Bingham Tablet (1905)

By Lynne Gartley ’74 Meyer and Joyce Salmon

ON THIS SPOT
STOOD THE HOME OF THE
REV. HIRAM BINGHAM
WHO GAVE THIS BROAD ESTATE
TO THE CAUSE OF
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

(Bingham Tablet inscription)

Mr. and Mrs. Bingham
Hiram Bingham (1789 – 1869) arrived in Honolulu on April 19, 1820. He was a member of the first company of missionaries to the Sandwich Islands under the aegis of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. A prominent mission leader, he was Kawaiaha‘o Church’s first pastor, a prolific codifier of the written Hawaiian language, composer of Hawaiian hymns and royal advisor to ali‘i.

At the time of his arrival, the lands of Ka Punahou were in the care of Boki, the governor of O‘ahu, and his wife Liliha (whose grandfather, Kame‘eiamoku, received the lands as a gift from Kamehameha I). It was through the influence of Ka‘ahumanu, Kamehameha’s favorite wife and queen regent, that Bingham was granted the Punahou lands in 1829. The 224.7-acre parcel included Rocky Hill and stretched from the summit of Round Top to present day King Street. It was supplemented by fishponds, salt beds and coral flats at Kukuluaeo, a 77-acre tract that fronted Kewalo Basin.

Like other missionaries who had benefitted from the generosity of the Hawaiian ali‘i, Bingham managed the land togther with other mission members. As explained by fellow missionary Samuel Whitney on September 24, 1850, “The land could be received and immediately appropriated, as far as it was capable, to sustaining the missionary cause.”

At first, the Binghams lived in a grass home erected by Ka‘ahumanu beside a larger structure of her own. By 1831 they moved into a more permanent adobe cottage that stood beside a clump of hau trees. The building had two main rooms, a porch, a storeroom and a pantry. There was a separate cookhouse. It came to be known as the “old house” and during its final 20 years, it served as a carriage house.

While at Punahou, the Binghams created for themselves “a quiet retreat from the noise and bustle of Honolulu.” A major accomplishment in this effort was the building of the southeast and Punahou Street walls to prevent cattle from wandering in and destroying property. Among the things they did was Sybil Bingham’s planting of the now world-famous night-blooming cereus near Punahou’s main entrance.

Because of its location on a parched plain, transforming the land was fraught with both physical and financial challenges. Writing to Laura Judd in 1845, Mrs. Bingham described her “monumental endeavor”:


The planting of sugar cane and bananas among the taro patches transformed the land into a verdant oasis. Writing from Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary from which she graduated in 1853, Martha Chamberlain (1850) described the campus:


Much of the work to develop the grounds was done by mission volunteers. Sybil Bingham viewed this as appropriate, “regarding it, in anticipation at least, as the inheritance of the congregation.”

Creation of a School
Bingham’s goal for the land was for it to be a plantation for a parsonage and school. The school would be a boarding school – not for mission children, but for children of the ali‘i. Writing to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1836, Bingham and others detailed their logic for this choice:


But constant financial difficulties delayed the fulfillment of this goal. In the meantime, Mr. and Mrs. Amos S. Cooke opened The Chiefs’ Children’s School (later known as the Royal School) in 1839. According to Benjamin Wist in his article “A Century of Public Education in Hawai‘i,” the missionaries had also opened schools for both the Hawaiian children and adults:


By 1840 there was immense pressure that a local school be available for the mission children. Missionaries were being lost as parents returned to the U.S. continent in order to give their children an education of the same standards they themselves had received. In order to staunch this exodus, a unanimous vote was made at the General Meeting in 1840 to undertake the “experiment” of a boarding school for the mission’s children. Because extensive work had been done to prepare the grounds for a school, “it seemed proper that its location should be at Punahou, a pleasant spot of ground already in the possession of the mission.” The Bingham children would not benefit from this project. Taking the remaining three of their seven children with them, in August of that same year the Binghams left the Islands and the mission that had brought them there, never to return.

An Enduring Legacy
Although the Binghams were gone, they and their work at Punahou were not forgotten. Two campus buildings (built in 1883 and 1959) have been named for Hiram Bingham and, on April 19, 1905 – 82 years from the day the Binghams arrived in Honolulu – a stone marking the southern corner of their former adobe home site was dedicated.

This was the ceremony scene was described in the May 1905 issue of The Friend:


Speakers that day included The Reverend O. H. Gulick (1848), Lorrin A. Thurston Esq. (1875), Judge Sanford B. Dole (1864), The Reverend Hiram Bingham II, the Honorable P. C. Jones and The Reverend S. E. Bishop. All extolled the work of Reverend Bingham and the example that he set for others to follow:


It was Bingham’s son who unveiled the monument while asking those in attendance to “call to mind the labors of love which my dear father put forth in this city for the redemption of Hawai‘i, and his parting gift, Punahou.”

At that point he stepped to the flag-covered tablet and untied a cord holding the flags in place. A system of pulleys then raised both the American and the Hawaiian flags, together with the two flags of the Punahou colors which floated to the sides.

Immediately afterwards, the stone was dedicated by Mrs. Lydia B. Coan and Misses Mary Kluegel (1901), Claire Kelly (1900), Margaret C. Thurston (1914), Jane L. Winne (1903), Catharine W. Goodale (1905), and Helen Alexander (1903), all descendants of missionaries in the Pioneer company. Finally, the stone was garlanded with numerous lei of maile and gardenia.

Sources:

Alexander, Mary and Charlotte Dodge. Punahou: 1841-1941. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1941

Wist, Benjamin O. “A Century of Public Education in Hawaii.” Hawaii: Hawaii Educational Review, 1940

“Unveiling Ceremonies In Memory of the Pioneer Missionary Rev. Hiram Bingham.” The Friend, May 1905