the east end of the building, toward the Castle’s home was my room.” (Clara Lydia Sutherland)

“When Miss Bingham came to Hilo (on October 13, 1873 she married Titus Coan,) the seminary was committed to the charge of her sister (Lizzie), whose earnest labors for seven years in a task that is heavy and exhausting so reduced her strength, that in June, 1880 she was obliged to resign her post.” (Coan)

“I had planned to stay five years when I first went out to the Islands (however) ‘Old Captain Gelett) felt he must do something to change the course of my life. So he persuaded my aunts to let him send me away to school as soon as I had finished my third year at the Seminary.”

“Accordingly, in August, 1875, I sailed from Honolulu on the ‘DC Murray’ with a group of other young people who were going over to school. This sailing vessel was twenty one days in getting to San Francisco”. (Clara Lydia Sutherland)

At the end of the century, all the female seminaries began to lose students to the newly founded Kamehameha School for Girls. This latter school was established in 1894.

It was not technically a seminary or founded by missionaries, but all the girls enrolled were Hawaiian, and its curriculum was very similar to what was used at the missionary sponsored seminaries.

Since Kawaiahaʻo Seminary was located only a few miles from this new female school, it experienced the biggest loss in enrollment and adjusted by enrolling more non-Hawaiian students.

In 1905, a merger with Mills Institute, a boys’ school, was discussed; the Hawaiian Board of Foreign Missions purchased the Kidwell estate, about 35-acres of land in Mānoa valley.

By 1908, the first building was completed, and the school was officially operated as Mid-Pacific Institute, consisting of Kawaiahaʻo School for Girls and Damon School for Boys.

Finally, in the fall of 1922, a new coeducational plan went into effect – likewise, ‘Mills’ and ‘Kawaiahaʻo’ were dropped and by June 1923, Mid-Pacific became the common, shared name.

Click HERE to read more on the Mission Memorial Building.

Kawaiahaʻo_Female_Seminary,_Honolulu,_c._1867

July 16, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Mission Memorial Building

“Impressive ceremonies marked the laying of the cornerstone yesterday afternoon of the Mission Memorial building in King street, ewa of the YWCA Homestead, being erected at a cost of $90,000 as a monument to pioneer missionaries and to be the center of the missionary work in Hawaii in the future.” (Hawaiian Gazette, July 20, 1915)

Designed by architect H.L. Kerr and built between 1915 and 1916, these structures were commissioned by the Hawaii Evangelical Association in preparation for the centennial commemoration of the arrival of the American Protestant missionaries to Hawaii in 1820. (C&C)

“‘Various forms of memorials have been suggested, but instead of some monument of beauty, perhaps, but which could be put to no practical use, why not something which would be of lasting value and usefulness …’”

“‘… and what would combine all so well as a building whch would be the center of activity for the Hawaiian board, where work along the lines of those whose memories are now being revered, should be directed!’”

“‘Then came the idea of combining the old with the new in a building which would honor the work of those who had gone before and provide place for the workers of the present.”

“The object met with a hearty response from our friends and we were offered free of charge two sites, one ii out the Atherton estate and one from the Mary Castle Trust. Both were in the section of the city formerly known to all as the ‘Mission,’ but this one which was chosen by the board was the one offered by the Mary Castle Trust and was ground which had been hallowed by actual missionary work.”

“‘The main building is to provide offices for the secretary and the treasurer, the superintendents of the various branches of the work, the book rooms for the board as well as the rooms for its regular meetings; provision as mentioned for the Mission Children’s Society; a meeting place for the Christian Endeavor Society, etc.’”

“‘The building in the rear and connected with the main building will provide an auditorium with a seating capacity of 600, and this we believe will be the center of much active Christian work in the future.’” (Lowrey, Hawaiian Gazette, July 20, 1915) (A third building, the Christian Education Building, was added in 1930.)

“It will only be a short time before this building, in red brick, on old colonial lines, will be up and from the street you will see across the front the words ‘Mission Memorial.’”

“This will bring to the attention of many people in years to come the work which was commenced on these Islands in 1820, and may the work which shall be done in, and directed from this building, in all time to come be worthy of what it commemorates and may the work extend on all lines to the bringing in of all races to the melting pot from which shall issue a happy, contented, God-fearing and God-serving community.”

“Among the documents placed in the metal box which, was encased in the cornerstone is an album of portraits of Hawaiian missionaries presented by the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, reports of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, year book of Central Union Church, …”

“… copies of The Advertiser, Star Bulletin, the Friend, Ka Hoaloha, Ke Kuhunaao, Tomo; facsimile of contract with owners of brig Thaddeus made in 1819, list of donors and financial statement, copy of deed of building lot, program of this year’s conference of Hawaiian Evangelical Association and copy of program of cornerstone laying.” (Hawaiian Gazette, July 20, 1915)

“The handsome new Mission Memorial Building of the Hawaiian Board of Missions was dedicated July 16th (1916), with interesting ceremonies.” (Missionary Review, 1916)

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April 22, 2017 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives

Hawaiian Mission Houses’ Strategic Plan themes note that the collaboration between Native Hawaiians and American Protestant missionaries resulted in the

introduction of Christianity
development of a written Hawaiian language and establishment of schools that resulted in widespread literacy
promulgation of the concept of constitutional government
combination of Hawaiian with Western medicine
evolution of a new and distinctive musical tradition with harmony and choral singing

Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives is on an acre of land in the middle of downtown Honolulu. It includes Hawai‘i’s two oldest houses, the 1821 Mission House (wood frame) and the 1831 Chamberlain House (coral block,) a 1841 bedroom annex interpreted as the Print Shop.

In addition, the site has the Mission Memorial Cemetery, and a building which houses collections and archives, a reading room, a visitors’ store, and staff offices.

While now not part of the Mission Houses, the Memorial building was built by the Hawaiian Evangelical Association as a museum and archive to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Protestant Missionaries in Hawaii. The city took over the building during the 1940s and it has since been converted to the City Hall Annex.

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries from the northeast US, led by Hiram Bingham, set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.)

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 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in the Hawaiian Islands.

In addition to the buildings which are part of the collection, the Mission Houses object collection contains over 7,500 artifacts, including furniture, quilts, bark cloth, paintings, ceramics, clothing, and jewelry.

The archival collections include more than 12,000 books, manuscripts, original letters, diaries, journals, illustrations, and Hawaiian church records. Mission Houses owns the largest collection of Hawaiian language books in the world, and the second largest collection of letters written by the ali‘i.

The size and scope of these collections make Hawaiian Mission Houses one of the foremost repositories for nineteenth century Hawaiian history.

Included in the archives are some of the original WO Smith Papers associated with the Provisional Government, including the original signed protest from Queen Lili‘uokalani, dated January 17, 1893.

Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, a 501(c)3 non-profit educational institution, founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1907, acquired the 1821 Mission House in 1906, restored and opened it in 1908.

The organization developed a professional staff in 1970 and named the public program component Mission Houses Museum. In early 2012 they established a new name, Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives.

A National Historic Landmark, Mission Houses preserves and interprets the two oldest houses in Hawaiʻi through school programs, historic house tours, and special events.

The archives, English and Hawaiian, are available on site and online. Together, these activities enrich our community “by fostering thoughtful dialogue and greater understanding of the missionary role in the history of Hawaiʻi.” (Mission Houses’ Vision Statement)

The Mission Houses collections are critical to understanding the dramatic changes in the 19th-century Kingdom of Hawaiʻi that helped shape contemporary Hawaiʻi.

With one of the most significant collections of manuscripts and photos of 19th-century Hawaiʻi, and perhaps surprisingly, the largest collection of Hawaiian language books in the world, the collection includes results of the recent Letters from the Aliʻi translation project.

The site and its collection is a community resource that help us all understand who we are, where we came from, and how this place, this Hawaiʻi we know today came to be.

One cannot understand modern Hawaii without understanding the 19th century changes that occurred through the unlikely collaborative partnership between Native Hawaiians, their ali‘i, and the American Protestant missionaries.

Today, is the annual meeting of the Hawaiian Mission Houses, reminiscent of the annual General Meetings of the early missionaries.

We are preparing for the bicentennial of the arrival of the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries, including my great-great-great grandparents, Hiram and Sybil Bingham.

As critical dates approach, I’ll be providing more on the bicentennial’s series of publication, programs and events, focusing on Reflection and Rejuvenation. (Most of the information here is from Mission Houses.)