Hiram Bingham III | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

October 2, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Binghams and Mid-Pacific Institute

“It was a little acorn, planted in missionary soil, watered by some trials and tears, nourished by the prayers and gifts of many friends, protected and blest, we trust, by one who is our Master, even Christ.”

“A vigorous oak, it is soon to be transplanted to the hills, to spread its branches under the sunshine, the showers and the rainbows of beautiful Manoa Valley.”

“May the blessing of the Lord ever rest upon it, and upon her through whose munificence it is to find its new home.” (Lydia Bingham, 1907)

“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.

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)

What is not generally known is that Lydia and Lizzie’s niece, Clara Moseley, came to Hawai‘i to help at the school.

“(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.”

“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 (Moseley) Sutherland)

Those weren’t the only Binghams involved with the school. Lydia and Lizzie’s brother, Hiram Bingham II, and his wife Minerva (Minnie) Brewster Bingham (she was also called Clara) lived and helped at Kawaiaha‘o Female Seminary.

Their son, Hiram III was born at Kawaiaha‘o Female Seminary. (On July 24, 1911, Hiram III rediscovered the “Lost City” of Machu Picchu (which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley). Hiram III has been noted as a source of inspiration for the ‘Indiana Jones’ character.)

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.

The Bingham children involved at Kawaiaha‘o, Lydia, Lizzie and Hiram, are my GG Aunts &Uncle. Young Clara Moseley is my great grandmother. I was fortunate to have served as the president of the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society for 3 ½ years.

February 27, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sybil’s Bones

Sybil Moseley’s mother died in 1811 – leaving 19-year old Sybil an orphan to support herself as a schoolteacher, while other relatives took care of her younger sisters. (Bingham)

“At first her school was at Hartford and later at Canandaigua in western New York, which village was then in the far west. After three years at Canandaigua she determined to visit her friends and relatives and the people whom she was leaving tried to make her promise to return.”

“Her answer was, ‘I will, unless the Lord opens another door.’ She little imagined what that door would be. … She was interested in missions and had even desired to be a missionary.” (Restarick)

She met Hiram Bingham in Goshen Connecticut at his ordination. “He was introduced to Miss Moseley and he recalled a conversation with a fellow student at Andover who had said if he got an appointment as missionary he would ask a Miss Moseley to go with him as his wife.”

“Before he left Windsor he had asked her to go with him to the Sandwich islands as his wife. Their common desire to work in some mission field drew them together in affectionate sympathy and she told him she would be his co-worker among people whom they supposed were savages.”

“The ordination took place on September 29 (1819), and, as there was no time to lose they were married on October 11. On October 23 they sailed from Boston on the Thaddeus in company with six other missionaries and their wives.”

“Sybil Moseley Bingham wrote to her sister: ‘Since that memorable evening when I was introduced to him, I find that he has secured my love. God did indeed choose for me.’” (Restarick)

A couple weeks into the trip (November 9, 1819). Sybil’s journal entry notes, “Have been seventeen days on board. Hitherto the good hand of our God has been upon us. … Sea-sickness has been severe upon most, yet not so much so as upon many who have gone before us.” (Sybil)

“For the first month out, the sea was rough, and the winds not favorable, and most of the passengers felt the inconvenience of their new mode of life; and some suffered much and long from sea-sickness.” (Hiram) Sea sickness continued for her and the others throughout the 18,000-mile voyage.

“Life in the Paradise of the Pacific was anything but healthy in the years when Honolulu was a village of grass huts on a dusty plain.”

“Sybil was frail to begin with, if one can judge from her likeness in the portrait of the Binghams painted by Samuel FB Morse (of the Morse code and telegraph) before their departure for the Pacific: where an idealized Hiram gazes confidently from the little oval frame, Sybil’s long thin nose and watery blue eyes make her look as if she had a cold.” (Bingham)

“For twenty years she worked with him and for him and bore his children, but the cost to nature was a wasted body that finally came to seem to Hiram more important than his mission.”

“Hiram anticipated that a few months rest in what they considered the more healthful climate of New England would put her on her feet, and they would return to carry on the great work with which the Mission Board had originally charged them.” (Bingham)

On August 3, 1840, they sailed back to the continent on the Flora. “The cabin of the Flora is very small, having three state-rooms, one of which belonging to the captain is the only one whose dimensions were intended, for comfort.” (Olmstead)

They returned to New England. “Sybil’s health did not improve. … (she went to) Hartford to be nursed by her sister. She had a chronic cough. Whether she or Hiram knew it, she was dying of the prevailing malady, ‘consumption.’” Then “Hiram and Sybil had found a ‘refuge’ in Easthampton (Massachusetts) with ‘kind friends.’”

“She seemed most comfortable sitting in her rocking chair, the chair he had lovingly fashioned for her on their arrival in Honolulu twenty-eight years before -as a Vermont farm boy he had been handy with tools—and then brought back around Cape Horn. Now, as it became clear the end was near.” (Bingham)

“(I)n accordance with her former request to be in her chair when God should send the summons, we placed her there, and sustained her head and hands and feet. I asked, how do you feel now, ‘I feel a little rested’ (or ‘exhausted’) not quite distinctly.”

Sybil’s rocking chair, “which a thousand times rested her weary frame & gave her much comfort … proved to be remarkably easy as to its form & balance, light, strong and durable having now been in use about 30 years”. (Bingham letter to H Hill, March 12, 1850)

“I said again, ‘do you feel exhausted?’ ‘Not as much as I should expect,’ she said, and soon repeated ‘Let His name be praised’. ‘Be bold to speak the truth’ – ‘The Lord cares for me’ – then, in a low tone ‘Stop, Stop – I live.’”

“Then passed into a comatose state and spoke no more, but appeared to sleep.” (Hiram) “(Daughter) Lydia, thirteen years old, in her later account, shortened the time to ‘a few more throbbings of her loving heart’ …”

“while ‘father prayed, commending her to God,’ and sang two verses of a hymn beginning: Go, pilgrim, to thy Saviour; On joyful wings ascend.” (Bingham)

Sybil died in her rocking chair on February 27, 1848 in Easthampton, Massachusetts. “For Hiram, Jr., finally helping his father lift his mother out of the rocking chair, her death must have been deeply affecting. But he was young and strong.”

A generation later he wrote to his own son (Hiram III), ‘If ever there was in this world a woman who was noble, honest, generous, loving, tender-hearted and sympathetic, that woman was your grandmother.” (Bingham)

“Sybil was buried in the Williston family plot in the old cemetery not far from the Academy (a school her children had attended).” (Bingham)

Hiram later remarried. “In an age when housework was not yet a male occupation, few men willingly remained widowers. It was natural for Sybil’s husband to remarry, and all the more if Sybil had known and approved the new wife.” (Bingham)

Hiram and his second wife (Naomi) were buried in the New Haven City Burial Ground. Later, Hiram III took it upon himself to reunite Hiram and Sybil by disinterring Sybil’s bones and placing them next to Hiram in New Haven.

Hiram III “provided a suitable box 3 ft x 16 in x 18 in and had his man ready to make the exhumation. … After digging down about three feet through a sandy soil we came upon the remains. They lay together directly in front of the stone. There was no trace of any box or container of any sort except two old fashioned brass handles which were probably on the coffin.”

“The bones were all together. The skull, leg bones and ribs were all within a few inches of each other. We looked very carefully for traces of a box but found none. … The gravedigger searched very thoroughly, and I believe that all of the remains that lay there were safely removed.”

Ultimately, Hiram III “brought them with him in his personal luggage when he had come to Yale as a freshman”. (Bingham) (Much of the information here, as well as the title, comes from Alfred Bingham, son of Hiram III.)

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Sybil Bingham-Naomi Bingham – Hiram Bingham headstones

Sybil Binghams Headstone

July 24, 2018 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Machu Picchu Commemorations

A story told to some of the early Spanish chroniclers noted a mythical place from which the Incas had come when they started out and to make the beginnings of that great empire which was to embrace a large part of South America.

Thousands of years ago there lived in the highlands of Peru a megalithic folk who developed a remarkable civilization, and who left, as architectural records, such cyclopean structures as the fortresses of Sacsahuaman and Ollantaytambo. These people were attacked by barbarian hordes coming from the south – possibly from the Argentine pampas.

They were defeated, and fled into one of the most inaccessible Andine cañons. Here, in a region strongly defended by nature, they established themselves; here their descendants lived for several centuries. The chief place was called Tampu Tocco.

Eventually regaining their military strength and becoming crowded in this mountainous valley, they left Tampu Tocco, and, under the leadership of three brothers, went out of three windows (or caves) and started for Cuzco.

The migration was slow and deliberate. They eventually reached Cuzco, and there established the Inca kingdom, which through several centuries spread by conquest over the entire plateau, and even as far south as Chile and as far north as Ecuador.

This Inca empire had reached its height when the Spaniards came. The Spaniards were told that Tampu Tocco was at a place called Pacaritampu, a small village a day’s journey southwest of Cuzco and in the Apurimac Valley.

The chroniclers duly noted this location, and it has been taken for granted ever since that Tampu Tocco was at Pacaritampu. (National Geographic, 1913)

Tampu means “tavern,” or “a place of temporary abode.” Tocco means “window.” The legend is distinctly connected with a place of windows, preferably of three windows, from which the three brothers, the heads of three tribes or clans, started out on the campaign that founded the Inca empire.

“So far as I could discover, few travelers have ever taken the trouble to visit Pacaritampu, and no one knew whether there were any buildings with windows, or caves, there.” (Bingham)

Hiram Bingham III was born in Honolulu, on November 19, 1875, the son of missionaries to Micronesia and grandson of Hiram and Sybil Bingham, leader of the Pioneer Company of Missionaries to Hawaii. He completed his studies at Yale, earning a doctorate in Latin American history.

In 1905, Bingham made his first trip to South America, following the route of Simón Bolivar, from Caracas, Venezuela to Bogotá, Colombia. He returned in 1908 and retraced the Spanish trade route from Buenos Aires to Lima.

While in Peru, in February, 1909, he visited Choqquequirau, a recently discovered Inca site that had once been thought to be the last refuge of the Inca rulers after they were defeated by the Spanish explorer, Francisco Pizarro. This visit inspired him with the desire to find the legendary “lost city of the Incas.”

In 1911, Bingham went back to Peru with two goals: to climb Mount Coropuna to see whether it was higher than Mount Aconcagua and to seek out the last capital of the Incas, the almost mystical city of Vilcabamba.

Arriving in Arequipa, in June 1911, he decided that it would not be wise to try to make the climb in winter and instead decided to look for ruins in the valley of the Rio Urubamba. (Encyclopedia)

“In 1911, a young Peruvian boy led an American explorer and Yale historian named Hiram Bingham into the ancient Incan citadel of Machu Picchu. Hidden amidst the breathtaking heights of the Andes, this settlement of temples, tombs and palaces was the Incas’ greatest achievement.”

“Tall, handsome, and sure of his destiny, Bingham believed that Machu Picchu was the Incas’ final refuge, where they fled the Spanish Conquistadors.”

“Bingham made Machu Picchu famous, and his dispatches from the jungle cast him as the swashbuckling hero romanticized today as a true Indiana Jones-like character.” (History)

“Some experts believe that parts of the city, which Bingham named Machu Picchu (Old Peak), are 60 centuries old, which would make it 1,000 years older than ancient Babylon. More recently, if its ruins are interpreted correctly, it was at once an impregnable fortress and a majestic royal capital of an exiled civilization.”

“Built on a saddle between two peaks, Machu Picchu is surrounded by a granite wall, can be entered only by one main gate. Inside is a maze of a thousand ruined houses, temples, palaces, and staircases, all hewn from white granite and dominated by a great granite sundial.”

“In Quechua, language of the sun-worshipping Incas and their present-day descendants, the dial was known as Intihuatana—hitching post of the sun.” (Time)

Four different plaques commemorate the ‘find.’ Two plaques attached to a rock face near the entrance to Machu Picchu pay tribute to Hiram Bingham and his “discovery” of Machu Picchu.

The first plaque was erected in October, 1948, by the Rotary Club of Cusco. It reads (in Spanish): “Cusco is grateful to Hiram Bingham, scientific discoverer of Machu Picchu in 1911.” The second was put in place in 1961. It reads (also in Spanish): “Tribute to Hiram Bingham on the 50th anniversary of the discovery of Machu Picchu.”

The second was put in place in 1961. It reads (also in Spanish): “Tribute to Hiram Bingham on the 50th anniversary of the discovery of Machu Picchu.”

A third bronze plaque marks the 75th anniversary of the “scientific discovery” of Machu Picchu. It doesn’t mention Hiram Bingham, nor does it mention anyone else, apart from a reference to the “sons of Inti” who built Machu Picchu (Inti being the Inca sun god).

In 1993, Peru’s National Institute of Culture decided it was time to pay tribute to the locals who helped Hiram Bingham find his way to Machu Picchu. The sign reads: “The National Institute of Culture Cusco pays homage to Melchor Arteaga, Richarte and Álvarez who lived in Machu Picchu before Hiran [sic] Bingham.” (Atlas Obscura)

Melchor Arteaga was instrumental in Bingham’s expedition to Machu Picchu. A local farmer living at Mandor Pampa near Aguas Calientes, Arteaga knew the location of Machu Picchu and showed Bingham the way.

The other two names, Richarte and Álvarez, refer to two men and their families who lived up near Machu Picchu and still farmed on its lower terraces when Bingham arrived.

Bingham and Arteaga met Toribio Richarte and Anacleto Álvarez on their tough trek up the steep, jungle covered mountain. It was Anacleto’s son, Pablo, who on July 24, 1911 guided Bingham along the last leg of the trek, into the heart of Machu Picchu. (Atlas Obscura)

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1948 Plaque-Machu Picchu

1961 Plaque-Machu Picchu

1993 Tablet-Machu Picchu

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Trapezoidal entry doors at Incan ruins of Machu Picchu.

The staircase leading up the Machhu Picchu.

Machu Picchu NatlGeo

Temple of Three Windows

Inca Story, Peru

The ruins of Machu Picchu.

September 17, 2015 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Hiram Bingham: I – IV

Hiram Bingham I was born at Bennington, Vermont, October 30, 1789, in a family of thirteen children – seven sons and six daughters – of Calvin and Lydia Bingham. About the age of twenty-one, he united with the Congregational church in his native town in May, 1811.

He strongly felt it to be his duty to prepare for the Gospel ministry. He entered Middlebury College in 1813; was graduated at the same institution in 1816, and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1819. (Congregational Quarterly, 1871)

On September 19 1819, Bingham was ordained in Goshen, Connecticut, site of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) school for Sandwich Islanders. That morning, he met Sybil Moseley; she had asked Bingham for directions and he offered to drive her there. Three weeks later, on October 11, 1819, the couple was married in Hartford, Connecticut. (Miller)

On October 23, 1819, Bingham led the Pioneer Company of ABCFM missionaries as they set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.) These included two Ordained Preachers, Bingham and his wife Sybil and Asa Thurston and his wife Lucy; 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; a Farmer, Daniel Chamberlain, his wife and five children.

By the time the Pioneer Company arrived (April 1820,) 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.

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.

Bingham had seven children, including Sophia Moseley Bingham born 1820 (the first Caucasian girl born on Oʻahu;) Levi Parsons Bingham; Jeremiah Everts Bingham; Lucy Whiting Bingham; Elizabeth Kaʻahumanu Bingham, born 1829; Hiram Bingham II, born on August 16th, 1831; and Lydia Bingham, born 1834 (who later became principal of Kawaiahaʻo Seminary, forerunner to Mid-Pacific Institute.)

Hiram I’s position as trusted advisor to the King and the chiefs resulted in the gift of the land of Ka Punahou from Boki and Liliha (Kaʻahumanu is considered responsible for this gift.) While the land was given to the Binghams and they resided there, the land was held by the Sandwich Island Mission.

On account of the failing health of his wife, Sybil, Bingham was compelled to return to the US on August 3, 1840, after a period of about twenty-one years in the Islands. He continued in the service of the Board during the five following years, and did not until the end of that time wholly abandon the hope of returning to the mission. Sybil died at Easthampton, Massachusetts, February 27, 1848.

Bingham’s second marriage was in 1852, to Miss Naomi C Morse. Hiram I died at New Haven, Connecticut, November 11, 1869, at the age of eighty-one.

Hiram Bingham II was born in the Islands on August 16, 1831. At the age of ten, he and sisters Elizabeth Kaahumanu and Lydia were sent to the continent to attend school. Hiram II was enrolled at Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts and graduated from Yale University in 1853 and Andover Seminary (1856.)

Hiram II was ordained a Congregationalist minister in New Haven, Connecticut on November 9, 1856 and married Clara Brewster only nine days later. Like his father, he set sail less than two weeks later to begin his missionary career. He left Boston on December 2, 1856 on the brig Morning Star, arrived in Honolulu on April 24, 1857, then in the Gilbert Islands in November 1857.

The Gilbert Islands (named in 1820 after the British Captain Thomas Gilbert) are a group of 16-coral atolls and islands, that are part of Kiribati (‘Kiribati’” is the Kiribatese rendition of “Gilberts.”) Hiram II settled at Abaiang, just north of Tarawa.

Hiram II spent seven years in the Gilbert Islands, struggling against disease, hunger and hostile merchants. During that time he made few converts, about fifty in all, but learned the language and began translating the Bible into Gilbertese.

Due to ill health, he was forced to return to Honolulu in 1864. Except for occasional visits to the US and another short stay in the Gilberts (1873-75,) Hiram II spent the remainder of his life in Hawaiʻi where he translated of the entire Bible into Gilbertese.

Hiram II also wrote a Gilbertese hymn book, commentaries on the gospels and a Gilbertese-English dictionary. His wife published a book of Bible stories in Gilbertese. (Youngs)

From 1877 to 1880, Hiram II served as Secretary of the Hawaiian Board of Missions and in 1895, Yale University awarded him the Doctorate of Divinity. He died October 25, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hiram Bingham III was born in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, to Hiram Bingham II; He was the grandson of Hiram Bingham I. He attended Punahou School and continued his studies at the Phillips Academy of Massachusetts, and then at Yale University, where he graduated in 1898; got a masters In History and Political Sciences from Berkeley and a PhD from Harvard in 1905.

In 1900 at the age of 25, Hiram III married Alfreda Mitchell, heiress of the Tiffany and Co fortune through her maternal grandfather Charles L. Tiffany. With this financial stability he was able to focus on his future explorations.

He taught history and politics at Harvard and then was a lecturer and subsequently professor in South American history at Yale University. In 1908, he served as delegate to the First Pan American Scientific Congress at Santiago, Chile. On his way home via Peru, a local prefect convinced him to visit the pre-Columbian city of Choquequirao.

Hiram III was not a trained archaeologist, but was thrilled by the prospect of unexplored cities. He returned to the Andes with the Yale Peruvian Expedition of 1911.

On July 24, 1911, Hiram III rediscovered the “Lost City” of Machu Picchu (which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley.)

His book “Lost City of the Incas” became a bestseller upon its publication in 1948; he also wrote “Across South America” (an account of his journey from Buenos Aires to Lima, with notes on Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru.)

Hiram III was elected governor of Connecticut in 1924; he was also a US Senator. Hiram III has been noted as a source of inspiration for the ‘Indiana Jones’ character.

Hiram (Harry) Bingham IV, born July 17, 1903, was one of seven sons of former Governor of Connecticut and US Senator Hiram Bingham III and his first wife, Alfreda Mitchell. He married Rose, they had eleven children: Rose Tiffany, Hiram Anthony, Thomas, John, David, Robert Kim, Maria Cecilia, Abigail, Margaret, Benjamin and William.

He was a US diplomat stationed in Marseilles, France during World War II when Germany was invading France. At great personal risk and against State Department orders, he (a Protestant Christian) used his government status to help over 2,500-Jewish people escape the Holocaust as they escaped Hitler’s occupied Europe from 1939-1941.

He organized clandestine rescue efforts and escapes, harbored many refugees at his diplomatic residence and issued “visas for life” and affidavits of eligibility for passage.

Hiram IV helped some of the most notable intellectuals and artists to escape, including Marc Chagall, (artist;) Leon Feuchtwanger, (author;) Golo Mann, (historian, son of Thomas Mann;) Hannah Arendt, (philosopher;) Max Ernst, (artist and poet;) and Dr. and Mrs. Otto Meyerhof, (Nobel Prize winning physicist.)

In 1998, Hiram IV was recognized as one of eleven diplomats who saved 200,000-lives from the Holocaust, which amounts to one-million descendants of survivors today.

He is the only US Diplomat who has been officially honored by the State of Israel as a “righteous diplomat.” He was the only American diplomat recognized during Israel’s 50th Anniversary at the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.

Sixty years after leaving the Foreign Service (in 2002,) the State Department posthumously recognized Bingham with the department’s American Foreign Service Association “Constructive Dissent” award.

In 2005, Bingham was posthumously given a letter of commendation from Israel’s Holocaust Museum. In 2006, a US commemorative postage stamp was issued in his honor. Hiram I is my great-great-great-grandfather.

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Hiram (IV) circa 1980

Hiram_(I)_and_Sybil_Moseley_Bingham,_1819,_by_Samuel_F.B._Morse

Hiram Bingham II and Minerva Clara Brewster-1866

Hiram Bingham III and Alfreda Mitchell Bingham

Hiram (IV) and Rose Newlyweds-1934

July 24, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Adventures of a University Lecturer

Hiram Bingham III was born in Honolulu, on November 19, 1875, to Hiram Bingham II, an early Protestant missionary to the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.

He was the grandson of Hiram Bingham I, who in 1820 was the leader of the Pioneer Company of missionaries to Hawaiʻi.

He attended Punahou School and ultimately earned degrees from Yale University, University of California-Berkeley and Harvard University.

In 1900 at the age of 25, Hiram III married Alfreda Mitchell, heiress of the Tiffany and Co fortune through her maternal grandfather Charles L Tiffany. With this financial stability he was able to focus on his future explorations.

He taught history and politics at Harvard and then was a lecturer and subsequently professor in South American history at Yale University.

In 1908, he served as delegate to the First Pan American Scientific Congress at Santiago, Chile. On his way home via Peru, a local prefect convinced him to visit the pre-Columbian city of Choquequirao.

Hiram III was not a trained archaeologist, but was thrilled by the prospect of unexplored cities. He returned to the Andes with the Yale Peruvian Expedition of 1911.

“The first day out from Cuzco saw us in Urubamba, the capital of a province, a modern town charmingly located a few miles below Yucay, which was famous for being the most highly prized winter resort of the Cuzco Incas.”

“Its ancient fortress, perched on a rocky eminence that commands a magnificent view up and down the valley, is still one of the most attractive ancient monuments in America.”

Continuing on down the valley over a newly constructed government trail, we found ourselves in a wonderful cañon. So lofty are the peaks on either side that although the trail was frequently shadowed by dense tropical jungle, many of the mountains were capped with snow, and some of them had glaciers. There is no valley in South America that has such varied beauties and so many charms.” (Bingham; National Geographic)

“We camped a few rods away from the owner’s grass-thatched hut, and it was not long before he came to visit us and to inquire our business. He turned out to be an Indian rather better than the average, but overfond of ‘fire-water.’”

“His occupation consisted in selling grass and pasturage to passing travelers and in occasionally providing them with ardent spirits. He said that on top of the magnificent precipices nearby there were some ruins at a place called Machu Picchu”.

“He offered to show me the ruins, which he had once visited, if I would pay him well for his services. His idea of proper payment was 50 cents for his day’s labor. This did not seem unreasonable, although it was two and one-half times his usual day’s wage.” (Bingham; National Geographic)

On July 24, 1911, Hiram Bingham III rediscovered the ‘Lost City’ of Machu Picchu (which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley.)

“(W)e found ourselves in the midst of a tropical forest, beneath the shade of whose trees we could make out a maze of ancient walls, the ruins of buildings made of blocks of granite, some of which were beautifully fitted together in the most refined style of Inca architecture.”

“A few rods farther along we came to a little open space, on which were two splendid temples or palaces. The superior character of the stone work, the presence of these splendid edifices, and of what appeared to be an unusually large number of finely constructed stone dwellings, led me to believe that Machu Picchu might prove to be the largest and most important ruin discovered in South America since the days of the Spanish conquest.” (Bingham; National Geographic)

After his return to the United States, he attained the rank of Captain in the Connecticut National Guard.

He eventually became an aviator and organized the United States Schools of Military Aeronautics to provide ground school training for aviation cadets, as well as commanded an aviator school in France.

Hiram III was elected governor of Connecticut in 1924; he was also a US Senator.

‘Lost City of the Incas’ and Hiram III have been noted as a source of inspiration for the story and ‘Indiana Jones’ character.

Hiram Bingham I (reportedly a basis for James Michener’s Abner Hale character in ‘Hawaii’) is my great-great-great grandfather and Hiram III is my great-great uncle.

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