Royal Letters Patent of Denization for Levi Chamberlain from Kamehameha III
Levi Chamberlain
Hawaiian Language
Denizen
Hawai`i
Kamehameha III
Ali`i
Missionaries
1849 Royal Letters Patent of Denization issued to Levi Chamberlain by Kamehameha III written in both 'Ōlelo Hawai'i and English.
Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library at the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives
January 23 1849
If you would like permission to publish or reproduce this material, please send your requests to archives@missionhouses.org
Lahainaluna School Atlas
Hawaiian Language Imprints
Ōlelo Hawai`i
Lahainaluna Seminary
Mission House Press
Hawaii
Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library at the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives
1844
If you would like permission to publish or reproduce this material, please send your requests to archives@missionhouses.org
Alakai Mua no Na Kamalii
Hawaiian Language Imprints
Ōlelo Hawai`i
Mission House Press
Hawaii
Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library at the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives
1854
If you would like permission to publish or reproduce this material, please send your requests to archives@missionhouses.org
William Kanui
William Kanui (ca. 1796 - January 14, 1864)
There are three names on Kanui’s memorial stone: Kanui, his birth name, meaning, The Big or Great One; William, a name given him by an American ship’s captain when he sailed as crew, and Tennooe, an anglicization of Kanui, used by his American friends.
Kanui was an adventurous teenager. In the year 1809, when he was about 13 years old, he and his brother left the islands as ship’s crew. After touching at ports in the American northwest, they arrived at their ship’s home port of Boston, Massachusetts. A return to the islands was made impossible when the east coast of America was blockaded by the British during the War of 1812 The brothers took on farm work and then signed on as crew to several privateer ships licensed to confuse, attack and raid British ships.
At the end of the war, the brothers sought to sign onto a ship returning to Hawaiʻi. Having found nothing between Boston and New York, they went to Providence, Rhode Island. In Providence, Kanui’s brother took ill and died. Kanui, alone for the first time in a foreign land, took up work near Yale College. Here Kanui met Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia, a Hawaiian who had begun studying at the Cornwall Foreign Mission School, begun for foreign missionary students in the year 1817 by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). ʻŌpūkahaʻia dreamed of taking his knowledge of the Christian god to his homeland, but died in February, 1818, with his fellow Hawaiians at his deathbed – Kanui included. Kanui was a member of the pioneer company of ABCFM missionaries to Hawaiʻi that left on October 23, 1819, from Boston. On the six-month voyage from Boston to Hawai`i, he and two fellow Hawaiians gave the mission band their first lessons in the Hawaiian language and culture.
After the nearly six-month journey brought ship Thaddeus carrying the mission to the islands, Kanui was chosen with Asa and Lucy Thurston, John Honoliʻi and Dr. and Mrs Holman to set up a mission on Hawaiʻi Island, while the rest of the party continued to Oʻahu.
Kanui became friends with the King and joined in his drinking and games, which was frowned upon by the mission to the point that Kanui was excommunicated from the mission church. He did not repent and not long after sailed for the American continent. The teachings of the church did not leave him, however, and one day, working in a forest cutting wood , he heard a voice calling for him to repent and return home. He returned to Hawaiʻi, returned to the church, and began an English school in Palolo Valley, Oʻahu. It was a spiritual success but difficult and expensive to run. In 1848, he decided to go to California and find his fortune in the California gold fields. He left the islands with a letter from the office of foreign affairs of Kamehameha III, giving him a list of directions for Hawaiian natives then in California, encouraging them to be upright in their behavior and to return to the islands when they had made their fortunes. Kanui himself was successful and made a fortune of six thousand dollars, which he put in the Page , Bacon and Company bank. The bank failed and his fortune was lost in a single day.
Following this setback, Kanui tried his hand at being a bootblack, a barber, a tavern keeper, and lastly as an iron and rag merchant. Friends asked Kamehameha III to find him a way home to the islands, which was done, and Kanui enjoyed a short few months on O`ahu before his death in 1864. As much as fortune tossed him around, Kanui found, lost and found again his faith and then kept it, ending his life in humble poverty but convinced that God had led him home.
His memorial stone reads:
In Memory of, William Tennooe Kanui, Born about AD 1796, On the island of O`ahu, Went to America, 1809. Educated in Cornwall, Ct. Returned to Honolulu, 1820, Twice visited California, Died in Honolulu, Janu’y 14, 1864
In the life and death of Kanui, God’s Providence and Grace were wonderfully manifested. This stone was erected by J.H. [James Hunnewell] of Boston & S.C.D. [Samuel Chenery Damon] of Honolulu.
Willam Kanui
Born ca. 1796, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻ
Died January 14, 1864, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi
Sources:
The Story Behind the Headstone: The Life of William Kanui . Douglas Warne. Hawaiian Journal of History Volume 43 (2009)
Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, Buke II, Helu 30 Iulai 25, 1863
Twain, Mark. Roughing It. Chapter 72 P 493 American Publishing Company, Hartford Connecticut, 1872.
Weeping Woman Statue
WEEPING WOMAN by Stephan Abel Sinding (4 August 1846 – 23 January 1922)
This sculpture was designed and sculpted by famous Norwegian artist Stephan Sinding. It was cast in 1912 and is thought to have been commissioned by Anna Charlotte Rice Cooke, founder of the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Her relative, Dora Isenberg, had commissioned a similar Sinding sculpture for a site in Lihue, Kauaʻi. We know that Anna Cooke was involved in the Isenberg commission, and it is surmised that she ordered this statue for the Mission Memorial Cemetery after she saw the one on Kauaʻi installed in 1911. Anna’s husband Charles Montague Cooke, Sr died in 1909 and is buried in this cemetery. As the cemetery is also the location of the Cooke family plot, it seems probable that she thought the sculpture a fitting memorial to the members of the Cooke family buried here. Anna Rice Cooke died in 1934 and is buried with her husband and his family. [For Anna Rice Cooke biography, see https://hmha.missionhouses.org/items/show/14043]
Meredith Gairdner
Meredith Gairdner
In the fall of 1832, Meredith Gairdner, a young Scots doctor, journeyed south from his home in Edinburgh to Kew, home to the Royal Horticultural Society’s collection of plant specimens on the outskirts of London. He had studied under Sir William Jackson Hooker, who at that time had at Kew the largest collection of known plant life, and there Gairdner was introduced to the work of David Douglas, a fellow Scot. Douglas, for whom the Douglas Fir is named, had sailed to America and had sent back to England a collection of plant life exotic to Europe. Gairdner promised to send additional specimens from the new world, as he had signed on to sail to the Pacific Northwest as a ship’s doctor with the Hudson’s Bay Company.
He found on arrival at Fort Vancouver, in what is now the state of Washington, that his chances to explore the natural world of Northwest America were few, as his indenture kept him close to the settlement, dealing with the medical crises of the company’s men and Native Americans alike.
At Fort Vancouver, Gairdner met David Douglas himself, who encouraged him to travel to Hawaiʻi to study the unique flora in the islands. Gairdner was tied to the company by contract, but when it became clear that he was beginning to fail in his health because of his workload, he sailed to Hawaii. He took a reconnaissance mission around Oʻahu, writing and publishing a geological survey of that island, during a short visit to the islands in 1833, noting that “The Kings country seat, the Mission House & the Billiard Room are the most conspicuous buildings."
After two more years in the Northwest, Gairdner returned to Hawaiʻi in hope of a cure with the change of climate. Although unwell, he reported on his colleague Douglas’ death on Hawaiʻi Island in a letter to Hooker at Kew Gardens, which he sent with various boxes of specimens. From 1835 on he was looked after by mission families including both Artemas and Delia Bishop in Ka’awaloa and Asa and Lucy Thurston in Kailua-Kona. The Thurstons, who were impressed with the young man’s scientific knowledge and adventuresome spirit, gave their fifth child, Thomas, the middle name Gairdner in the year before Doctor Gairdner died in Honolulu, of tuberculosis, at the age of 28.
Meredith Gairdner
Born 1809, London, England
Died March 25, 1837, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi
Sources:
British Columbia Historical Quarterly, April, 1945 pp 89-112 also has the full inscription from his grave stone
Partners in Change, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, 2018
Letter : Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Meredith Gairdner to Sir William Jackson Hooker, 19 November, 1835, Library and Archives; Directors correspondence
www.kew.org
Mary Tenney Castle
Mary Tenney Castle (October 26, 1819 - March 13, 1907
Philanthropy, education and religion were the interests that drove Mary Tenney Castle’s life; that she carried out her work in those fields in the Hawaiian Islands was a fate decided by her elder sister, Angeline Tenney Castle.
Mary became the second wife of Samuel Northrup Castle, a member of the Hawaiian Islands Mission who arrived in Hawaii with the eighth company of missionaries in April of 1837 aboard the ship Mary Frazier. He was accompanied by Angeline, who lived until 1841.
When Samuel Castle returned to the United States in search of a new wife, it was Mary, his wife’s sister, that he chose. Mary’s honest assessment of herself as a Christian, saying that she would continue to question both her own religious view and that held within the spiritual foundation of the mission, made some on the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) question her fitness for the role of Samuel’s wife. The ABCFM gave the marriage a vote of confidence and she arrived in the islands in March 1843. She became the stepmother and aunt to Angeline and Samuels’s daughter Mary, and went on to have ten children more. When the ABCFM ceased the support of the Hawaiian Mission, Samuel joined forces with Amos Cooke, a missionary, and the two formed Castle and Cooke, a mercantile business.
Samuel Northrup was not a missionary but a secular agent to the mission, one who had daily contact and correspondence with the mission stations. This situation created space for his wife Mary to pursue her interests, and within a short time her home became a meeting place for those interested in education of all types. Mary’s own education was considered radical at the time. She studied at the Deerfield Academy and was influenced by the popular movements of the time which opposed slavery and alcohol and supported women’s suffrage and prison reform. When Samuel died in 1894, Mary created the Samuel Northrup Castle Benevolent Trust which, under the name Samuel N. And Mary Castle Foundation, continues to serve the people of Hawaiʻi today.
Mary Tenney Castle
Born October 26, 1819 Plainfield, New York.
Died March 13, 1907 Honolulu, Hawaii
Sources:
Notable Women of Hawaii, Barbara Bennett Peterson,ed., University of Hawaii Press 1984
Partners in Change, David Forbes, Ralph Kam, Thomas Woods, editors; Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, 2018
A Century of Philanthropy:A History of the Samuel N. and Mary Tenney Castle Foundation, Alfred L. Castle, Hawaiian Historical Society, 2001
Mary Atherton Richards
Mary Atherton Richards (April 21, 1869 - April 18, 1951)
Mary Atherton Richards was the granddaughter of eighth company missionaries Amos Starr Cooke and Juliette Montague Cooke, and the daughter of Juliette Montague Atherton and Joseph Ballard Atherton. She was born in the 1821 Mission House which you can see across the street from this cemetery.
Mary followed her parents and grandparents into public service. She led the Morning Music Club, begun in 1905, a monthly meeting club for active local musicians and singers. She was a commissioner of the Department of Public Education and made it her mission to improve the quality of teachers. She campaigned for the opening of the first high schools on Kauaʻi and Maui, and helped to establish the Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind.
For many years she led the Women’s Board of Missions, whose causes included temperance, the establishment of Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese school and health departments, and from these, financial assistance was sent out beyond Hawaii to infant health clinics in South Africa, Egypt and China.
With her husband, Theodore, Mary Atherton Richards gave property for the establishment of schools, an endowment for the Hawaiian Board of Missions, and gave Fernhurst, their family home, to the YWCA for the establishment of a home for working women.. They established Kokokahi, a camp in the beauty of nature for weary souls to enjoy a respite from their lives. Montague Hall at Punahou School was a gift from the Richards, and a foundation created for Mary Atherton Richards constructed a memorial chapel at the United Church of Christ in Nuʻuanu. Mary and her husband traveled the world to further their evangelical goals.
Mary wrote for The Friend, the mission’s newspaper, and two books; The Chiefs Childrens’ School, an account of the work of her grandparents, Amos Starr and Juliette Montague Cooke as instructors and guardians of the chiefly children of Hawaiʻi in the 1800s, and a history of her grandparents, Amos Starr Cooke and Juliette Montague Cooke.
Mary Cushing Atherton Richards
Born April 21, 1869 Honolulu, Hawaiʻi
Died April 18, 1951, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi
Sources:
Notable Women of Hawaii, Barbara Bennett Peterson, editor, University of Hawaii Press 1984
https://www.ywcaoahu.org/ywca-oahu-120/2020/4/27/a-moment-in-our-history-kokokahi-a-place-where-all-gather-in-the-shared-spirit-of-one-blood
Maria Patton Chamberlain
Maria Patton Chamberlain (March 19, 1803 - January 19, 1880)
Looking across Mission Lane, which divides this cemetery from the Mission Houses grounds, you will see the Chamberlain House, the tall stone-built building on the left. Imagine the yard full of children, and the continually busy storehouse receiving and sending goods. The Chamberlain House was the home of Maria Patton Chamberlain, her husband Levi, and their children during the years 1831 until 1877.
Maria was born in Salisbury Township, Pennsylvania in the year 1803. Unusually for a missionary, her deep interest in religion was not shared by her family. She sailed as a missionary in 1827 as one of four single women in the third company of missionaries to the islands, on the ship Parthian.
Her first assignment was as a helper to Reverend William Richards and his family in Lahaina, Maui. There she met Levi Chamberlain, the head of secular affairs for the mission, and they married soon after in 1828.
Maria’s first home at the Mission Houses compound in Honolulu was a grass house; most of the early missionaries lived in them, to begin with. By 1831, however, the Chamberlain House was built and the couple moved in. The Chamberlains had eight children: one died in infancy, but they raised seven children in the house, although the two eldest were sent back to the United States for schooling, as the earliest missionaries did not feel it safe to raise their children among the Hawaiians. Maria was particularly interested in child welfare and taught classes with a view to lessening the rate of child mortality in the islands.
The congregation of Kawaiahaʻo church, which borders this cemetery, met at the mission compound each Sunday and Wednesday. Newly arrived missionaries were welcomed there. The annual meeting of all of the mission stations around the islands took place there. The Chamberlain House was busy with classes and home care of children and orphans.
When her husband Levi died in 1847, Maria was forty-six. With a small inheritance from her husband, Maria continued her teaching, sending her children to Punahou School while supplementing her income by taking in boarders. She managed her business by herself, for the rest of her life, a further thirty-one years.
Maria returned to the United States once to visit family and friends, in 1859. She is buried alongside her husband and five of their children in this cemetery.
Maria Patton Chamberlain
Born Salisbury Township, Pequa, Pennsylvania, March 19, 1803
Died Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, January 19, 1880
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
Sojourners Among Strangers:The first two companies of missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands, Sandra Elaine Wagner, PHD Dissertation, University of Hawaii, 1986
Maria Ogden
Maria Ogden (February 17, 1792 - April 3, 1874)
“By her own estimate, she had under her training in her various schools over a thousand Hawaiian girls.” So ran the article in The Friend, the mission newspaper, of Maria Ogden.
Miss Ogden grew up in Philadelphia and New Jersey. She found a calling to missionary life and with glowing references was accepted as part of the Sandwich Island Mission. She sailed to Honolulu in 1828, part of an unusual contingent that included four unmarried women.
Maria Ogden began her missionary life at Waimea, Kauaʻi, living with Peter and Fanny Gulick. Soon, however, she began to teach small classes, and in 1829 was reassigned to Lahaina, Maui, where she once more assisted a mission family, this time the William Richards family. She taught day school and Sunday school to a large group of children.
She was called to teach, and within the decade had moved on to lead the Wailuku Female Seminary, where she remained for twenty years. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission closed that school in 1849. Miss Ogden then opened a smaller school, still in Wailuku.
She adopted two orphaned sisters, Ellen and Isabella Holden. One of her students, Naomi Maka, became a missionary to the Marquesas Islands when she married a young Hawaiian pastor, James Kekela. Their first child they named Maria Ogden Kekela, such was their affection for Miss Ogden. When the Kekelas sailed for the Marquesas they were warned not to bring the children because the situation in the Marquesas, as far as safety was concerned, was uncertain. Maria Ogden took in Maria Ogden Kekela and her younger sister Susan to join the Holden sisters and raised them as her own.
When she was called to Honolulu to assist the principal of Oahu College (Punahou School) in 1858, the children went with her and helped her in the creation of a school for girls in Makiki. She led this school for another ten years, and then enjoyed a further seven years of peaceful retirement.
Maria C. Ogden
Born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 17, 1792
Died Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, April 3, 1873
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://nupepa-hawaii.com/tag/maria-ogden/