Curricular Innovations in Hawaiian Female Seminaries 

Carl Kalani Beyer 

Abstract 

This article reveals that during the second half of 

the nineteenth century the government of the 

Kingdom of Hawai‛i and the American Protestant 

missionaries collaborated to engage in curricular 

innovations, involving educating Hawaiian 

females much like the charter schools of 

contemporary United States.  The curricular 

innovations included the use of manual labor and 

manual training systems during a period from the 

establishment of its first seminary in 1837 until 

the end of the nineteenth century.   

The purpose of this article is to make the 

case that during the second half of the nineteenth 

century the government of the Kingdom of 

Hawai‛i and the American Protestant missionaries 

collaborated to engage in curricular innovations, 

involving educating Hawaiian females much like 

the charter schools of contemporary United 

States.  This paper investigates four Hawaiian 

female seminaries established by the Hawaiian 

Evangelical Association (HEA) during this time 

period to make its case.  This study also reveals 

curricular innovations on the part of the 

missionary educators of these female seminaries 

in using manual labor and manual training 

systems from the establishment of its first 

seminary in 1837 until the end of the nineteenth 

century.  Agreeing with the contention made by 

Bernard Bailyn (1960) that research should 

provide a critique of previous studies and the call 

by Hayden White (1999) that history is about 

retrieving the past in order to grasp the present, 

this paper is an historical analysis, utilizing both 

primary and secondary resources, and guided by a 

theoretical framework based upon revisionism.  

There are two reasons for taking this approach: 

first, it offers a view of the education for 

Hawaiians not previously reported, and second, it 

provides a means to enlighten contemporary 

scholars as to the innovative educational practices 

occurring in Hawai‛i during the nineteenth 

century. 

When one investigates the history of 

government supported education, there is a 

distinct difference between funding support for 

public and private education.  Public education is 

financially supported and private education is not.  

Beginning in the 1970s, charter schools created a 

new category of education towards which the 

government supported financially.  Charter 

schools provide a choice to other public schools 

but are still considered part of the public 

education system and are not allowed to charge 

tuition.  While the charter schools are legally and 

financially autonomous, operating more like a 

private business, they are accountable for student 

achievement.  Due to their being freed from 

bureaucratic restraints to which traditional public 

schools need to adhere, they are generally 

laboratories of innovation (Chen 2010; Landsberg 

2010).  

  

Early Female Education 

Western-style education arrived in 

Hawai‟i with the Sandwich Islands Mission 

(SIM) in 1820.  Preparing Hawaiians to read the 

Bible was the initial purpose for American 

Protestant missionary education (Alexander 

1902).  While they would have preferred teaching 

all Hawaiians equally, schools were established 

for the chiefs and latter their children first.  Even 

when they established a common school system 

with mixed gender students, because they 

mistakenly believed that the traditional Hawaiian 

culture rated women as second-class citizens, 

Hawaiian men who excelled in the common 



37 
 

schools were offered more education than 

Hawaiian women (Linnekin 2000).  

Consequently, when Lāhaināluna High School 

was founded in 1831 as a training center for 

religious assistants and teachers, only males were 

selected to attend.  It is interesting, however, that 

in 1839, when the first education law of the 

kingdom was written, it specified the importance 

of educating women.   

 

[Education] is the appropriate business 

of all the females of these islands, to 

teach children to read, cipher, and write, 

and other branches of learning, to 

subject the children to good parental and 

school laws, to guide the children in 

right behavior, and place them in 

schools, that they may do better than 

their parents. (Thurston 1904, 106) 

 

The American Protestant missionaries sent 

by the American Board of Commissioners for 

Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to Hawai‟i were 

prepared for their mission by education, work 

experience, and the sense of a calling.  Their 

backgrounds were usually rural, and often 

farming had been the family livelihood.  They 

were from the middle class.  Their lives were 

marked by an acquaintance with a variety of 

skills, hard work, self-denial, thrift, and personal 

initiative.  Their education had been preceded by 

engagement in various kinds of work: the 

employment with charitable or religious concerns; 

and traveling the northeast with tracts, Bibles, and 

the missionary message, or the call to revival 

(Grimshaw 1989).  In many cases, the education 

of the men had also included an experience with 

the manual labor system, which had become 

popular during the first half of the nineteenth 

century, especially among the theological 

seminaries (Beyer 2010a).   The women of the 

mission were quick, efficient, and multi-talented.  

Although their families could afford further 

education for them, they did not have the male 

privilege of extensive, full-time education for 

years, which culminated in the granting of a 

formal qualification.  Most had secured their 

education at intervals, while supporting 

themselves by teaching, by farm labor, or skilled 

trade (Grimshaw 1989).   

A substantial number of these women did 

receive their training from the female seminaries 

emerging during the first half of the nineteenth 

century in the United States.  When the daughters 

of these missionaries or new recruits from the 

United States took over the education of 

Hawaiian females during the last forty years of 

the nineteenth century, many more were trained 

in the female seminaries of the United States.  

While Oberlin College was not a female 

seminary, due to its curriculum, which included 

manual labor and manual training and a strong 

Christian education, the SIM sought its graduates.  

Many missionary daughters also selected this 

school for their education as well.  Of the 

American female seminaries, Mt. Holyoke 

Female Seminary was the most preferred by many 

children of missionaries to Hawai‛i and served as 

a place from where missionary educators were 

recruited for schools in Hawai‛i (Bingham 1868; 

Chamberlain 1889; Female Boarding 1866; 

Turner 1929).  

Prior to when education for Hawaiian 

females was primarily accomplished in 

seminaries, there was an initial educational 

experiment involving adult Hawaiian women.  

Patricia Grimshaw (1989) stated that “soon after 

their arrival in Hawai‟i in 1820, and over the next 

three decades, New England missionary women 

embarked on an ambitious plan to transform 

Hawaiian girls and women to notions of 

femininity upheld by their culture” (xvii).  Of all 

the cultural practices of Hawaiian women, the 



38 
 

missionaries deemed their sexual ones the most 

abhorrent. Traditionally, Hawaiian commoners 

had no formal marriage system.  Relationships 

were tenuous and, at times, could involve 

multiple partners.  Moreover, because sexual 

relations were looked upon as just one of life‟s 

pleasures, sexual activity began at an early age 

(Handy and Pukui 1972).  To counteract this 

practice, the missionaries forced Hawaiians to 

enter into formal marriages.  This was 

accomplished by getting the high chiefs to 

proclaim that Christian marriage was to be the 

law of the land.  It was more difficult, however, to 

eliminate what the missionaries perceived as 

promiscuity.  Secondarily, “sloth and idleness” 

were also characteristics that the missionaries 

abhorred among the Hawaiians (Alexander 1902, 

23).  Consequently, at first the missionaries 

attempted to use their life style and homes as 

models for Hawaiian women to emulate 

(Grimshaw 1989).  

When it became apparent that the 

American Protestant missionaries needed to focus 

its educational efforts on the young, a second 

period of educational innovations began.  In 1835, 

at the general meeting of the SIM, a resolution 

was passed to establish common schools for both 

boys and girls in the mission districts and 

promote boarding schools for select Hawaiians.  

As a result of these efforts, a compulsory 

education law was established and several male 

boarding schools and two female boarding 

schools were begun.   These female schools, the 

Wailuku Female Seminary on the island of Maui 

and the Hilo School for Girls on the island of 

Hawai‟i, were designed primarily to provide 

wives for the students at the boys‟ boarding 

schools (Annual Report 1835).  Before the 1850s, 

both of these schools had closed.   

Wailuku Female Seminary or the Central 

Female Seminary (as it was first called) was the 

first female school begun by the missionaries.  It 

received its financial support entirely form the 

ABCFM, the organization that had established the 

SIM.  Like the boys‟ schools, the schools for girls 

also experimented with both boarding students 

and the manual labor system.  The school was 

opened in 1837 under the supervision of 

Reverend Jonathan S. Green and Miss Lydia 

Brown (Extracts 1836).  Reverend Green was 

educated at Theological Seminary at Andover, 

Massachusetts, where he had experienced manual 

labor training.  He also had some experience with 

the education being provided the Hawaiian men at 

Lāhaināluna High School.  Miss Lydia Brown 

had been recruited to serve the mission in Hawai‟i 

as a teacher.  Along with teaching academic 

subjects, she specialized in the teaching of 

carding, spinning, weaving, and knitting of cotton 

and wool (Missionary Album 1969).  They 

commenced immediately to oversee the erection 

of a suitable building for the school.  On July 6, 

1837, the school opened with six little girls.  The 

number increased during the year to become an 

average of about thirty students.  While Reverend 

Green was busy with the Seminary, Edward 

Bailey assisted him by tending to mission duties, 

including teaching at the local common school, 

superintending the other schools throughout the 

district, and dealing with people‟s medical needs.  

Edward Bailey and his wife, Carroline Hubbard 

Bailey, were selected to join the mission in 

Hawai‟i for their teaching abilities.  In November, 

Miss Maria Odgen was added to the staff, and the 

enrollment grew to an average of about fifty 

students (Holt 1861).  Unlike the instructors for 

the boys‟ school, who were usually ordained 

ministers, the girls‟ instructors tended to be 

women with teaching experiences who were from 

the United States and selected for their high ideals 

and earnest Christian purpose in order that they 

be models for the girls (Haven 1920; Central 



39 
 

1838).  The following statement by Miss Ogden 

best illustrates this purpose: 

 

I feel it important as far as our means 

will allow to root out every vestige of 

their former manner of living[,] raise 

them in morals and civilization as high 

as we can get them.  So I am obliged to 

be wide awake in the school, at the 

table[,] and in the playground[,] and 

even follow them into their bed 

chambers.  I am more and more satisfied 

that nothing but just constant vigil and 

supervision will accomplish the object 

we aim at. (Kleinberg 1990, 35) 

 

 A great deal of the vigilance pertained to 

controlling the students‟ sexuality and this was 

accomplished by implementing the components 

of the “virtue of purity:” secluding the girls in 

individual sleeping areas, assigning them to wear 

uniforms, requiring daily bathing, and 

admonishing them to control not only their 

actions but their thoughts as well (Kleinberg 

1990).  The academic curriculum was elementary, 

including reading, writing, arithmetic and 

geography.  Once the school was up and running, 

the schedule for the usual day included: prayers at 

daylight; one hour of light labor in the garden; 

breakfast; miscellaneous work; from about nine to 

eleven a.m., Miss Ogden (who after Mr. Edward 

Bailey took over the school replaced Miss Brown) 

taught them spinning, sewing, knitting, and 

weaving; bathing and dinner; from two to four 

p.m., Mr. Bailey instructed them in the academic 

subjects; from four to five p.m., they labored in 

the open fields with hoes and other implements 

mainly for exercise; the day ended with supper 

and prayers.  From the beginning, the students at 

the school were constantly ill.  The labor in the 

gardens was added as a feature to counteract the 

students‟ ill health (Dibble 1854). 

The primary outcome of the school was to 

have the girls marry the boys of Lāhaināluna 

Seminary.  In 1842, the American Board renamed 

the boys‟ school as a seminary, in keeping with 

its newfound desire to train some of the male 

students to become Hawaiian pastors. 

Thus, special attention in the females‟ training 

was paid to teaching them to perform all the 

duties as wives and mothers.  This was 

accomplished by instructing them how to prepare 

sleeping quarters, prepare meals, set table for 

eating, wash dishes, and other household chores 

(Dibble 1854).  The missionaries feared that all 

the good work that they were doing with the 

Lāhaināluna  students would be ruined and the 

graduates would “sink rapidly to an equality with 

their companions” if they ended up marrying non-

pious, illiterate females.  If on the other hand, 

they married “females of cultured minds, and 

civilized manners, and especially of industrious 

habits and pious dispositions,” they felt assured 

that their labor would not have been in vain 

(Green 1838, 35).  Thus, the manual labor portion 

of the Seminary curriculum was crucial as it was 

“central to the Western concept of women‟s 

domestic sphere” (Kleinberg 1990, 95).  Sheldon 

Dibble (1854), a missionary and first scholar of 

Hawaiian history, summarized the overall intent 

of the female seminary best when he stated: 

The plan and design of the Female 

Seminary is to take a class of young 

females into a boarding school – away in 

a measure from the contaminating 

influence of heathen society, to train 

them to habits of industry, neatness, and 

order, to instruct them in employments 

suited to their sex, to cultivate the minds, 

to improve their manners and to instill 

the principles of our holy religion – to fit 

them to be suitable companions for the 

scholars of the Mission Seminary and 



40 
 

examples of propriety among the 

females of the Sandwich Islands. (106)  

 

             When Lāhaināluna was transferred to the 

government, Wailuku Female Seminary was 

transformed into a co-educational day school.  

The General Meeting of 1849 gave Mr. Bailey 

permission to make this change.  The school was 

re-oriented to offer education to either to 

Hawaiians or foreigners, whose parents, 

guardians, or patrons would pay a reasonable fee 

for tuition.  Prior to this change, no tuition was 

charged the girls for their education (Extracts 

1849).   

This was just one example of the blurring 

of public and private education in Hawai‛i during 

the first 30 years of the arrival of Western 

education.  Technically, the school was no longer 

a part of the Hawaiian public educational system 

but in practice, half of its enrollment tended to be 

full-blooded Hawaiian and the other half was 

hapa haole (half Hawaiians).  Mr. Bailey taught 

the boys and Miss Odgen taught the girls.  The 

Prudential Committee of the ABCFM approved 

of the changes, released them from their 

connection with the American Protestant mission, 

and gave them use of the school property and 

buildings.  The school lasted until 1858, when 

due to the parents or sponsors of the children not 

meeting their financial obligations the school 

closed (Extracts 1849).  

In 1838, Fidelia Coan, the wife of 

Reverend Titus Coan, began Hilo Girls‟ Boarding 

School.  Before her marriage, she had been a 

teacher at Middlebury Female Seminary in 

Vermont (Missionary Album 1969).  Hilo Girls‟ 

Boarding School was opened for 20 girls from 

seven to 10 years old.  With the help of Hilo 

residents, a building was erected and furnished.  

The school only lasted for eight years and the 

girls never were old enough to satisfy its 

objective of providing wives for the boys of Hilo 

Boarding School.  Coan‟s curriculum was 

“rudiments of necessary book knowledge, and of 

singing, sewing, washing and ironing, gardening, 

and other things.”  Book knowledge provided 

learning in reading, writing, geography, natural 

history of beasts, and arithmetic.  Manual labor 

consisted of  the girls helping to maintain a 

garden alongside the school (Coan 1840, 1882).  

Titus Coan (1840) expressed the value of the 

education provided these young girls: 

I never, in any country saw a school of 

twenty little children so uniformly meek, 

quiet, gentle, docile, and industrious as 

these little girls.  They are a company of 

bright faces and happy hearts.  Their 

contentment has seemed perfect from the 

first.  No one wishes to leave the school; 

no one sheds homesick tears.  All are 

cheerful as the lark, and, by their 

obedient and affectionate manners, they 

have entwined themselves closely 

around our hearts. (9)  

 

Mrs. Coan also noted that the girls who were 

trained at the school did distinguish themselves 

“for neatness, skill, industry and piety” (Piercy 

1992, 102).  Ultimately, the school closed due to 

Mrs. Coan‟s failing health (Simpson 1993).  

Even before these two female seminaries 

closed, the missionaries had begun a school 

system for males and females that offered a 

common school education.  However, by 1840, 

the missionaries were obliged to turn the common 

schools over to the government.  Bernard O. Wist 

(1937), the premiere scholar on public education 

during the nineteenth century, speculated that the 

cuts in financial support from the ABCFM due to 

the economic depression in the United States led 

to the missionaries‟ encouragement of the 

government‟s actions regarding the schools.  

While the schools were a valuable adjunct to the 

mission, the only course of action was to 



41 
 

surrender the schools to the government because 

of insufficient funds to build schools and pay 

teachers.  Over the next 20 years, the public 

school system was reorganized with the 

cooperation of the government and the 

missionaries continued to operate private 

boarding schools (Wist, 1937, 1940).  

 

Government Supported Female Education 

By the 1850s, two educational systems 

existed in Hawai‛i. All the common schools were 

formed into a public school system.  The 

missionary boarding schools that were able to 

finance themselves became the private school 

educational system.  When other religious 

dominations began to compete for the souls of 

Hawaiian, they too began their own private 

schools (Beyer 2010b).  Because the Hawaiian 

public education system had earlier been a 

product of the American Protestant missionary 

education effort, the government of the Kingdom 

of Hawai‛i continued to help the private schools 

of the missionaries through land donations and 

financial aid.   

While the first experiments in female 

schools occurred during a period of little interest 

in educating girls, during the late 1850s, there 

was much interest in female education 

(Kuykendall 1932).  Evidence of this interest 

surfaced when the journal, The Friend, initiated a 

journalistic challenge to the Advertiser and The 

Polynesian, the other prominent English language 

journals of that time period, and chided both the 

government and the ABCFM for not promoting 

female education.  The other papers responded, 

generating more discussion in promoting female 

education separate from the common schools 

(Female education 1857).   

There were four dominant groups in 

Hawaiian society at this time.  The Hawaiian 

Royalty, consisting of all the families who were 

eligible to become king or queen of the Kingdom, 

and the American Protestant missionaries were by 

far the most powerful of these forces.  Due to 

their usual collaboration on education projects, 

they were staunch supporters of the government 

financially supporting private schools for female 

education.  While the Hawaiian people generally 

supported whatever the Royalty proposed, their 

support was not always guaranteed.  However, 

when Richard Armstrong, the Minister of Public 

Education, visited schools across the Kingdom, 

he reported their support for a separate female 

education system: “what the Hawaiian people 

want is mothers, mothers, mothers, to train their 

sons and daughters; to reign in the domestic circle 

and make homes, quiet, well ordered, clean and 

happy homes” (Armstrong 1854, 12).  The final 

dominant group was the business community.  

The three Honolulu newspapers were generally 

used by this group to express their interest.   

Consequently, since the news media generated the 

discussion in favor of supporting female 

education, it is safe to say that the business 

community also supported this educational 

innovation. 

Whenever the issue of female education 

surfaced, it was concerned with improving the 

ordinary Hawaiian home by removing girls to 

boarding schools (Report of Education 1866).  

  

For the proper training of most of the 

Hawaiian girls, [boarding school] is an 

absolute necessity if they are to be kept 

from degradation.  This is the age when 

the Hawaiian girl needs the seclusion of 

the school-home. (Minutes 1892) 

 

Ellen Bond (1923), a founder of one of the female 

seminaries in this study, confirmed this with her 

own analysis: 

 



42 
 

It is my impression that the school 

originated in the demand of the time for 

schools that would give to the Hawaiian 

girls a higher and broader education then 

was available at the public schools, and 

probably in an acceptance of the adage 

that the character of the nation depends 

largely on the character of its mothers. 

(35) 

 

In 1860, the Hawaiian government‟s first 

effort to influence the curriculum for Hawaiian 

females began when Mataio Kekuanaoa, the 

President of the Board of Education for the 

Kingdom (the father of King Kamehameha IV 

and V), authorized the charter for the Makiki 

Family School, a school for girls. This was the 

first new school in 20 years (Kekuanaoa 1860).  

The closing of Wailuku Female Seminary had 

freed Maria Ogden, its former Principal, and she 

was called upon to establish this school 

(Kawaiahao 1885). The legislative assembly 

supported this process when it amended the Civil 

Code, giving specific authority to the Kingdom‟s 

Board of Education to establish family schools for 

Hawaiian girls and also made it lawful for the 

schools to be aided by the government even if 

private organizations or individuals operated them 

(Kamehameha IV 1860).  He devised a 

government aid formula based upon capitation 

fees paid per child on the following scale: for 

every child in a family school (later to include 

female seminaries) for 6 months, $10; for 1 year, 

$20; for 2 to 3 years, $25; and for 4 years or 

more, $30 (Government support 1865).  This 

government aid was indispensable if Hawaiian 

families were to take advantage of the choice this 

offered them in educating their daughters due to 

the financial hardships of the schools and the 

poverty of Hawaiian families (Chamberlain 

1889). 

In 1865, Kekuanaoa led the Board of 

Education to adopt special rules for the 

governance of these schools.  Schools were 

required to teach reading and writing in either 

English or Hawaiian, arithmetic, the elements of 

grammar and geography, and utilize the manual 

labor and/or manual training systems.  The 

internal arrangements of the schools had to be 

conducive to the physical and moral well being of 

the pupils.  The schools were to be conducted on 

Christian principles, but each set of board of 

directors or trustees was given full discretion as to 

the form of Christianity they might choose to 

inculcate.  The Government Inspector was 

required to visit, gather information pertaining to 

the number of students in attendance, the 

curriculum, the number of students who left the 

school and the reasons for their departure, and an 

evaluation of the value of the education 

(Kekuanaoa 1865).  In this way, the Kingdom of 

Hawai‟i began an innovative system of education 

which mirrored contemporary American charter 

schools. The schools received public financing 

and the government had a say in the general 

curriculum of these schools.   

While the primary motivation for 

educating Hawaiian girls in private boarding 

schools was to improve their character, there was 

also beginning to be more concern about 

providing the graduates of female schools with 

the means of a livelihood as well.  Besides 

training the girls to produce household goods or 

obtaining domestic skills that they could sell, 

there were also voices calling for the training of 

Hawaiian females as either missionaries or public 

school teachers (Minutes 1863).   

Although the Hawaiian government was 

willing to financially support female seminaries, 

it was still up to independent organizations or 

individuals to establish these schools.  The 

involvement of organizations not connected to 



43 
 

public education was another way that Hawaiian 

female boarding schools mirrored the 

contemporary American charter school 

movement.  As had always been the case in terms 

of education in Hawai‛i, the American Protestant 

missionaries again took the lead.  A circular sent 

by Reverends Poque and Andrews seeking 

answers from the various missionaries throughout 

the Hawaiian Islands helped to fashion the 

missionaries‟ policies for a series of new 

seminaries.  The Missionary Letter Collection of 

the Hawaiian Mission Children‟s Society did not 

have the circular, but the responses to this circular 

by the various missionaries indicated that there 

were four questions being asked: 1) What 

proportion of unmarried Hawaiian girls who have 

attained the age of puberty remain physically 

chaste? 2) Should there be the establishment of 

female seminaries? 3) Should the seminaries be 

like Wailuku Female Seminary? 4) At what age 

should the education begin? 5) How should the 

seminaries be financed?  The consensus of their 

responses included the following: seminaries 

were needed like the earlier Wailuku Female 

Seminary; the girls needed to begin their 

education at a very young age; the girls should 

stay at the seminary until they married or found 

employment; the seminaries should be boarding 

schools in order to keep the students away from 

corrupting influences; the seminaries should be 

located away from major port cities, where the 

bad influences were greatest; parents or guardians 

should pay for the expenses of the girls; the 

seminaries should have at least two instructors, 

one for academics and one for household arts, and 

that the pay be high enough to attract competent 

teachers; and the seminaries should teach in the 

English language and use a manual labor 

curriculum, which would help defray the costs 

and prepare girls for life after school (Alexander 

1858; Clark 1858; Johnson 1858; Paris 1858).    

Government Supported Female Seminaries 

Ka‟u Seminary was the first female 

seminary to be established under the new 

government support of private female education.  

This school was located on the island of Hawai‟i.  

The school was founded in 1862, by Orramel 

Hinckley Gulick and his wife, Ann Eliza Clark 

Gulick.  Both were the children of missionaries 

and had graduated from Punahou School, the 

school established by the missionaries for their 

children.  Orramel received all his education in 

Hawai‟i; Anna Eliza was a graduate of Mt. 

Holyoke Seminary (Female Boarding 1866).  Due 

to the isolated location of the seminary, it was 

difficult to attract many students to attend.  As a 

consequence, tuition and board was free, as long 

as the girls were placed under the parental care of 

the teachers of the school until the girls were 

married or obtained employment (Minutes 1863).  

While later female seminaries charged tuition, the 

fact that Waialua Female Seminary did not, made 

it more like a public school than other missionary 

schools.  In 1865, after struggling to attract 

students to the school, the Hawaiian Board of 

Missions decided to transplant the school to 

Wai‛alua, Oahu.  They opened the latter school 

with fifty students, ranging in age from eleven to 

fifteen.  Contrary to the advice of the other 

missionaries, the students were instructed in the 

Hawaiian language (Female Boarding 1866).  

In general, due to the homes of the girls 

being located in rural areas, the students were 

raised according to the values and practices of 

traditional Hawaiian culture.  The HEA 

determined that the objective of the school was to 

prepare the girls to become New England ladies.  

In order to transform the girls, the teachers 

instituted the following practices: dressing the 

girls in calico as opposed to their usual holoku; 

provide beds rather than sleeping mats on the 

floor; served meals at a table with silverware 



44 
 

instead of on the floor using their fingers.  The 

schedule for the day began with breakfast, 

followed by each girl reading from the Hawaiian 

Bible, and after the principal offered a prayer in 

Hawaiian, they were dismissed to begin the 

routine work, which encompassed all the work 

necessary to maintain the school except for 

carting and carrying firewood, and baking and 

pounding the taro for poi.  The older girls put the 

food away, washed the dishes, and swept the 

floor.  The younger girls dispersed to do various 

tasks, which included sweeping and dusting the 

parlor, the sitting-room or the school-room, 

gathering up the litter of leaves and branches 

from the yard and garden paths, or putting the 

teachers‟ rooms in order.  Some of the girls were 

involved with preparing the meals.  All the girls 

did washing and ironing clothes once a week.  

The academic work took place between nine a.m. 

and twelve p.m. and between one and four p.m.  

An hour and a half was spent on gardening and 

farming (Jones 1880).  Through this training, 

according to an instructor, “[i]t is our endeavor, 

by the course of study and training they shall 

receive, to fit them for missionaries and teachers, 

and to be the mothers of a part of the future 

redeemed Hawaiian nation” (Jones 1880, 436).  

The curriculum included geography, arithmetic, 

surveying, astronomy, singing, Bible history, and 

the Bible in general.  Manual training consisted of 

instruction in cutting and sewing dresses, in 

washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning house, and 

painting (Minutes 1867).  

Based on an original manuscript that 

provided details on each student enrolled in the 

school from 1865 to 1870, several features of this 

school were revealed.  First, it was very important 

to the sponsors of the school that the girls become 

members of the Christian church.  Nearly 58 

percent of the students were members.  Second, 

the school did keep the girls until they graduated 

(40 percent of the enrollment), married (34 

percent of the enrollment), were employed (4 

percent of the enrollment), left for health reasons 

(6 percent of the enrollment), or were dismissed 

for not applying themselves or for bad behavior 

(16 percent of the enrollment).   Generally, bad 

behavior meant improper sexual behavior, but 

sometimes it meant stealing or repeatedly lying.  

The school was also meeting its goal in preparing 

some of its students to become wives of ministers 

or missionaries (22 two percent of enrollment) 

and teachers (12 percent of enrollment) (Female 

Boarding 1871).  Although the teachers would 

never have called these figures a success, they 

indeed reflected that their efforts were leading to 

positive results.  No doubt this can be attributed 

to the rapport between the teachers and the 

students (Gulick 1867).              

In December, 1870, the school closed 

when the American Board sent the Gulicks to 

evangelize in Japan (Piercy 1992).  The school 

was reopened April 3, 1871, under the charge of 

Miss Mary E. Green.  She was a daughter of 

missionaries, educated at Punahou School and 

Mt. Holyoke Seminary (Minutes 1871).  Except 

for the addition of instruction in both the English 

and Hawaiian languages, the school was 

conducted mainly as it had in its first six years.  

English became the language of instruction in the 

academic subjects while the Hawaiian language 

continued to be the language to study the Bible 

and other related Christian studies (Female 

Boarding 1873).  She ran the school until 1882, 

when due to her ill health, she could do it no 

longer.  The property was sold and the money 

was given to the trustees of Kawaiaha‛o Seminary 

in Honolulu for the erection of new buildings 

(Kawaiahao 1885). 

The origins of Kawaiaha‛o Seminary was 

first as a school for the daughters of Dr. L. H. 

Gulick and South Sea Island girls in a building 



45 
 

located just south of the Kawaiaha‛o Church.  

Corresponding with a quick increase in 

enrollment, which presented the need for a more 

permanent organization, was a report issued by 

the Education Committee of the HEA, expressing 

the need for a female seminary in Honolulu.  The 

authors of this report wanted this school to be 

primarily religious, a boarding school with a day 

school department, taught in both English and 

Hawaiian languages, supported by tuition paid by 

parents or guardians of the students.  It was also 

expected to use the manual labor and manual 

training systems in order that the girls learn how 

to work and receive training in all that pertains to 

housekeeping and the domestic arts (Report of 

Education Committee 1866).  

In 1867, the Hawaiian Mission Children‟s 

Society (HMCS) decided to support a girls‟ 

boarding school.  This was an organization 

consisting of the children of the missionaries, 

which operated separately from the HEA.  They 

were looking for a cause to support when this 

opportunity availed itself.  After this initial 

support, HMCS became a regular contributor to 

all the Hawaiian female seminaries (Chamberlain 

1889).  They selected Miss Lydia Bingham as 

principal, and it was officially named the 

Kawaiaha‛o Seminary.  She was the daughter of 

Reverend Hiram Bingham, a member of the first 

company of missionaries to Hawai‟i, who 

returned to the United States to raise his children 

after his wife died.  Miss Bingham had been the 

principal of the Ohio Female Seminary and had 

been brought from Ohio earlier that year by Dr. 

Gulick to assist him with his emerging school 

(Report of Education Committee 1867).  The 

Hawaiian Board appropriated $1000 for repairs 

and additions to the buildings then occupied by 

Dr. L.H. Gulick and the girls in his family school.  

The capitation aid from the Government was 

indispensable in helping to keep the price charged 

for board and tuition low (Chamberlain 1889).  

The tuition varied from $25 to $33 during the 

entire history of the school.  At first, Miss Lizzie 

Johnson assisted Miss Lydia Bingham in the 

management of the school.  In January 1869, 

Miss Elizabeth K. Bingham arrived from the 

United States to be an assistant to her sister.  

Elizabeth Bingham was a graduate of Mt. 

Holyoke and, when she was recruited, was a 

teacher at Rockford Female Seminary (Bingham 

1868).  The breaking up of Miss Ogden‟s school 

at Makiki in 1868 increased the enrollment and 

the needs of the school (Missionary 1969).  

Already the enrollment was over fifty students.  

Throughout the rest of the century a number of 

assistants and principals came and went.  Private 

contributors, the ABCFM, HEA, and HMCS 

poured more money into the school.  New 

buildings were constructed, enabling the school to 

offer a full compliment of manual training 

programs and increase its enrollment.  Between 

1881 and the end of the century, the enrollment 

grew from 57 to 127 students.  In 1876, due to the 

growing expense of the school, the Hawaiian 

board invited the government to join them in 

supporting the school.  A board of trustees was 

established.   As a result of the government 

contributing funds, it had a say in the membership 

of this board.  In spite of this arrangement, all the 

trustees remained members of the missionary 

group (Kawaiahao 1885).  

Originally, Kawaiaha‛o Seminary was 

both a day and boarding school.  But from 1871 

on, it became an exclusively a boarding school.  

At first the school was designed to prepare 

Hawaiian girls to become “suitable” wives for 

men who were at the same time preparing to 

become missionaries and work in the South Seas.  

This objective took the back seat to industrial 

education as new manual training departments 

were added.  This included sewing, washing and 



46 
 

ironing, dressmaking, domestic arts, and nursing.  

The mainstay of the curriculum involved 

furnishing complete elementary courses, 

including music, both vocal and instrumental, and 

training in the household arts (Fiftieth 1914). 

While Kawaiaha‛o was both growing and 

changing into a manual training school, two other 

female seminaries came into existence.  The first 

of these to be discussed is the Kohala Female 

Seminary.  Originally, in the 1840s, Reverend 

Elias Bond and his wife, Ellen Howell Bond, had 

founded both boys‟ and girls‟ boarding schools in 

Kohala, located on the west side of the island of 

Hawai‟i.  Reverend Bond was a graduate of 

Bowdoin College and Bangor Theological 

Seminary, Maine.  Ellen Bond had studied at 

Gorham Female Seminary and expected to be a 

foreign missionary.  But due to the pressures of 

other work, they were both forced to close their 

respective schools (Missionary 1969).  In 1873, 

after raising $2500, a school for girls was 

reorganized as the Kohala Female Seminary.  The 

grounds were cleared, a stone foundation and 

fences built, water system laid out, and the main 

buildings for classes and living were constructed.  

The school officially opened in 1874.  Miss 

Elizabeth Lyons came from the mission at 

Waimea to be its first principal.  Forty-five girls 

enrolled, but it soon grew to sixty, which outgrew 

the first dormitory.  In 1878, the first schoolhouse 

was converted into a second dormitory, and a new 

schoolhouse was erected.  The school flourished 

for ten years.  Then a serious typhoid epidemic 

occurred.  Miss Lyons was force to return home 

to Waimea to care for her aged father.  No one 

could be found to replace her, so the school was 

closed (Bond 1923; Bond 1954).    

In 1887, the Bonds turned over the 

property for the school to the HEA Board under 

the conditions that it be used as a boarding school 

for girls, following the same evangelical 

principles for which the school had been founded.  

Katherine Bond (1954), a daughter of the Bond‟s, 

says “[t]he aims and ideals of the school have 

always been to furnish a wholesome Christian 

home training, together with a practical education 

such as will fit the girls to become housekeepers, 

wage earners, and generally good citizens” (2).  

The girls were allowed to do work in lieu of the 

tuition and room and board fees, which also 

minimized the costs for the school.  The tuition 

was $25 per semester throughout the nineteenth 

century.  Manual labor involved washing and 

ironing clothes, cooking, baking taro twice a 

week, and raising the potatoes, taro, and other 

vegetables.  The curriculum included arithmetic, 

history, language, geography, reading, spelling, 

civics, and the Bible.  The manual training 

program included lauhala mat weaving, sewing, 

cooking, crafts, music, hygiene, and gymnastics.  

The graduates of the Kohala Female Seminary 

were preferred, as employees by the manager of 

Parker Ranch, which is today the largest singly 

owned ranch in the United States (Williams 

1923).  A statement made in a journal published 

in Hawai‟i best summarized the attitude about this 

school: 

 

It was the original purpose of Mr. Bond 

to establish a school for girls that should 

give them a higher and broader 

education than was available at the time 

in the public schools, besides giving 

them a wholesome Christian home 

training.  During these years the school 

has registered no less than eight hundred 

girls, many of whom are living lives of 

usefulness as teachers in the public 

schools of Hawai‟i or as wives and 

mothers in their own homes. (School 

1904, 14) 

 

The last of the female seminaries that was 

begun by the missionaries was at first called the 



47 
 

Makawao Family School.  Reverend Claudius B. 

Andrews and his wife, Anne Seward Gilson 

Andrews, began it in 1861 in a location above 

Makawao Village on the island of Maui.  He was 

a graduate of Western Reserve College and Lane 

Seminary in Ohio.  No mention was made of Mrs. 

Andrews‟ education.  His purpose was to create a 

school where the girls were taught, as if they were 

his own daughters (Turner 1929).  Borrowing 

$3000, which he added to the $1000 he had 

received from his father for emergencies, he built 

the house that became the school (Andrews 

1866).  The curriculum of the school was not 

based primarily on book knowledge; instead “[the 

students] would be given the essential elements of 

the true character building, looking to future 

development of Hawaiian womanhood” (Turner 

1929, 7).  A year after the school was begun, Mrs. 

Andrews died.  Throughout the next seven years, 

Reverend Andrews received help from a variety 

of people and attendance grew to seventy 

students.  But then in 1869, after the school 

building burned, the school was closed.  It 

reopened in 1871, as a special project of the 

Henry P. Baldwin family, under a board of 

trustees, and after the erection of new buildings, 

as the East Maui Female Seminary or Maunaolu 

Seminary (Turner 1929).  Henry Baldwin was the 

son of missionaries, educated at Punahou School 

and Oahu College, taught for a while at 

Lāhaināluna Seminary, and, at this time, was 

amassing a fortune as a sugar planter (Wist 1940).  

Reverend Andrews along with his second wife, 

Samantha Washburne Wilson Andrews, were in 

charge of operating the school.  Miss Helen E. 

Carpenter was engaged as an assistant teacher.  

Both Samantha Andrews and Helen Carpenter 

were graduates of Mt. Holyoke Seminary.  In 

1874, the latter was appointed principal 

(Missionary 1969; Turner 1929).  

Throughout the years after the 

reorganization, the curriculum included the usual 

academic courses in reading, mathematics, 

literature, history, language (all instruction was in 

English), geography, spelling, civics, and the 

Bible.  The manual training departments included 

sewing, domestic arts, and culinary.  During the 

last two decades of the nineteenth century, the 

school was nicknamed the Mt. Holyoke Seminary 

of the Hawaiian Islands due to the connection of 

its instructors with that American seminary and 

the large number of Hawaiian minister‟s 

daughters in attendance.  Additions to the 

buildings and aid from both the government and 

the ABCFM led to the enrollment climbing to 100 

pupils (Hawaiian Mission 1881).  Ultimately, the 

school was successful on many levels.  Even 

though the missionary founders no longer aimed 

to have the women graduates of this school marry 

graduates from the nearby Lāhaināluna Seminary, 

this was indeed happening frequently.  Many of 

the graduates became teachers, either at other 

seminaries or in the public schools (Missionary 

1969; Turner 1929). 

Conclusion 

In 1895, the legislature of the Republic of 

Hawai‛i terminated the practice of government 

financially supporting private education 

(Thurston 1904).  This action was taken to 

enhance the chances that their bid for annexation 

by the United States was successful by mirroring 

the American practice of separation of church and 

state.  Nevertheless, three of the Hawaiian female 

seminaries continued to be educational innovators 

well into the twentieth century.  Throughout their 

history, the Hawaiian female seminaries were 

successful in offering Hawaiian females a choice 

from the rudimentary education offered at the 

public schools.  When one reads the reports of the 

principals of these seminaries in the Annual 



48 
 

Reports of the HEA and the HMCS, they 

continuously highlight the successes they were 

having with training their students to become 

good, Christian housewives, and models for other 

Hawaiian women.  They exhibited pride in the 

marriages of their students, especially if their 

husbands were Hawaiian pastors or missionaries.  

Towards the last twenty years of the nineteenth 

century, Kawaiaha‛o, Kohala, and Maunaolu 

Seminaries expanded their enrollment.  Most 

likely this was due to the success the seminaries 

were having in preparing its students for paid 

employment, which coincided with their 

educational innovations in using manual labor 

and manual training.  By the end of the nineteenth 

century, each school had a full compliment of 

manual training departments, which led to the 

acquisition of industrial skills by the students.  

Thus, through a period of almost 75 years, 

Hawaiian female seminaries were curricular 

innovators through providing an education that 

led to the success of its students that they would 

not have had if they had received their education 

from the common schools. 

Besides the curricular innovations the 

American Protestant missionaries utilized in their 

female seminaries for almost three quarters of the 

nineteenth century, my research also reveals 

evidence that indicates an early form of the 

charter school movement was taking place in the 

Kingdom of Hawai„i.  While technically the 

Hawaiian female seminaries were not a part of the 

public school system, they did provide an 

alternative to the public school system and a 

choice for Hawaiian parents.  The female 

seminaries received financial aid from the 

government and were expected to account for 

student success.  Thus, the collaboration of 

missionary educators and members of the 

Hawaiian government anticipated on their own 

some of the same elements of this educational 

system in the United States a hundred years later.   

 

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