Richard Armstrong | Page 2 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

January 3, 2020 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Fort Armstrong

Fort Armstrong was located at Honolulu and was built on fill over Kaʻākaukukui reef in 1907 to protect Honolulu Harbor. It had one named Battery, and was spread over an area of 64.34 acres (6 acres being upland and the balance submerged lands.)

Kaʻākaukukui (the right (or north) light – and also called ‘Ākaukukui) was an original name for Kakaʻako.

Marshland, reef, salt pans and traditional fish ponds existed in this area. The entire shoreline was a coral wasteland bordered by mudflats. According to an 1885 survey map, the ‘ili of Kaʻākaukukui was awarded by land court to Victoria Kamāmalu; Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop inherited the land and it later became part of the Kamehameha Schools.

In 1898, the property was transferred to the United States by the Republic of Hawaiʻi under the joint resolution of annexation and, to protect the mouth of Honolulu Harbor, the US Army filled a submerged coral reef on the ‘Ewa side of Ka’ākaukukui for a gun emplacement.

In January 1905, President Teddy Roosevelt instructed Secretary of War William H Taft to convene the National Coast Defense Board (Taft Board) “to consider and report upon the coast defenses of the United States and the insular possessions (including Hawai‘i.)”

In 1906 the Taft Board recommended a system of Coast Artillery batteries to protect Pearl Harbor and Honolulu. Between 1909-1921, the Hawaiian Coast Artillery Command had its headquarters at Fort Ruger and defenses included artillery regiments stationed at …

… Fort Armstrong, Fort Barrette, Fort DeRussy, Diamond Head, Fort Kamehameha, Kuwa‘aohe Military Reservation (Fort Hase – later known as Marine Corps Base Hawaiʻi) and Fort Weaver.

The District was renamed Headquarters Coast Defenses of Oʻahu sometime between 1911 and 1913. Following World War I and until the end of World War II, additional coastal batteries were constructed throughout the Island.

Fort Armstrong, built in 1907, was named for Brigadier General Samuel C Armstrong. His father, Reverend Richard Armstrong (1805-1860,) had arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1832 and later replaced Hiram Bingham as pastor at Kawaiahaʻo Church (1840-1843.) In 1848, Armstrong (the father) left the mission and became Hawaiʻi’s minister of public education.

Armstrong (the son – namesake of the Fort) was born January 30, 1839 in Maui, Hawaii, the sixth of ten children. He attended Punahou School and later volunteered to serve in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

At the end of the war, Armstrong established the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute – now known as Hampton University – in Hampton, Virginia in 1868. Perhaps the best student of Armstrong’s Hampton-style education was Booker T Washington. Samuel Chapman Armstrong died at the Hampton Institute on May 11, 1893, and is buried in the Hampton University Cemetery.

The original garrison at Fort Armstrong was the 1st Coast Artillery Company, followed by the 104th Mine Co. operating the harbor mines. Also stationed there was the 185th Coast Artillery Company.

They lived in tents for quite a long time; then temporary barracks were built – wooden structures that were continually occupied since January, 1914. Buildings are constructed of 1 x 12 rough boards, with tar-paper roofs.

The facility later had a barracks, 4 officers’ quarters, 3 noncommissioned officers’ quarters, administration building and post exchange, guardhouse, fire apparatus house, quartermaster storehouse, gymnasium and related infrastructure; the standard strength was 109 men.

Battery Tiernon at Fort Armstrong was armed with two pedestal mounted 3-inch Guns from 1911 to 1943.

The first service practice ever held at Battery Tiernon, using the 3-inch guns, was August 30, 1913. “Two 10-by-24 foot material targets were towed from right to left, facing the field of fire from a position at the B.C. station. … only one target was fired upon, viz: Four shots by the first manning detail and then four shots by the second manning detail. This was due to the fact that when the left target had almost reached the inner allowable limit of range at which practice may be held (1,500-yards) the right target was just beginning to be obscured by a dredge working in the outer channel.”

The Army mission in Hawaiʻi was defined in 1920 as “the defense of Pearl Harbor Naval Base against damage from naval or aerial bombardment or by enemy sympathizers and attack by enemy expeditionary force or forces, supported or unsupported by an enemy fleet or fleets.”

Fort Armstrong continued under the Coast Artillery program until September 15, 1922.

It was reserved for military purposes by a series of Executive Orders in 1930 and was described as the Fort Armstrong Military Reservation.

The present seawall was constructed 500-feet out from the original shoreline in 1948, and the area was backfilled. The Army Corps of Engineers took over the post in 1949. Kakaʻako Park was created over the landfill area.

On December 13, 1951, because the site was no longer needed by the military and was needed by the Territory of Hawaiʻi for harbor improvements, President Truman transferred the land to the Territory of Hawaiʻi.

Today, the site includes Piers 1 and 2 and has container and general cargo berths, warehouses, sheds, open paved storage areas for container back up and marshaling and Foreign Trade Zone No. 9. The area also contains the US Immigration Station, the Department of Health Building, and the Ala Moana Pumping Station (all historic buildings.)

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October 26, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Armstrong Appointment

“The Missionaries have been the fathers, the builders and the supporters of education in these Islands, and (William Lee) thought it proper that their wishes in reference to the appointment of a person to superintend Education should in some degree be consulted”. (William Lee)

“Mr Richards the Minister of Public Instruction is sick and has been given up to die, though he still lives. The Minister of the Interior has been appointed to act for him provisionally”. (Gerrit Judd)

“Mr. Wyllie rose and said a sense of duty to the King induced him to state that the appointment of a Minister of Public Instruction, in the peculiar circumstances of the Islands, was the most important under the Crown.”

“On public instruction was based the Security of His M’s Crown, and the progress of His subjects in civilization and christianity. That, therefore, an appointment so momentous for good or evil, ought not to be precipitately made.” (Two names were discussed, Lorrin Andrews and Richard Armstrong.)

“That the man of greatest talent, most moral worth, most devoted to the King and to His Subjects and best acquainted with the language should be selected and he believed that man to be Mr Armstrong.”

“He gave this opinion as if speaking in presence of his Maker and having to answer for it, at the great day of Judgement. But he
hoped that whoever might be appointed, the appointment should be considered provisional, so as to meet the case of the possible recovery of Mr Richards.” (Richard Wyllie)

Lee “Said it was his mind that this matter is the most important one that can come before the Privy Council. With the Minister of Public Instruction rested the weighty responsibility of moulding the mind and character of this Nation for generations to come.”

“How necessary then, that we select the best man the Kingdom affords. He had looked around him to see who this man was, and his mind and heart were fixed upon Richard Armstrong.”

“He was his first choice, and in his humble opinion the Man of all men best adopted to discharge the high duties of this Post. He gave his preference to Mr Armstrong because he was a good Man, a wise Man and an industrious Man.”

“He would say nothing in disparagement of Mr Andrews of Molokai, for he knew little or nothing about him. But he did know Mr Armstrong, and thought he should certainly have the first offer.”

“He was a tried and devoted to this Nation and one whom we could not mistake – A question of such vast importance required our most sober deliberations, and he trusted that in whatever we did, we might not move with precipitation.”

“He most heartily concurred with Mr Wyllie in his remarks, and would end as he began, in stating it as his firm conviction, that Richard Armstrong was the Man.” (Lee)

“Mr (John Papa) Ii spoke very eloquently in favor of both candidates – said that either of them do well, but that Mr Armstrong was a good fisher of Men and that his loss would be severely felt in the Church.” (Ii)

Richards died – “the oldest, the most devoted, faithful and tried servant of His Majesty. He had given all the best energies of his body, mind & soul to this Nation, and what was more, he had died in poverty”. (William Lee)

“Kekuanaoa states that in his opinion Mr Armstrong be appointed and so notified. In his opinion, Mr Armstrong was the best Man and that he ought to be appointed at once.” (Kekuanaoa)

“Mr Wyllie stated that notwithstanding all that had been said, he could not without violence to his conscience, do otherwise than support the views of Governor Kekuanaoa and John Ii. Their views were r that Mr Armstrong should be appointed subject to the approval of the Missionaries at their next General Meeting.”

“He (Mr Wyllie) supported those views, both because he considered Mr Armstrong the best man, & because the whole Missionary body thought him to be the best Man. …” (Wyllie)

“It was, therefore, due, no less in gratitude than in policy, for the Government, to act so as to cultivate the good opinion & continue the sympathy of the American Board of F. Missions in the U. S. and the good will of the Missionaries here.”

“Nothing would do that more effectually than the appointment of M. Armstrong, whom all the Missionaries considered the fittest Man for the Post, although from the value they attach to him, they did not like to part with him.”

“He believed and Mr Armstrong also believed that by waiting till the next General Meeting, the Missionaries would so far consent to his separation, as to enable him to take office with their approval.” (Wyllie)

“Mr Wyllie moved the following Resolution ‘Resolved that the Reverend Mr Armstrong’s offer to assist the Minister of the Interior until the next General Meeting of his brethren, be accepted; and that if he can then obtain the approval of his brethren, he be appointed to the Office of Minister of Public Instruction.’” (Wyllie)

“The Rev. Mr. Armstrong, having by letter to Judge Lee, dated May 1848, accepted the office of the Minister of Public Instruction, tendered him by Resolution of the 2nd of December 1847 – took the Oath of Allegiance.” (All from Privy Council Minutes)

Armstrong left the mission and became Minister of Public Instruction on June 7, 1848. Armstrong was to serve the government for the remainder of his life. He was a member of the Privy Council and the House of Nobles and acted as the royal chaplain.

He set up the Board of Education under the kingdom in 1855 and was its president until his death. Armstrong is known as the “the father of American education in Hawaiʻi.”

The government-sponsored education system in Hawaiʻi is the longest running public school system west of the Mississippi River. To this day, Hawaiʻi is the only state to have a completely-centralized State public school system.

Armstrong helped bring better textbooks, qualified teachers and better school buildings. Students were taught in Hawaiian how to read, write, math, geography, singing and to be “God-fearing” citizens. (By 1863, three years after Armstrong’s death, the missionaries stopped being a part of Hawaiʻi’s education system.)

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August 3, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Barque Flora

Francis Allyn Olmsted took a voyage to Hawai‘i, to which he noted, “During the latter part of my collegiate course, my health became very much impaired by a chronic debility of the nervous system, and soon after graduating, the cold air of Autumn admonished me to seek a milder clime for spending the winter.”

“While deliberating upon what would be most desirable in accomplishing the purposes I had in view, a favorable opportunity was offered me to go out as passenger in the whale-ship ‘North America,’ which was fitting out at New-London for a voyage to the Pacific.” (Olmstead)

He sailed as a passenger on the whale-ship ‘North America,’ that sailed from New-London, Connecticut, leaving on October 11, 1839 and arriving at O‘ahu on May 22, 1840, “having sailed more than five thousand miles in a leaky ship, with the pumps going night and day.”

After spending a little over 3-months in the Islands, on August 3, 1840, Olmstead, “bade a long adieu to many kind friends at Honolulu, and established myself in my quarters aboard the barque ‘Flora,’ Captain Spring, bound for New York.” (Olmstead)

“The Flora, is a barque of about two hundred and ninety-three tons burden, nearly a hundred tons smaller than the ‘North America’, and in many other respects is her inferior. She is a merchant vessel, and arrived at Honolulu a short time since, with stores for the Exploring Expedition (Wilkes Expedition).”

“The Flora, is chartered by one of the mercantile houses at Honolulu, and is principally freighted with sugar and molasses, novel exports from the Hawaiian Islands to the United States, a distance of eighteen thousand miles. …”

“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.”

“As the other two are situated upon each quarter of the ship, they are conformed to the shape of the vessel, and are somewhat triangular in their outlines, which renders them very inconvenient; for with the large sea chest I am obliged to admit into mine, there is hardly room enough left to stand up securely.”

“There are twenty passengers in all, who, with the exception of two or three that are to be left at the Society Islands, are to constitute a community by ourselves for many a month, while roving the ocean, in the long voyage to our native land. …” (Olmstead)

Among the passengers were Hiram and Sybil Bingham (and family); Mrs Lucy Thurston and children; and Caroline Armstrong, 9-year-old daughter of missionaries Richard and Clarissa Armstrong).

“The character of the passengers, gives the fairest promises of a happy and profitable voyage. Mr. and Mrs. Bingham, after a residence of twenty years at these remote isles of the sea, during which, amid toils and privations of which we have no adequate conception …”

“… they have seen the christian religion established among a race of idolaters, and have given permanency to a language existing but from generation to generation, have now embarked with their family of three young children, to revisit the land of their fathers, for the recovery of their health …”

“… and then to return again to these islands, after bidding farewell forever to their children, and committing them to the care of a benevolent public.”

“The tide of contending emotions that agitate their hearts can only be imagined. With the thousand perplexities and cares attendant upon making preparation for so long a voyage …”

“… and in separating themselves perhaps forever from a people that had grown up under their instruction, and to whom they had become tenderly attached, they were almost exhausted, and it seemed like a renewal of that depressing sorrow that attended their departure from their native land.”

“The poor natives accompanied them in crowds as they came down to the ship, and thronged the dock, with sorrow depicted in their countenances.”

“Soon the voice of wailing, which had been heard from one or two, became general, and a note of wild lamentation burst forth in a deafening chorus, until by the efforts of two or three of the missionaries, the sorrow of the people was restrained to a more quiet demonstration of their grief.”

“I could not but admire the heroic fortitude with which Mrs. Thurston tore herself away from her affectionate husband, to voyage with her family, consisting of two sons and three daughters, to a far distant country, which had almost become a foreign land, after an exile of twenty years.”

“Poor Mr. Thurston! When he returns to his home upon the rocky shore of Hawaii, how heavily must the lonesome hours pass by, which are no longer enlivened by the presence of his beloved family.”

“There are a father and mother too, who with bursting hearts, commit their little daughter (Caroline Armstrong), of only nine years of age, to the care of Mrs. Bingham, to be borne far away from their presence to a land of strangers.” (Olmstead)

Caroline Armstrong, looking at her father on the shore, the distance between them widening every moment … “Oh, father, dear father, do take me back!” (Judd)

Her plea echoed in the hearts of the community. In June of that year the mission voted to establish a school for the missionary children at Punahou. (Emanuel)

“Such are some of the heart-rending scenes that are often exhibited in the missionaries’ rife, who not only exile themselves from all they hold dear in their native land, but are ready to sunder every tie of affection, if required by a sense of duty.” (Olmstead)

“We stood alone in thus making the experiment of retaining children on heathen ground. At this time, when the mission was in its twentieth year, more than forty missionaries’ children have been conveyed away by parents, that have retired from this field of labor.”

“Eighteen have been scattered about in the fatherland without parents.” (Lucy Thurston) She was on the trip with her children to provide them with educational opportunities.

“Divine Providence seemed to indicate that one or both of the ordained pioneers of the mission should leave the ground temporarily, at least, though both could not well be spared at once.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Thurston, who thought it their duty to convey their children to the United States, myself, and Mrs. B., with health much impaired had permission to visit our native land. Mrs. B. was too much worn out to go without her husband.”

“Mr. T. chose to stand at his post at Kailua, and send his family with mine, and trusted the arrangement for their children with Mrs. T., the Board, and private friends. Mr. Armstrong took my post at Honolulu.” (Hiram Bingham)

They first headed to Tahiti, then headed to Cap Horn – Friday, January 1, 1841. Land ho! At four bells in the forenoon watch, the dim outline of the coast of South America, was just discernible through the gloom resting upon it, the first sight of terra-firma that has greeted our eyes since leaving Tahiti, a period of three months.”

Then, Wednesday, February 3. At daylight, this morning, the low outline of the coast of the United States, was seen stretching along to the westward of us, not more than ten or twelve miles off. … (February 4, 1841) we came to anchor off Sandy Hook, in six months from the Sandwich Islands.” (Olmstead) (Image shows the North America.)

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North America

May 11, 2018 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Piece of Pahoehoe

Richard and Clarissa Armstrong were with the Fifth Company of American Protestant missionaries to the Islands (which included the Alexanders, Emersons, Forbes, Hitchcocks, Lymans, Lyons, Stockton and others). They arrived on May 17, 1832.

The Armstrongs had ten children. Son William N Armstrong (King Kalākaua’s Attorney General) accompanied Kalākaua on his tour of the world, one of three white men who accompanied the King as advisers and counsellors (Armstrong, Charles H Judd and a personal attendant/valet.)

Armstrong and Judd were Kalākaua’s schoolmates at the Chiefs’ Children’s School in 1849. (Marumoto) “Thirty years afterward, and after three of our schoolmates had become kings and had died (Kamehameha IV & V and Lunalio) and two of them had become queens (Emma and Liliʻuokalani,) it so happened that Kalākaua ascended the throne, and with his two old schoolmates began his royal tour.” (Armstrong)

Another Armstrong son was Samuel Chapman Armstrong. “More than 100 people from Hawai‘i fought on both sides of the Civil War. Arguably the most famous was the Union general Samuel C Armstrong.” (NY Times)

Armstrong, the son of missionaries, was born January 30, 1839 in Maui, the sixth of ten children. In 1860 his father suddenly died, and Armstrong, at age 21, left Hawai‘i for the United States and attended Williams College in Massachusetts, graduating in 1862.

After graduation, Armstrong volunteered to serve in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and recruited a company near Troy, New York.

Armstrong was among the 12,000-men captured in September 1862 with the surrender of the garrison at Harpers Ferry. After being paroled, he returned to the front lines in Virginia in December; he fought at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, defending Cemetery Ridge against Pickett’s Charge.

Armstrong subsequently rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, being assigned to the 9th Regiment, United States Colored Troops (USCT) in late 1863, then the 8th US Colored Troops when its previous commander was disabled from wounds. Armstrong’s experiences with these regiments aroused his interest in the welfare of black Americans.

When Armstrong was assigned to command the USCT, training was conducted at Camp Stanton near Benedict, Maryland. While stationed at Stanton, he established a school to educate the black soldiers, most of whom had no education as slaves.

At the end of the war, Armstrong joined the Freedmen’s Bureau. With the help of the American Missionary Association, he established the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute – now known as Hampton University – in Hampton, Virginia in 1868.

The Institute was meant to be a place where black students could receive post-secondary education to become teachers, as well as training in useful job skills while paying for their education through manual labor.

Among the school’s famous alumni is Dr Booker T Washington, who became an educator and later founded Tuskegee Institute. President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was read to local freedmen under the historic “Emancipation Tree,” which is still located on the campus today.

“As an acknowledgment of the origin of Hampton from work done in Hawaii at the entrance of the great assembly hall there is built into the wall a piece of lava rock. This is a token that the foundation of Hampton lay in Hawaii.” (Ford, Pan Pacific Union)

“To anyone going to Hampton that piece of pahoehoe at the entrance to the great hall tells silently to those who can read the inestimable value of the Hawaiian Mission in its world-wide influence.” (Centennial Book)

“‘Education for Life,’ which was the constant theme of Armstrong’s teaching, essential though it be to secure to thousands of young men and women their self-support, is not an end in itself, but a means.” (Peabody) He incorporated the Head, Heart and Hand approach used by the missionaries.

“(Armstrong’s) parting message has become, not alone a precious legacy to Hampton, but a source of strength to great numbers of lives which are trying to go the same way of happy sacrifice.” Portions of his ‘Memoranda’, found after his death, follows …

“A work that requires no sacrifice does not count for much in fulfilling God’s plans. But what is commonly called sacrifice is the best, happiest use of one’s self and one’s resources …”

“…the best investment of time, strength, and means. He who makes no such sacrifice is most to be pitied. He is a heathen because he knows nothing of God.”

“In the school the great thing is not to quarrel; to pull all together; to refrain from hasty, unwise words and actions; to unselfishly and wisely seek the best good of all …”

“… and to get rid of workers whose temperaments are unfortunate – whose heads are not level; no matter how much knowledge or culture they may have. Cantankerousness is worse than heterodoxy.”

“I am most thankful for my parents, my Hawaiian home, for war experiences, and college days at Williams, and for life and work at Hampton.”

“Hampton has blessed me in so many ways; along with it have come the choicest people of the country for my friends and helpers, and then such a grand chance to do something directly for those set free by the war, and indirectly for those who were conquered; and Indian work has been another great privilege.”

“Few men have had the chance that I have had. I never gave up or sacrificed anything in my life – have been, seemingly, guided in everything.”

“Prayer is the greatest power in the world. It keeps us near to God—my own prayer has been most weak, wavering, inconstant; yet has been the best thing I have ever done. I think this is a universal truth—what comfort is there in any but the broadest truths?”

“”Hampton must not go down. See to it, you who are true to the black and red children of the land, and to just ideas of education. The loyalty of my old soldiers and of my students has been an unspeakable comfort.”

“It pays to follow one’s best light—to put God and country first; ourselves afterwards.” (Armstrong; Peabody)

The Islands were at the grave of Armstrong … “At its head was set a huge fragment of volcanic rock, laboriously brought from his island-home in the Pacific, and at its foot a quartz boulder hewn from the Berkshire Hills, where he had been trained.”

“The monument is a witness of the character it commemorates, volcanic in temperament, granitic in persistency; a life of self-destructive energy, like a mountain on fire, but with the steadiness and strength of one who had lifted up his eyes to the hills and found help.”

Samuel Chapman Armstrong died May 11, 1893. “Such was the end of an era in the history of Education for Life.” (Peabody)

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Grave of Samuel Armstrong-Peabody

Grave of Samuel Armstrong

Headstone at Grave of Samuel Armstrong

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Booker_T_Washington

American Indian at Hampton Institute, Virginia

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute

Hampton Normal & Agricultural Institute

Emancipation Oak CWT Marker

February 23, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Going to “the land of our fathers”

Among the passengers were Hiram and Sybil Bingham (and family); Mrs Lucy Thurston and children; and Caroline Armstrong, 9-year-old daughter of missionaries Richard and Clarissa Armstrong).

“Mr. and Mrs. (Asa) Thurston, who thought it their duty to convey their children to the United States, myself, and Mrs. B(ingham), with health much impaired had permission to visit our native land. Mrs. B. was too much worn out to go without her husband.”

“Mr. T(hurston) chose to stand at his post at Kailua, and send his family with mine, and trusted the arrangement for their children with Mrs. T., the Board, and private friends. Mr. Armstrong took my post at Honolulu.” (Hiram Bingham)

“Time passes rapidly on, and brings near the day of our departure from the land of our childhood. Our family, which has so long lived together, is soon to be separated.”

“Probably we shall not all meet again on earth; but it will be but a short time before we shall meet in a better, brighter world, if prepared. Our passage is engaged in the Flora, Captain Spring, bound to New York. The Captain is a pious man, and we are much pleased with him.”

“I hope you will write us whenever you can. We shall desire very much to hear from the Sandwich Islands. We shall always think of you with interest; and shall long remember the many pleasant visits we have made at your house, and the many kindnesses we have received at your hands. The Lord reward you for them all.”

“We shall often think of the many friends we leave behind, when far away. Pray for us. I hope you will often visit Kailua, and comfort our father in his lonely home at Laniakea.” (Lucy G Thurston to Mrs Forbes, July 29, 1840)

“Mrs. Thurston, with her family, arrived in New York on the 4th of February, 1841. She delayed going immediately on to the home of her kindred, in the eastern part of Massachusetts, in order to have the company and protection of a friend who was expecting to make the same journey.”

Upon arrival, young Lucy writes, “Brooklyn, Feb. 16th, 1841. “My Dear Father, We learn that a vessel is to sail for the Sandwich Islands in about a week, and I take my pen to inform you of our safe arrival in the land of our fathers.”

“We were six months and one day from the S. Islands to this place. Stopped a fortnight at the Society Islands, and three days at Pernambuco. We have been remarkably favored in our passage, and all enjoyed good health.”

“The captain has been as a father to us, and by his kind attentions we have felt your loss much less than we otherwise should have done.”

“Mr. B(ingham) has very kindly invited our whole family to remain at his house till we leave the place. We feel under great obligations to him for his kindness. ….”

“We have been thronged with visiters, who call to see us from morning till night. Mother has a trunk of curiosities, which she shows them, and thus excites a good deal of interest in the mission.”

“P(ersis) has several times dressed herself in native style, and marched about the room, much to the amusement of the company. We have received more kindness than we expected – far more than we deserved. …”

The Thurston children reached the continent, a new and different place – as written by young Lucy Thurston, ‘the land of our fathers’ – having left ‘the land of our childhood’.

Shortly after arriving, young Lucy Thurston ‘was taken sick.’ She noted in a letter she was drafting “… We visited the City Hall – a splendid building, where in the Governor’s room, we saw the full length portraits of all the Governors of the State of New York. They were elegant paintings; In the evening –”

Her sister Persis wrote to their father thereafter, explaining the abrupt ending of the letter “… Company calling, she was interrupted in the middle of a sentence, and never again resumed her pen.”

“Lucy was in most vigorous health; but she was seized with inflammation on the lungs just two weeks after their arrival, and on the morning of her coming to the family with whom she passed the last week of her life – the only week of physical pain and distress she ever experienced.”

“She told her mother, a day or two after the commencement of her illness, that she had no choice about its result. … ‘Mother, dear mother,’ many, many times repeated, still continued, and ‘Father, father,’ were the last that fell upon the ear.” Young Lucy Thurston died February 24, 1841.

“At the age of seventeen, she landed upon our shores, with the expectation of enjoying, for a season, the advantages of the society and institutions of Christian America; but within three weeks after the time of her arrival, she found a place in our sepulchres.” (Thurston) A book was written, her memoir, ‘The Missionary’s Daughter or Memoir of Lucy Goodale Thurston’.

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The Missionary’s Daughter Cover