The Pilgrims Who Arrived in New England in 1620 Influenced Hawai‘i in 1820

The Pilgrim ship the Mayflower arrived off Cape Cod four hundred years ago today, on November 9, 1620.

The pioneer Hawai‘i Mission company sailed aboard the brig Thaddeus, a ship known in its day as the Mayflower of the Pacific, departing for the Hawaiian Islands from the Long Wharf in Boston on October 23, 1819. This 163-day voyage taken around Cape Horn brought evangelical Christianity to Hawai‘i, changing the Islands forever.

The sending of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions company came at the request of Native Hawaiian scholar Henry ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia. Henry died of typhus fever at about the age of thirty at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut in February 1818. His dying wish was to return to Hawai‘i and to fulfill his plans to join with American missionaries in bringing the Gospel to the Hawaiian Islands.

Model of brig Thaddeus was displayed in the History Room of Mokuaikaua Church in Kailua, Kona. The Thaddeus was 85 feet long, with a beam of 24 feet. 

The Rev. Lyman Beecher, pastor of the Litchfield Congregational Church in Litchfield, Connecticut mentored ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia following his baptism at Torringford, Connecticut in 1814. Henry and his fellow Hawaiian scholars at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut were welcomed into the Beecher home. Beecher rose to become one of the most renowned ministers in New England in the 1820s. The Litchfield pastor preached the sermon at Henry’s funeral at the Cornwall Center Cemetery in February 1818.

Lyman Beecher presents a clear picture of the Pilgrim-Hawai‘i tie in his landmark sermon “The Memory of Our Fathers” given at Plymouth in November 1827. Beecher told the gathering, “If we look at our missionaries abroad [n.b. in Hawai‘i, Ceylon, Burma, elsewhere], and witness the smiles of heaven upon their efforts, our confidence, that it is the purpose of God to render our nation a blessing to the world, will be increased. In talents, and piety, and learning, and doctrine, and civil policy, they are the legitimate descendants of the Puritans.”


In the United States Capitol Building in Washington D.C. hangs a grand painting of the Pilgrim departure from Holland. Pilgrim leader William Bradford. In his book History of Plymouth Plantation, the first book written in New England, Bradford quoted their pastor John Robinson who declared a prophecy over the departing Pilgrims. Bradford, rather than seeing the Pilgrims as just fleeing the Old World for religious freedom, portrayed Robinson as sending off the Pilgrims as missionaries. Bradford emphasized this by quoting Robinson:

(They had) a great hope & inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for ye propagating & advancing ye gospel of ye kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of ye world; yea, though they should be but as stepping-stones unto others for ye performing of so great a work.

The Pilgrims land at Plymouth (Library of Congress)

FUTURE EVENTS

Grand plans to commemorate in April 2020 in Hawai‘i the arrival of the pioneer Mission Company, and in November 2020 in Plymouth, Massachusetts the arrival of the Pilgrims, have both been postponed due to the covid-19 epidemic.

Keep an eye on the Hawaiian Mission Houses website for updates on a possible rescheduling for April 2021 of the postponed pioneer company arrival events.

In Plymouth, the events are now rescheduled for April 2021.

The restored Mayflower II is featured in Sea History for Fall 2020. Click to read the news about the ship’s return to Plymouth from a three-year restoration at Mystic Seaport shipyard.

Events for the Hawai‘i Mission Departure Bicentennial were held in Boston at the Park Street Church, and across New England in October 2020.

Bicentennial events for the Hawai‘i arrival of the Sandwich Islands Mission had been planned for April 2020 in Kailua-Kona, in Honolulu, and in Waimea, Kaua‘i.

To celebrate the bicentennial of the formation of their church in 1820, the Historic Kawaiaha‘o Church in Honolulu has been hosting a monthly speakers series via youtube.com. Speakers focuses on the history of the historic church.

The Story of Mokuaikaua Congregational Church

The Story of Mokuaikaua Church booklet cover

The Story of Mokuaikaua Congreational Church is 32-page booklet I helped create over summer 2016. Mokuaikaua Church (www.mokuaikaua.org) is located along the waterfront in Kailua-Kona on central west shore of the Island of Hawai‘i. Here the first missionary party sent to Hawai‘i formally landed in early April 1820. Mokuaikaua is the “first-gathered” church in Hawaiʻi, and the “oldest-stand” church building in Hawaiʻi. Construction funded by Hawaiʻi Island Governor Kuakini (John Adams) in 1836 built the stone-and-mortar walled church that still stands today. The church is pictured in the cover illustration above, you can’t miss the church as it then towered over all the thatched hale and wood-frame western buildings of old Kailua town.

Mokuaikaua Church Historian Yolanda Olson wrote the main text of the booklet. I did the background research, editing, graphic design, photography. I contributed a section I call “A New England Church with a Hawaiian Heart.” This contribution details the dual, hybrid New England-Native Hawaiian architectural features found in the Mokuaikaua Church building.

Proceeds from sale of The Story of Mokuaikaua Church are helping to raise funds for a $3 million restoration needed to make the historic church earthquake proof, to replace hardwood ʻōhiʻa beams that date back to the 1820s, and other repairs needed to preserve Mokuaikaua. Go www.mokuaikaua.org for more details.

Copies of the booklet are available at the Mokuaikaua Church in Kailua-Kona. Check on their website for contact information.

 

Moku‘aikaua – The First Gathered Church

Mokuaikaua-NPS-photo-shoot
A nationally-renowned historical documentary film company traveled to Moku‘aikaua Church in Kailua-Kona Sunday, August 7 for location filming. Great Divide Pictures of Denver is filming for several documentaries, each set at a National Park Service historic site on Hawai‘i Island. Moku‘aikaua, located along the waterfront in Kailua-Kona in leeward Hawai‘i Island, is located along an ancient, shoreline trail that is 175-miles long. Interpreted sections of the trail today are accessible to hikers and part of the Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail (). Moku‘aikaua is to be featured in the Ala Kahakai Trail feature.

This photo is of Great Divide Pictures Executive Producer/Principal Photographer Chris Wheeler (l.), myself and Chuck Dunkerly (r.) from the Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park who was coordinating the production on-island. Chris and Chuck joined me in this photo taken in front of Mokuaikaua Church along Ali‘i Drive in Kailua-Kona. Sonny Hutchinson, Chris’ partner in Great Divide PIctures, took this photo and handled the audio for the shoot.

The Great Divide Pictures team shot footage of the interior and exterior of Moku‘aikaua. I supplied narrative on the history of Moku‘aikaua Church, which is considered the first Protestant church gathered in all Hawai‘i. The pioneer Sandwich Islands Mission party arrived at Kailua on April 4, 1820. Kuakini, the ruling ali‘i nui of Hawai‘i Island in 1820 greeted the missionaries, aided in securing them permission to reside and establish a missionary station in Kailua-Kona, and built for the missionaries a series of three churches at Kailua-Kona: two thatched churches, the second destroyed by fire in 1835, and the stone-walled Moku‘aikaua Church (built in 1836) which is still actively used as a Congregational church.

I am currently editing and designing a booklet on the history of Moku‘aikaua. The booklet will support an effort to raise funds to keep the almost 200-year-old church earthquake resilient and to repair and restore aging features of the church. Go to www.mokuaikaua.com for more information. Digital copies of the booklet will be available by this fall on the Moku‘aikaua website.

I am writing an essay to be featured in the booklet on the very interesting vernacular architecture of Moku‘aikaua. The building combines a structure based on a large New England barn of the post-Revolutionary War era, with materials readily available in Hawai‘i: Basalt-lava rock stones, coral heads burnt with firewood to create lime, and tall, sturdy hardwood ‘Ōhi‘a beams and posts. Moku‘aikaua is considered the mother Congregational church of Hawai‘i. Elements of native Hawaiian culture are embedded in the church, including dressed hewn stones used as edge stones stacked up in each corner of the church building to anchor its heavy rock walls. The hewn stones were carried by a long line of workers from the nearby heiau (temple) of the legendary 15th century ruler ‘Umi. ‘Umi moved the capital of Hawai‘i Island from Waipio Valley on its windward side to sunny Kailua. His incredible, mauka (inland) agricultural system stretched south for miles, providing abundant food for ‘Umi’s people. Its rock wall landscape pattern is still visible today.