Names of those memorialized in Mission Memorial Cemetery
Artemas Bishop (December 30, 1795 - December 18, 1872) For over two years young Artemas Bishop felt the call to missionary service while engaged in his studies at Union College, New York, and later Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. “It is the Sandwich Islands Mission in which I have been most interested from the first, & to which of all places I had rather go…” Bishop was born in Pompey, New York on December 30, 1795. Near the time of his departure to Hawaiʻi, he met and married Elizabeth Edwards, a childhood schoolmate of Lucy Goodale Thurston, with whom she shared a dream of missionary service. The Bishops arrived in Hawai`i April 23, 1823, on the ship Thames, as part of the second company of missionaries sent to the islands by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Their assignments took them from Honolulu to Kauai and to Kona on Hawai`i Island, where they worked alongside the Thurston family. There they had two children. Bishop had shown a talent for languages while attending college. In Hawaii, he used that talent to translate, with fellow missionaries and Hawaiian advisors, parts of five books of the New Testament and seven books of the Old Testament. In addition, he translated six mathematics books, wrote a Hawaiian-to -English phrase book, and translated Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, then the second most popular book in the world. In 1823, Bishop took part in a three-hundred-mile exploratory expedition on foot and by canoe, around the island of Hawai`i with Asa Thurston, Joseph Goodrich, a guide, Makoa, a mechanic by the name of Harwood, and the English missionary William Ellis, undertaken to scout sites for new mission stations. Elizabeth Bishop died in February of 1828, and Bishop remarried by the end of the year. His second wife was Delia Stone, who raised Bishop’s children in Kona and in ‘Ewa, O`ahu, where the Bishops were later stationed. In ‘Ewa, Bishop’s mission became that of assuring the succession of ministers for the Congregational Protestant church through the ordaining of native Hawaiian pastors. In later years Bishop made a voyage to the Marquesas Islands as part of a deputation from the ABCFM. After returning to Hawai`i, he became a surveyor for the government, earning enough that he and his wife, upon leaving the mission’s work, were able to build a house in Honolulu, where they spent their last days. Artemas Bishop Born December 30, 1795, Pompey, Oswego, New York Died December 18, 1872 Honolulu, Hawai`i Sources: Partners in Change, David Forbes, Ralph Kam, Thomas Woods, editors; Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, 2018 Nancy J. Morris, Robert Benedetto Nā Kahu: Portraits of Native Hawaiian Pastors at Home and Abroad, 1820–1900 Ellis, William. A Narrative Tour of Hawaii London H. Fisher, Son, and P. Jackson; Hatchard and Son; Seeley and Son; Hamilton, Adams, and Company; Sherwood and Company; J. Nisbet; Simpkin and Marshall; and J. Duncan 1827 Thurston, Lucy. Life and Times of Lucy G. Thurston, S.C. Andrews, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1882
Anna Charlotte Rice Cooke (September 5, 1853 - August 8, 1934) Anna Rice Cooke founded the wonderful Honolulu Museum of Art. The youngest child of missionaries William and Mary Sophia Rice, she lived a simple life as a child but later traveled, with her mother, brother-in-law, and his children, to Germany. Here she visited art museums which began her life-long love of art. Anna Rice married Charles Montague Cooke in 1874. The Cookes built a life in Honolulu’s center, first living with his parents at the frame house which you see across the street from this cemetery, then on Beretania Street, at the current site of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Mr. Cooke was a founder of the Bank of Hawai’i, and served as a trustee for the Bishop Estate. They created the Cooke Foundation which continues today to serve the community through art, humanities, and educational grants. When her husband died, Anna traveled to Asia and Canada with her daughter, and as they traveled they collected paintings, drawings, sculptures, porcelain, and textiles. She enjoyed displaying her treasures at home but eventually decided that the best thing she could do with all of these things was to create a museum so everyone could enjoy them. In 1920 she moved from Beretania Street to Makiki Heights, and her house was torn down and the museum was built on the site. Central to the museum's idea was her philosophy that art was for everyone, and specifically everyone in Hawai’i. She wanted Hawaiian architecture for the building and followed a plan of displaying only some of the work at any given time in order to create a harmony between display spaces and the pieces themselves. When the building was finished and displays created, she invited schools to visit, and if that were impossible, she took photo reproductions of pieces, and sometimes the pieces themselves, to rural schools. She was the first woman in Hawai’i to obtain a driver’s license, in order to accomplish these visits. Because she felt so strongly about the place of art in education, she called the museum The Honolulu Academy of Art, so that its role in the lives of the people would not be forgotten. The name of the institution was changed in 2012. Anna Charlotte Rice Cooke Born September 5, 1853 Punahou, Hawai’i, Died August 8, 1934 Honolulu, Hawai’i Sources: Partners in Change, David Forbes, Ralph Kam, Thomas Woods, editors; Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, 2018 Notable Women of Hawaii, Barbara Bennett Peterson, editor, University of Hawaii Press 1984 https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/the-cooke-foundation-nurturing-the-next-generation-of-givers/
Agnes Baldwin Alexander (July 21, 1875 - January 1, 1971) Ms. Alexander is best known as the first Bahá’i of Hawai`i and the missioner who carried the faith to Japan and eastern Asia. She was the youngest of five children born to William DeWitt Alexander* and Abigail Charlotte (Baldwin) Alexander and granddaughter of two mission families - Reverend William and Mary Ann Alexander and Reverend Dr. Dwight and Charlotte Baldwin. Born in Honolulu, she attended Oahu College (now Punahou School) and furthered her studies in education at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oberlin College. She worked at Punahou school assisting in the kindergarten, then as a second-grade teacher from 1898 to 1900. Due to ill health, she toured North America and Europe in 1900. “It was in far off Rome,” Miss Alexander wrote, that she received the “Light of this New Day.” She learned from Mrs. Charlotte Dixon about Bahá’u’lláh, prophet-founder of the Bahá’i faith, as a new messenger from God. After three meetings with her, Agnes wrote she could not sleep, “an overwhelming realization came to me, which was neither a dream nor vision, that Christ had come on earth.” She embraced the Bahá’i cause that morning, November 26, 1900. `Abdu’l-Bahá, son of Bahá’u’lláh and head of the faith, wrote Ms. Alexander requesting her to return to Hawai`i to spread the New Gospel. As Bahá’i believe God to be the author of all the world’s major religions, Ms. Alexander regarded her Bahá’i missionary work as an extension of her grandparents’ efforts. Returning to Honolulu, she lived with her parents and sister Mary, however the new religion upset her parents. She wrote: “Among my relatives a rumor had spread that I had taken up some strange belief. I had to show through my life, and not be words, the great happiness that had come into my life.” She continued her Bahá’i teaching quietly, patiently and person-to-person, eventually gathering together a small group of local believers. The first public opposition to Ms. Alexander’s new beliefs came from her father. In November 1909, two itinerant Bahá’i teachers stopped in Honolulu. Ms. Alexander persuaded her father to let them deliver their first address on the lanai of the Alexander home in Makiki. Afterwards Professor Alexander wrote a newspaper editorial critical of the faith. After her parents’ deaths in 1913, Ms. Alexander sailed to America and received a letter from `Abdu’l-Bahá directing her to travel to Japan to introduce the faith. For twenty-three years she labored to spread the Bahá’i faith in Japan and eastern Asia, including Korea and China. She supervised the translation and publication of Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era into Japanese and assisted in the translation of that work into Japanese Braille as well. During visits home to Hawaiʻi, Ms. Alexander introduced Bahá’i teachings on Maui, Kauaʻi, and Hawaiʻi Island. She initiated a Bahá’i children’s class in 1927 and broadcast in 1933 over the radio. Ms. Alexander earned many distinctions for her work with the faith, and her longevity enabled Ms. Alexander to see the results of her work when, in 1964 the first National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’is of the Hawaiian Islands was formed. Ms. Alexander’s seventy years of service to her beloved faith is unparalleled among the Bahá’is of the Western world. Today Bahá’is from around the world visit this site to honor this extraordinary woman of Hawai`i. As one believer has said, “It is not possible to convey to anyone who did not know her the strength of character possessed by Agnes—her extraordinary courage, her complete selflessness, the supreme degree of renunciation apparent in all her actions, and her unshakeable faith. She was a willing and loving thrall of the cause, and in her bondage, she was as free as the ‘divine bird’ `Abdu’l-Bahá had asked her to be.” *Ms. Alexander’s father, William DeWitt Alexander, also buried here, was born on the Mission Houses site and after serving as President of O`ahu College, became surveyor-general (1871-1901) of the kingdom as well as a recognized scholar and author. Agnes Baldwin Alexander Born July 21, 1875 Died January 1, 1971 As written by Duane K. Troxel in Notable Women of Hawaii, ed Barbara Bennett Peterson, (1984) pp 1-4 Sources: Agnes B Alexander: Forty Years of the Bahai Cause in Hawaii 1902-1942 (rev. 1974) Agnes B Alexander: History of the Bahai Faith in Japan, 1914-1938 (1977) Elena Maria Marsella: “Agnes Baldwin Alexander: 1875-1971,” The Bahai World, vol 15 (1976), pp 423-430 Honolulu Advertiser, Jan 4, 1971 Honolulu Star Bulletin Jan 4, 1971 Eighty Golden Years, the Bahai Faith in Hawaii 1901-1981 Personal papers located in the Hawaii Bahai National Archives, Honolulu, and in the Bahai National Archives of Japan