Artemas Bishop
Title
Artemas Bishop
Description
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
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
Files
Collection
Citation
“Artemas Bishop,” Hawaiian Mission Houses Digital Archive, accessed April 19, 2024, https://hmha.missionhouses.org/items/show/14110.