The subjects of 2 columns turn out to have been kin

It’s interesting to me to find connections between people I write about.

On Sept. 9, I wrote about the Rev. Richard Armstrong visiting the original Iolani Palace with his daughter, Ellen.

Ellen Armstrong Weaver recalled the visit to the palace when she was a young girl in about 1850. She described in vivid detail the people who were there and the furnishings of the palace.

On July 29, I wrote about the Hilo Boarding School, and that it was the model upon which the Hampton Institute in Virginia and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama were founded.

The Hampton Institute was founded by Gen. Samuel C. Armstrong, who was born in Wailuku and fought for the Union Army in the Civil War.

This week, I found out that Samuel Armstrong was Ellen’s brother. Their father, Richard Armstrong, was Kamehameha III’s chaplain. He was also a pastor at Kawaiaha‘o Church and minister of public instruction for the kingdom.

This week, I thought I’d explore this influential family further.

Richard Armstrong left New England in 1831 with his wife, Clarissa, on a six-month, 10,000-mile journey. They were in the fifth company of missionaries to Hawaii.

By 1840 he was pastor at Kawaiaha‘o Church and by 1848 he was superintendent of the kingdom’s school system.

“Armstrong is known as the ‘the father of American education in Hawaii,’” says historian Peter Young. “The government-sponsored education system in Hawaii is the longest-running public school system west of the Mississippi River.”

Under his guidance, the system switched from teaching predominantly in Hawaiian to English, as it was the language of the business community. He also pushed for educating girls.

Richard Armstrong also was on the first Board of Trustees of Punahou school in 1841, along with the Rev. Daniel Dole, Levi Chamberlain, the Rev. John S. Emerson and Gerrit P. Judd.

When Charles Reed Bishop married Bernice Pauahi in 1850, the Rev. Richard Armstrong performed the ceremony.

* * *

Samuel Armstrong was born in Wailuku in 1839, but the family moved to Oahu in his first year. They resided next to Washington Place at the top of Richards and Beretania streets in what was known as the “Stone House” and later Armstrong House.”

The family had 12 cattle that resided in a pen behind the house. Samuel and his brothers milked them. The mission also had cattle and the young Armstrong said he “used to think he could tell to whom the cows belonged by their resemblance to their owners.”

“Kamuela,” as he was known to his Hawaiian friends, said he grew up barefooted year-round, wearing shoes on Sunday only under protest. It was his one real luxury.

Samuel Armstrong had a perspective on church services at Kawaiaha‘o I had never heard before. “The royal family always distinguished themselves by coming in very late with the loudest-squeaking shoes. The more the shoes squeaked,” Armstrong wrote, “the better was the wearer pleased.

“And often a man, after walking noisily in, would sit down and pass his shoes through the window for his wife to wear in, thus doubling the family glory.”

Armstrong attended the Royal School with David Kalakaua and Lydia Liliuokalani as his playmates. He then moved on to Punahou and then Williams College in Massachusetts, where the thing he missed the most was poi — “the most satisfying food in the world.”

When he graduated, the Civil War was starting and Armstrong enlisted as a captain. He had a distinguished military career.

Armstrong led the 125th New York Regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, which fought off Gen. George Pickett’s Confederate charge. For that he was promoted to major, then colonel, in charge of the Union’s 9th regiment of “colored” troops.

By the end of the war, he was a brigadier general in attendance at Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Pretty impressive for a 26 year-old Maui boy.

Following the war, he founded the Hampton Institute in 1868. The Virginia school was for newly freed slaves, to give them educational tools to compete and survive after the war.

The Hampton Institute was based on the Hilo Boarding School model, where students paid for their instruction with gardening, carpentry and other manual work. It gave them academic and vocational skills.

Peter Young says that King Kalakaua visited the Hampton Institute in 1881 as part of his around-the-world tour.

By 1913, Hampton had 1,669 students and 135 buildings. It was considered to be the parent of all later African-American schools, including the famous Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, headed by Hampton graduate Booker T. Washington.

His accomplishment made his mother recall that the ship that brought them to Hawaii in 1831 made port in Rio de Janeiro. They had their first encounter with slavery there.

“From that day my sympathies went out to the poor slaves everywhere,” Clarissa Armstrong wrote in her later years. “But little did I think that I should live to rear a son who would lead slaves to victory in the great contest which in future years should come in my native country.”

* * *

My now-retired chiropractor, Dr. Dennis Momyer, told me that recently he accompanied David Dunson, a state Department of Education behavioral health specialist, back to his alma mater, Hampton University, a historically black college in Hampton, Va.

“I was surprised to see the Hawaii connection,” he said.

Momyer told me that the Hampton Institute has a coral block on display in one of the buildings. It was from the foundation of Kawaiaha‘o Church and given to the institute in 1895.

The church was constructed around 1842 from about 14,000 coral slabs that weigh about 1,000 pounds each.

* * *

My friend J. Arthur Rath III read my article on the Hilo Boarding School and told me I left out something important.

The Hilo Boarding School, founded by his grandfather, David Lyman, was the model for Kamehameha Schools, Rath said. It was founded by Princesses Ruth and Pauahi, and Charles Reed Bishop.

“Kamehameha Schools began in 1887 with the approach that the Rev. David Belden and Sarah Joiner Lyman developed for Hilo Boarding School in 1836. The Lymans emphasized manual training and academic work.

“When Kamehameha Schools opened in 1887, it hired as its principal the Rev. William Brewster Oleson, who’d been principal at Hilo Boarding School. Olson brought some Hilo Boarding School students with him to help set an example for other boys.

“The Hilo Boarding School has been described by historians as America’s first industrial arts training school,” Rath concludes.

* * *

There are several areas in Hawaii named after the Armstrongs. Fort Armstrong (now Piers 1 and 2) on Ala Moana Boulevard was built in 1907 and named for Samuel C. Armstrong. It was built to defend Honolulu Harbor.

Armstrong Street, which runs parallel to the Mid-Pac Institute tennis courts in Manoa, is named for the father, Richard.

Bob Sigall, author of the Companies We Keep books, looks through his collection of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at sigall@yahoo.com.