WESTFIELD-Young women from well established families in the city and surrounding towns took a leap of faith almost 200 years ago when they set sail with their new Christian missionary husbands to the Hawaiian islands.
Hiram and Sybil Moseley Bingham. 1819.
Historian Dr. Robert Brown will chronicle the travels – and travails – of these young couples during a free public lecture titled “Westfield Missionaries in Hawaii” on March 21 at 6:30 p.m. in the Lang Auditorium of the Westfield Athenaeum.
Brown’s 60-minute program will detail the history of Westfield area missionaries and their role in the development of the 50th U.S. state.
The lecture is also coinciding with this month’s Athenaeum Book Club reading of “Hawaii” by James A. Michener. A book discussion is planned March 15 at 1 p.m. in the Whitney Study. No registration is required.
“Going to Hawaii in 1819 was like going to the moon today,” said Brown, adding the trip on the ship Thaddeus took 170 days after leaving a Boston wharf.
“Each couple had a 6’ x 6’ x 5’ spot in the hold for all of their possessions and none of them had been to sea before this trip,” he added.
By the time the ship reached their destination, four of the six women were pregnant and all of the couples had been sea sick for the first three months.
“It was a God awful trip,” said Brown.
Brown will explain how the Boston-based American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions commissioned the mission, and the role that Hiram Bingham forged as the first leader of American Protestant missionaries to introduce Christianity to the Hawaiian islands. Since only couples were allowed to participate in the voyage, Bingham found his bride – Sybil Moseley of Westfield – through a mutual friend of hers during a prayer meeting.
Within a month of meeting each other, Bingham and Moseley married and were on board the first of 12 ships that would set sail from Boston from 1819 to 1850.
“Bingham ran the mission for 20 years,” said Brown, adding that Richard Armstrong and his wife, the former Clarissa Chapman of Russell, then oversaw the mission for the next 20 years.
Brown’s lecture will shed light on the local individuals – several who had attended First Congregational Church in Westfield – providing a glimpse of how these New Englanders beat the odds and helped establish religious roots among the “natives” that inhabited the islands.
“Within a 50-year period, 170 people on 12 ships embarked on this journey,” said Brown, adding that Westfield Academy graduates Fanny Gulick and Lucy Fowler were also among those missionary families over the years. Both women also had ties to the First Congregational Church in Westfield.
“The lecture will detail the strong connection Westfield has to Hawaii,” said Brown, adding that an annual Westfield Day is celebrated in Honolulu.
A question and answer session will follow the program.
The Athenaeum’s lecture series continues on April 18 at 6:30 p.m. with Agawam resident Mario Bonavita discussing “The Autism Spectrum.” Bonavita, 27, will discuss what autism is, as well as statistics on the spectrum, and how autism has affected him. He will be available for questions after the program.
The spring series concludes on May 16 with J. Kevin “Quack” Quackenbush presenting a lecture titled “History Under Our Feet” at 6:30 p.m. Quackenbush, a trustee at the Massachusetts Archaeological Society and chairman of its education committee, will discuss how archeological digs are performed and how stories are pieced together from clues and facts about the samples and artifacts. Also, the hands-on program for all ages will feature samples available for examination.
For more information on any program, visit www.westath.org or call (413) 568-7833.
