Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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.

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Instructions from the ABCFM

“It is for no private end, for no earthly object that you go. It is wholly for the good of others, and for the glory of God our Saviour.”

“You will never forget Opukahaia.  You will never forget his fervent love, his affectionate counsels, his many prayers and tears for you, and for his and your nation.”

“You saw him die; saw how the Christian could triumph over death and the grave; saw the radient glory in which he left this world for heaven. You will remember it always, and you will tell it to your kindred and countrymen who are dying without hope.”

On October 23, 1819, a group of northeast missionaries, led by Hiram Bingham, set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.)  With the missionaries were four Hawaiian students from the Foreign Mission School, Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, John Honoliʻi and Prince Humehume (son of Kauaʻi’s King Kaumuali‘i.)

The Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) 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)

The points of especial and essential importance to all missionaries, and all persons engaged in the missionary work are four:
• Devotedness to Christ;
• Subordination to rightful direction;
• Unity one with another; and
• Benevolence towards the objects of their mission

To this high and holy service you are solemnly designated; to this arduous and momentous work you are henceforth to hold yourselves sacredly devoted. You go to the Sandwich Islands as the messengers of the churches and the glory of Christ.

But it is an arduous enterprise, a great and difficult work. To obtain an adequate knowledge of the language of the people; to make them acquainted with letters; to give them the Bible with skill to read it; to turn them from their barbarous courses and habits; to introduce the arts; above all, to convert them from their idolatries and superstitions and vices, to the living and redeeming God, his truth, his laws, his ways of life, of virtue, and of glory.

To effect all this must be the work of an invincible and indefectible spirit of benevolence – a spirit which is not to be turned from its purpose, by any ingratitude, or perverseness, or maltreatment, or difficulties, or dangers; which, in the true sense of the first missionary, will become all things unto all men; which will give earnest heed to the counsels of, wisdom, and be studious in devising the best means and methods of promoting its great object; and which, most especially, and as its grand reliance, will, humbly and thankfully avail itself of the graciously proffered aid of Him in whom all fulness dwells.

Beloved members of the mission, male and female, this christian community is moved for you, and for your enterprise.  The offerings, and prayers, and tears, and benedictions, and vows of the churches are before the throne of everlasting mercy. They must not be violated; they must not, cannot be lost.

But how can you sustain the responsibility? A Nation to be enlightened and renovated; and added to the civilized world, and to the kingdom of the world’s Redeemer and rightful sovereign! In his name only, and by his power, can the enterprise be achieved. In him be all your trust. To Him, most affectionately and devoutly, and to the word of His grace, we commend you.

In the Islands, the kapu system was the common structure, the rule of order, and religious and political code.  This social and political structure gave leaders absolute rule and authority.

By the time the Pioneer Company arrived, Kamehameha I had died and the crown was passed to his son, Liholiho, who would rule as Kamehameha II.  Kaʻahumanu recruited Liholiho’s mother, Keōpūolani, to join her in convincing Liholiho to break the kapu system which had been the rigid code of Hawaiians for centuries.

When the Pioneer Company of missionaries arrived, the kapu system had been abolished; the Hawaiian people had already dismantled their heiau and had rejected their religious beliefs – and effectively weakened belief in the power of the gods and the inevitability of divine punishment for those who opposed them.

Christianity and the western law brought order and were the only answers to keeping order with a growing foreign population and dying race.  Kamehameha III incorporated traditional customary practices within the western laws – by maintaining the “land division of his father with his uncles” – which secured the heirship of lands and succession of the throne, as best he could outside of “politics, trade and commerce.” (Yardley)

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 information here is mostly from the initial instructions given to the missionaries in the Pioneer Company – those were included in 15-pages of instructions, summarized into about a page, here.)

The Annual Meeting of the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society begins at 10 am, today (April 12;) at about 11 am, there is the “Cousins” Annual Roll Call (a competitive counting of the descendents of the respective missionary families who were called to serve in the Islands.) From 1 – 4 pm, there is a free open house at the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives.

The image shows the Mission Houses in a drawing by James P. Chamberlain (LOC) ca 1860.

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© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Henry Opukahaʻia’s Influence on Missionaries Coming to Hawaiʻi

The history and growth of Christianity in Hawaiʻi include Henry Opukahaʻia, a native Hawaiian from the Island of Hawaiʻi.
In 1809, at the age of 16, after his parents had been killed, he boarded a sailing ship anchored in Kealakekua Bay and sailed to the continent.
On board, he developed a friendship with a Christian sailor who, using the Bible, began teaching Opukahaʻia how to read and write.
Once landed, he traveled throughout New England and continued to learn and study.
Opukahaʻia’s life in New England was greatly influenced by many young men with proven sincerity and religious fervor that were active in the Second Great Awakening and the establishment of the missionary movement.
These men had a major impact on Opukahaʻia’s enlightenment in Christianity and his vision to return to Hawaiʻi as a Christian missionary.
By 1817, a dozen students, six of them Hawaiians, were training at the Foreign Mission School to become missionaries to teach the Christian faith to people around the world.
He improved his English by writing the story of his life in a book called “Memoirs of Henry Obookiah” (the spelling of his name prior to establishment of the formal Hawaiian alphabet, based on its sound.)
Opukahaʻia died suddenly of typhus fever in 1818.  The book about his life was printed and circulated after his death.
Opukahaʻia’s book inspired 14 missionaries to volunteer to carry his message to the Sandwich Islands. 
On October 23, 1819, a group of missionaries from the northeast United States, set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.)
There were seven couples sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to convert the Hawaiians to Christianity.
These included two Ordained Preachers, Hiram 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.
Along with them were four Hawaiian youths who had been students at the Foreign Mission School, Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, John Honoliʻi and Prince Humehume (son of Kauaiʻi’s King Kaumuali‘i and also known as Prince George Kaumuali‘i.)
After 164 days at sea, on April 4, 1820 (192-years ago, today,) the Thaddeus first arrived and anchored at Kailua-Kona on the Island of Hawaiʻi.
Hawai‘i’s “Plymouth Rock” is about where the Kailua pier is today.
The Thurstons remained in Kailua-Kona, while their fellow missionaries went to establish stations on other Hawaiian islands.
Hiram Bingham, the leader of the group, went to Honolulu to set up a mission headquarters; Whitney and Ruggles accompanied Prince Kaumuali‘i on his return to Kaua‘i.  (Hiram is my great-great-great grandfather.)
By the time the missionaries arrived, Kamehameha I had died, Liholiho (his son) was king and the kapu system had been abolished.
I have added a folder of like name in the Photos section of my Facebook page of images from Hiram Bingham’s book, “A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands” and other related images.  Several of the illustrations show missionary work across the islands.