Richard Armstrong

By the time the Pioneer Company of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) Protestant missionaries arrived in 1820, Kamehameha I had died and the centuries-old kapu system had been abolished.

The missionaries first lived in the traditional Hawaiian hatched house, the hale pili.  In addition to their homes, the missionaries had grass meeting places and, later, churches.  One of the first was on the same site as the present Kawaiahaʻo Church.

On December 31, 1820, Levi Sartwell Loomis, son of Elisha and Maria Loomis (the first white child born in the Sandwich Islands) and Sophia Moseley Bingham, daughter of Hiram and Sybil Bingham (the first white girl born on Oʻahu) were baptized.

Within a year, Hiram Bingham began to preach in the Hawaiian language.  4-services a week were conducted (3 in Hawaiian and 1 in English.)    Congregations ranged from 100 – 400; by the end of the year, the thatched church was expanded.

Between 1836 and 1842, Kawaiahaʻo Church was constructed.  Revered as the Protestant “mother church” and often called “the Westminster Abbey of Hawai‘i” this structure is an outgrowth of the original Mission Church founded in Boston and is the first foreign church on O‘ahu (1820.)

Kawaiahaʻo Church was designed and founded by its first pastor, Hiram Bingham.  Hiram left the islands on August 3, 1840 and never saw the completed church.  Reverend Richard Armstrong replaced Bingham as pastor of Kawaiahaʻo.

Richard Armstrong was born in 1805 in Pennsylvania, the youngest of 10-children; he attended three years at Princeton Theological Seminary.  He married Clarissa Chapman, September 25, 1831; was ordained at Baltimore, Maryland, October 27, 1831; and sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts, November 26, 1831 for Hawaiʻi.

Armstrong was with the Fifth Company of missionaries (which included the Alexanders, Emersons, Forbes, Hitchcocks, Lymans, Lyons, Stockton and others. They arrived on May 17, 1832.

Shortly after arrival, Clarissa wrote about a subject most suspect was not a part of the missionary lifestyle … On October 31, 1832, she noted, “Capt Brayton has given me a little beer cask - it holds 6 quarts - Nothing could have been more acceptable.”

“I wanted to ask you for one, but did not like to. O how kind providence has been & is to us, in supplying our wants. The board have sent out hops - & I have some beer now a working. I should like to give you a drink.”

Armstrong was stationed for a year at the mission in Marquesas Islands; he then replaced the Reverend Green as pastor of Kaʻahumanu Church (Wailuku) in 1836, supervised the construction of two stone meeting houses one at Haiku, and the other at Wailuku.  Reverend Green returned to replace Armstrong in 1840.

He was pastor of the Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu from 1840 to 1848.  “Mr. Armstrong preached to congregations of twenty-five hundred and often three thousand people. The ground about the church looked like an encampment when the people came from valley and shore on horseback and spent their noon hour in the rush-covered basement awaiting the afternoon session.”  (The Friend, July 1932)

Following the re-raising of the Hawaiian flag above the Islands on July 31, 1843 for Ka La Hoʻihoʻi Ea - Sovereignty Restoration Day, religious services were held that evening in Kawaiahaʻo Church.

A sermon apropos of the occasion was preached by Rev. Richard Armstrong, the text being taken from Psalms 37, 3 – ‘Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.’ There could have been no question but that his hearers had been fed on that day.  (Thrum)

In 1848 Armstrong left the mission and became Minister of Public Instruction on June 7, 1848, following the death of William Richards. Armstrong was to serve the government for the remainder of his life. He was a member of the Privy Council and the House of Nobles and acted as the royal chaplain.

He set up the Board of Education under the kingdom in 1855 and was its president until his death.   Armstrong is known as the “the father of American education in Hawaiʻi.”

The government-sponsored education system in Hawaiʻi is the longest running public school system west of the Mississippi River.  To this day, Hawaiʻi is the only state to have a completely-centralized State public school system.

Armstrong helped bring better textbooks, qualified teachers and better school buildings.  Students were taught in Hawaiian how to read, write, math, geography, singing and to be “God-fearing” citizens. (By 1863, three years after Armstrong’s death, the missionaries stopped being a part of Hawaiʻi’s education system.)

The Armstrongs had ten children. Son William N Armstrong (King Kalākaua’s Attorney General) accompanied Kalākaua on his tour of the world, one of three white men who accompanied the King as advisers and counsellors (Armstrong, Charles H Judd and a personal attendant/valet.)

Armstrong and Judd were Kalākaua’s schoolmates at the Chiefs' Children's School in 1849.  (Marumoto)  “Thirty years afterward, and after three of our schoolmates had become kings and had died (Kamehameha IV & V and Lunalio) and two of them had become queens (Emma and Liliʻuokalani,) it so happened that Kalākaua ascended the throne, and with his two old schoolmates began his royal tour.”  (Armstrong)

Another Armstrong son, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, became a Union general in the American Civil War and was founder of Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School (later called the Hampton Institute, then Hampton University.)  (King Kalākaua visited Hampton Normal and Agricultural School on one of his trips to the continent.)

Among the school’s famous alumni is Dr Booker T Washington, who became an educator and later founded Tuskegee Institute.  President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was read to local freedmen under the historic “Emancipation Tree,” which is still located on the campus today.

Richard Armstrong’s home was a stone building on Beretania adjoining Washington Place (called “Stonehouse,” named after the residence of Admiral Richard Thomas in England.  It later served as temporary facilities at different times for what became St. Louis and Punahou Schools.

Reverend Richard Armstrong died on September 23, 1860; on his way to preach in Kāneʻohe “he had been thrown from his horse and seriously hurt. He was a good rider, but the horse had been suddenly startled and a girth gave way.”

He is buried “in the shadow of the great Kawaiahaʻo church where he had preached for so many years.”  Clarissa, moved to California in 1880; she died in 1891 (the reverse of her tombstone says “Aloha.”)

The image shows Richard Armstrong.  In addition, I have added others similar images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Betsey Stockton

Born in 1798 in Princeton, New Jersey, as a slave owned by the family of Robert Stockton, Esq., Betsey Stockton was presented as a gift to the Stockton's eldest daughter and her husband, the Reverend Ashbel Green (who was then the President of Princeton College (later known as Princeton University.))

Although masters did not typically favor educating their slaves beyond proficient training as domestic nurse, seamstress and cook, Green gave her books and encouraged her to use the family library. She later attended evening classes at Princeton Theological Seminary.

In September 1816, Betsey’s application for admission to the First Presbyterian Church in Princeton was formally approved.  Around 1817, Ashbel Green freed her.

Stockton often spoke to Green about her wish to journey abroad, possibly to Africa, on a Christian mission. Green introduced her to Charles S Stewart, a young missionary, newly ordained in 1821, who was about to be sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to Hawaiʻi.

Through a special agreement between Green, the Stewarts and the ABCFM, Stockton joined the mission both as a domestic in the Stewart household and was commissioned by the ABCFM as a missionary.

She became the first single American woman sent overseas as a missionary.

Her contract with the Board and with the Stewarts said that she went "neither as an equal nor as a servant, but as a humble Christian friend" to the Stewarts, and provided that she was not to do more than an equal share of menial duties which might "prevent her being employed as a teacher of a school".

In November 1822, Stockton, the Stewarts and the other missionaries in the 2nd Company set sail on the 'Thames' from New Haven, Connecticut for the Hawaiian Islands.

On April 24, 1823, "we saw and made Owhyhee (Hawaiʻi). At the first sight of the snow-capped mountains, I felt a strange sensation of joy and grief. It soon wore away, and as we sailed slowly past its windward side, we had a full view of all its grandeur. The tops of the mountains are hidden in the clouds, and covered with perpetual snow. We could see with a glass the white banks, which brought the strong wintry blasts of our native country to our minds so forcibly, as almost to make me shiver."  (Betsey Stockton Journal)

Upon her arrival, Stockton became the first known African American woman in Hawaiʻi.

Intelligent, industrious and frugal, she was aptly described as a devoted Christian, not only because of her constant attendance at church and her faith in God, but also because she supported the interests of the church, secured clothes for her students, and helped to heal the sick while continuing her domestic work to help the Stuarts.  (Jackson)

"On Saturday, the 10th of May (1823,) we left the ship, and went to the mission enclosure at Honoruru. We had assigned to us a little thatched house in one corner of the yard, consisting of one small room, with a door, and two windows - the door too small to admit a person walking in without stooping, and the windows only large enough for one person to look out at a time. … The family all eat at the same table, and the ladies attend to the work by turns. Mrs. Stewart and myself took each of us a day separately."  (Betsey Stockton Journal)

"On the 26th of May (1823) we heard that the barge (Cleopatra's Barge, or "Haʻaheo o Hawaiʻi," Pride of Hawaiʻi) was about to sail for Lahaina, with the old queen (Keōpūolani) and princess (Nāhiʻenaʻena;) and that the queen was desirous to have missionaries to accompany her … A meeting was called to consult whether it was expedient to establish a mission at Lahaina. The mission was determined on, and Mr. S. (Stewart) was appointed to go: he chose Mr. R. (Richards) for his companion … On the 28th we embarked on the mighty ocean again, which we had left so lately."  (Betsey Stockton Journal)

Per the requests of the chiefs, the American Protestant missionaries, at that time, were typically teaching their own children and the children of the Hawaiian chiefs.

"Now the chiefs have expressed their determination to have instruction in reading and writing extended to the whole population and have only been waiting for books, and an increase in the number of suitably qualified native teachers, to put the resolution, as far as practical, into effect.  A knowledge of this having reached some of the makaainana, or farmers of Lahaina ... application was made by them to us for books and slates, and an instructor; and the first school, consisting of about thirty individuals, ever formed among that class of people, has, within a few days, been established in our enclosure, under the superintendence of B (Betsey Stockton), who is quite familiar with the native tongue."  (Charles Stewart Journal, August 1824)

In 1823, Kalākua Kaheiheimālie (ke Aliʻi Hoapili wahine, wife of Governor Hoapili) offered the American missionaries a tract of land on the slopes surrounding Puʻu Paʻupaʻu for the creation of a school.

Stockton founded a school for makaʻāinana (common people) including the women and children.  The school was situated on what is now Lahainaluna School (and some suggest it served as the initial basis for that school.)

Stockton's school was commended for its teaching proficiency, and later served as a model for the Hilo Boarding School and also for the Hampton Institute in Virginia, a historic Black college in Virginia established after the Civil War (founded by General Samuel C. Armstrong (son of missionary Richard Armstrong, former Pastor at Kawaiahaʻo Church.))  (Kalākaua visited Hampton Normal and Agricultural School - later known as Hampton Institute on one of his trips to the continent.)

Because of the serious illness of Mrs. Harriet Stewart, the Stewarts decided to return to Cooperstown, New York, after two and a half years in Hawaiʻi.  Stockton accompanied them; leaving native Hawaiian teachers she had trained to take her place.

Stockton left Hawaiʻi in 1825, returning to the continent where she was assigned to teach Native American children in Canada.  Then, Stockton returned to Princeton in 1835, living in a small house on Witherspoon Street, which was primarily an African American neighborhood.

Stockton was instrumental in the founding of the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church, originally called the First Presbyterian Church of Color of Princeton. She also began teaching African American children in a public school in Princeton in 1837, which she continued to do for several years.

She spent the rest of her life in Princeton working on behalf of its African American and white residents to enrich the lives of the members of the local African American community.

Betsey Stockton began life as a slave, and went on to become a schoolteacher, medical nurse and missionary; she died in her hometown of Princeton, New Jersey in October 1865.

The image shows Betsey Stockton; in addition, I have added some other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook  

Follow Peter T Young on Google+  

© 2013 Hoʻokuleana LLC