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Bishop, Gulick, Judd, Thurston, Wilcox, Baldwin, Lyman and Rice are just a few of the names given to streets, schools, museums, hospitals, shopping centers, hiking trails and other familiar places statewide to honor 19th-century missionaries and their descendants who played key roles in shaping the history and lifestyle of Hawaii.
Close to 200 devout men and women served in the islands between 1820 and 1863. ‘Opukaha‘ia, one of the first Native Hawaiians to convert to Christianity, inspired that ambitious proselyting effort by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
Peter Young is a great-great-great-grandson of Hiram and Sybil Bingham, who were in the first company of those missionaries. “Sybil was pregnant with my great-great-grandmother, Sophia Bingham, when they landed in Kailua-Kona on April 4, 1820,” he said. “Hawaii’s first mission station and Christian church, Moku‘aikaua, were established there. Stations were also set up on Oahu and Kauai in 1820, and Maui’s first station was founded three years later.”
Young is president of the board of trustees of the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives, one of the organizations planning the observance of the Hawaiian mission’s bicentennial. Many of the public events have been derailed by the coronavirus pandemic, and have been changed into livestream events.
Young said the story of ‘Opukaha‘ia is critical to understanding the mission’s purpose and accomplishments.
‘Opukaha‘ia was born in the mid-1780s in Kau on Hawaii island. When he was 10, his parents and infant brother were killed by warriors aiming to gain control of the area. The young boy went to live with his uncle, the priest of a nearby heiau. There he began training, so that he could eventually assume his uncle’s role.
But ‘Opukaha‘ia yearned to leave the place that filled him with deep sadness. When the Connecticut-based merchant ship Triumph anchored in Kealakekua Bay in 1807, he signed on as a 16-year-old cabin boy with Capt. Caleb Brintnall.
Settling at first in New Haven, ‘Opukaha‘ia adopted the name Henry and lived, worked and learned English in Brintnall’s home. In 1809, while he was sitting on the steps of Yale College, he met a student, Edwin Dwight, who introduced him to a distant relative, Timothy Dwight IV, Yale’s president and a founder of the Foreign Missions group. That relationship enabled ‘Opukaha‘ia to take classes at Yale and strengthen his faith.
After converting to Christianity in 1815, he expressed his desire to return to Hawaii to teach the gospel, and two years later he enrolled in the Foreign Mission School just established in Cornwall, Conn. But before he could complete his theological studies, he contracted typhus fever and died on Feb. 17, 1818.
On Oct. 23 the following year, 14 missionaries sailed from Boston aboard the Thaddeus to fulfill ‘Opukaha‘ia’s dream. By that time, King Kamehameha had died, the ancient kapu system had been abolished, heiau had been dismantled and the Hawaiian people were ready to listen to their message.
‘Opukaha‘ia was initially buried in Cornwall. In 1993, a group of his relatives reinterred his remains at Kahikolu Congregational Church in Napoopoo, near Kealakekua Bay.
“The bicentennial events pay tribute to ‘Opukaha‘ia and the many missionaries who left their homes and families in the 1800s to accept their calling in a strange, new, faraway land,” Young said. “In the process, they touched hearts and changed lives. Their influence was profound, and it endures to this day in small ways and large.”
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HAWAIIAN MISSION BICENTENNIAL EVENTS
Considering coronavirus concerns, these events will only be livestreamed at missionhouses.org.
Programs are subject to change. For details call 447-3910, email info@missionhouses.org or visit missionhouses.org/bicentennial.
April 20
>> 2 p.m.: Literacy as the New Technology talk
>> 3:30 p.m.: Talk by Ralph Kam co-author of “Partners in Change: A Biographical Encyclopedia of American Protestant Missionaries in Hawai‘i and Their Hawaiian and Tahitian Colleagues, 1820-1900.” Kam wrote the book with David Forbes and Thomas Woods.
>> 5:30 p.m.: Living History Theater performance about Waimea Mission Station
April 21
>> 10 a.m.: Mission Cemetery tour. Bishop, Castle, Cooke and Alexander are among the missionary families buried there. Repeats April 24.
>> 3 p.m.: Architecture tour
>> 3:30 p.m.: Christopher Cook, a member of the Hawaiian Mission Houses’ board of trustees, will introduce his book, “Preparing the Way: A Pictorial History for the Hawai‘i Mission Bicentennial, 1820-2020”
April 22
>> 10 a.m.: Tour of O‘ahu Cemetery, focused on missionaries and descendants buried there
>> 3 p.m.: Hawaiian Perspectives tour exploring relationships between the missionaries and Native Hawaiians
April 23
>> 2 p.m.: Talk on the arrival of Tahitian Christians and members of the London Missionary Society from 1818 to 1822
>> 3:30 p.m.: Talk by Phil Corr, who will share highlights of his research for a biography of missionary Titus Coan
>> 5:30 p.m.: Living History Theater performance about Kailua-Kona Mission Station
April 24
>> 3 p.m.: History buff’s tour focused on 19th-century life in Hawaii
>> 3:30 p.m.: Nancy Morris will discuss “Na Kahu: Portraits of Native Hawaiian Pastors at Home and Abroad, 1820-1900,” a book she co-authored with Robert Benedetto
>> 6 p.m.: “Open Your Hearts Wide,” a play based on interviews with missionary descendants, their ancestors’ journals and letters by the alii
April 25
>> 12:30 p.m.: Living History Theater performance about Honolulu Mission Station
Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won several Society of American Travel Writers awards.
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