Reconnecting to Kawaiaha‘o Female Seminary: The Lives of the Students at the End of the Nineteenth Century

Introduction

Kawaiaha‘o Female Seminary was founded as a missionary school for Hawaiian girls in 1864.¹ It was on King Street, across from Kawaiaha‘o Church and a short walk from ‘Iolani Palace. The seminary was founded by the wives and daughters of American missionaries to Hawai‘i to provide Christian education to Hawaiian girls and especially to the daughters of Hawaiian pastors and missionaries serving in the Pacific field. While that was its core objective, teacher Lilla Estelle Appleton noted that the school accepted some students to shield them from ruin.² The ladies of the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society (HMCS; Cousins’ Society) ran the school during its early years. The seminary had no endowment. It was supported entirely by tuition income supplemented by sums provided by Protestant societies and individual donors. In 1873, the legislature of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i provided capitation fees to schools like Kawaiaha‘o Seminary “to encourage the entry, at family boarding schools, of girls at an early age.” Even with supplemental government funding, the school struggled to maintain standards as its enrollment grew.

Figure 1.

Group photo, Kawaiaha‘o Seminary, n.d. Charles Atwood Kofoid Papers, Mandeville Special Collections, Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego, La Jolla, California.

The seminary was caught in a financial dilemma. On one hand, it needed to raise tuition to improve the financial position of the school. On the other hand, the tuition fees for daughters of Native Hawaiian clergy were paid by the same group of people who operated the school.

In 1877, the Hawaiian Evangelical Association (HEA), in consultation with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), appointed a board of trustees to oversee finances at the seminary and persuaded the Reverend Charles M. Hyde to assume the presidency of the board. The Reverend Hyde had recently come to Honolulu from Massachusetts to undertake broad responsibilities on behalf of the ABCFM.³ The transition from Cousins’ Society oversight to board administration was not a smooth one. Some of the cousins were miffed, and the society refused to exercise its privilege to appoint one member of the board of trustees.⁴

The Reverend Hyde reorganized the school, tightening control of students, focusing its curriculum on the Bible, and improving its facilities. He attracted significant new funds from Hawai‘i and American donors to improve the aging seminary buildings.⁵ In 1884, Hyde emphasized the importance of encouraging girls to enter boarding schools “at an early age, before they may have formed vicious habits.”

The importance of a careful watch over girls from 12 to 18 years of age is equally as worthy of consideration in managing or assisting these schools as the merely negative qualification that girls under ten years of age will be most likely not to have formed vicious habits. The most critical period, in fact, in a girl’s life is when the principles of conduct, previously held up as desirable traits of character, may become fixed habits of life, or may be thrown to the winds under the stress of specially pressing temptations.⁶

Hyde is talking here about controlling the sexuality of Hawaiian girls by taking them from their communities and placing them in boarding schools like Kawaiaha‘o Seminary.⁷

Hyde’s plan was to secure additional government funding to improve the financial health of the seminary. This plan failed when Hyde provoked a rebellion among the Kawaiaha‘o Seminary students. HRH Princess Lili‘uokalani, a patron of the seminary who had placed her hānai daughter there, personally invited the students of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary to march in a Golden Jubilee procession, part of the grand public spectacles celebrating King Kalākaua’s fiftieth birthday on November 16, 1886. The Board of Trustees forbade them to march. The students and principal were vocal in their displeasure. The students were strongly affiliated with the Kingdom and personally devoted to Princess Lili‘uokalani. The Reverend Hyde and other trustees were forced to resign.⁸

The Reverend Hyde’s letter of resignation bears the sting of humiliation.

Recent events . . . have made it evident that the attempt is now quietly yet persistently being made, to revive the superstitious mummeries and licentious orgies of a moribund heathenism. Such practices are undermining the influence of our Christian institutions.⁹

Whether you believe the Reverend Hyde’s version of the incident, or see the actions of the board of trustees as overbearing, it is clear that a conflict between the HEA leadership and the palace was being played out at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary. The conflict was enjoined in this instance over the allegiance of young Hawaiian women; in other words, the future of the Hawaiian people.

This overview of the seminary at the end of the nineteenth century details financial strains and institutional conflicts that were not visible to the general public. In 1890, the public saw a large and successful school for Native Hawaiian girls, right in the center of Honolulu, enjoying royal patronage and substantial support from wealthy missionary families, some of whom lived nearby. The paths and lanes around the seminary were filled with the cottages and traditional homes of Hawaiian families, and many of them sent daughters to the seminary. The school was at the height of its reputation.

From 1864 to 1892, 483 girls attended Kawaiaha‘o Seminary.¹⁰ The early matriculation records of this large and important school were lost. We now know the names of 100 students who attended the seminary between 1890 and 1893, thanks to lists made by teacher Carrie Prudence Winter¹¹ and other material that has come to light recently. Of these 100 students, 35 were born on or came from O‘ahu, 25 from Kaua‘i, 13 from Hawai‘i, 10 from Maui, and 4 from Moloka‘i. Six were born elsewhere: 1 in Micronesia, 4 on “South Sea Islands,” and 1 in England.

The lives of these one hundred Hawaiian women are important for a number of reasons. They were born between 1865 and 1889 and came of age at the time of the Bayonet Constitution in the last years of the Hawaiian Kingdom. They experienced the transition from a Hawaiian to an American government in 1898 and endured the imposition of Western culture and language. The history of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary is written from the letters, journals, and printed words of the mostly haole school administrators, trustees, and teachers, because those are the sources that survived. The biographies of these students can serve as a check and corrective to that history. Most of the students were from maka‘āinana families, although a few were members of the royal family and women of ali‘i ancestry. Biographical information on the lives of the ordinary women of the islands are, with a few important exceptions, not widely accessible to scholars.¹² The biographies of one hundred Hawaiian women and girls living during the transition from the Hawaiian Kingdom to the Territory period could change our perspective on Hawaiian history.

Local newspapers covered events at the school. Reports of Cousins’ Society and the HEA identify student ethnicity and praise student religious practice, academic achievement, and musical virtuosity. These sources present the student body as a product of its education. This article seeks to expand this narrow view of young Hawaiian women. Instead of asking what their education accomplished, it asks what their lives were like.

The biographies of the one hundred students identify common challenges faced by Hawaiian women and girls of their generation. The biographies present some facts that contrast with official narratives of the school. Themes emerge that require investigation. For instance, thirty-two of the students lost one or both parents before or during their school years. Many students were enrolled at the seminary by guardians rather than parents, so guardianship law and practice is a theme that requires study. Student health is frequently mentioned in school reports, and these reports can now be compared to the actual health of students as detailed in their biographies. The political actions and opinions of the students can be compared to school reports that sometimes purport to represent their political views.

Student biographies reveal new information about the student body as a whole. Several students had mothers who were alumnae of the school, and many attended school with sisters, cousins, and other relatives among their classmates. This is revealed not only in the biographies but is also evident in photographs of student groups. Native Hawaiian children at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary were from Christian families whose history can be traced back several generations through mission records. Fifteen students were daughters of Native Hawaiian Protestant clergy.¹³ Five married Native Hawaiian pastors. While many of the students took the inter-island steamers to their home island at the end of the academic year, almost all of them had significant longstanding ties throughout Hawai‘i. These included kinship relationships, home island contacts, ties to the land, and church connections. Their teachers were amazed at how quickly important news reached the students through the locked doors of the seminary. These ties played a big role in their lives. Even when students lost parents, they retained their identity and remained connected to the larger Hawaiian community in the ‘ohana style of the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

While the early archives of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary are thin, there is a good photographic record of the school. Local professionals were allowed to take pictures of seminary buildings and some group photos of the students. Teachers and volunteers like Lilla Estelle Appleton and Nellie Waterhouse took candid images of the students and faculty. These images were often taken home as treasured souvenirs by the corps of hard working, unmarried, mostly American women who taught there.¹⁴ Individual students occasionally had studio likenesses taken, and Kawaiaha‘o Seminary brides with the means to do so sat for a wedding portrait. Some of these images can be found in archives, while others remain in family hands.

Figure 2.

Unidentified Kawaiaha‘o Seminary students with musical instruments, ca. 1892. Photo by Lilla Estelle Appleton. Charles Atwood Kofoid Papers, Mande ville Special Collections, Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego, La Jolla, California.

The surviving photographs of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary alumnae that were passed down in families are often identified with family names, but those photos retained by the school or its teachers rarely include identifying information. This is so striking that it requires fuller investigation. It suggests that the identity of individual students was not considered important enough to be recorded, and the reason for that can be found in the structure of the school and the policies of its administrators.

The finances and governance of the school were entirely in the hands of its board and principal. The students, and even the Hawaiian teachers at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary, were simply not recognized publicly by name and their names are rarely listed on photographs.¹⁵ Their contribution was not mentioned when school anniversaries were celebrated, but great public accolades were repeatedly given to the haole benefactors, managers, and principals at the school.¹⁶ There is a striking similarity between this fact and the situation reported by Nancy J. Morris on the contributions of Hawaiian clergy in the effort to evangelize the islands south of Hawai‘i:¹⁷

. . . the researcher faces a difficulty in that the [Hawaiian] missionaries often go unnamed, and the circumstances of their existence only sketched. The anonymity accorded the Hawaiians reflects a bias and lack of understanding on the part of Western observers, in contrast to the importance. . . Western observers attributed to haole mission endeavors.

Even though its students were rarely identified in photographs, the school was acclaimed for its education of Native Hawaiian girls, and Native Hawaiian children are featured in the photographs of the school. The work of the school departments are depicted in posed photographs taken by Appleton: classroom work, cooking, sewing, and housekeeping. It was enough that the children appeared to be good Christian girls, and that is how they are depicted in early images. Their individual identity is immaterial; it is their Hawaiian ethnicity, Christian modesty, and youthful charm that are on display.

This article begins the work of exploring the lives the students and themes that emerge from a comparison of official school reports with their biographies. This work has never been done before because the names of the students were largely unknown and consequently statistical information on students at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary has never been compiled or analyzed. This article focuses on three main themes: student entry into the seminary, guardianship, and student health. The biographies of twelve students relevant to these themes are presented in depth.

Figure 3.

Margaret Powers is pictured here (front row, second from the left) with “Miss Davis” and her class, Kawaiaha‘o Seminary, n.d. Courtesy of HMCS Library.

Entering Kawaiaha‘o Seminary: Biographies of Margaret and Emma Powers

Margaret Powers was born on August 12, 1873 in Honolulu, the second child of an American seaman Aaron R. Powers and a Maui woman Mary Francis. Her older sister was Emma, born about 1871. Their parents were married in Honolulu on May 11, 1870 and were members of the Fort Street Church. Captain Powers had been in Hawai‘i for a considerable time and was master of a series of small schooners including Kate Lee, Moi, and Kamoi. The family resided on Queen Street. In 1875, the Hawaiian Gazette reported that Captain Powers took all the family money and deserted his wife and two children.¹⁸ It is more likely that he briefly left the islands to purchase a new schooner, Iolani in partnership with Frank Cooke. On February 13, 1877, Iolani foundered in the Moloka‘i Channel (also known as the Ka‘iwi Channel). Two men, Captain Powers and John Adams, drowned. Like a lot of sailors, Captain Powers could not swim.

Captain Powers died without a will, and his assets were placed in probate according to the laws of the Kingdom under an administrator, William O. Smith.¹⁹ Smith was the law partner of Lorrin Thurston, both drafters of the Bayonet Constitution and members of the Committee of Safety, complicit in the coup d’état of 1893.

One third of Powers’ estate, after the satisfaction of debts, was set aside for his widow. The rest of the assets, under $2000 were managed by Smith who also served as guardian for the two little girls, Emma and Maria (known as Margaret at school). He placed them at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary in April 1877 just weeks after their father’s death.²⁰ Helen S. Norton, principal of the seminary, noted in her diary that their mother, Mary, was considered a leprosy “suspect” and was examined on August 2, 1881.²¹ Her health status would have diminished her ability to make decisions for her children, but even had she been well, the law at the time gave guardians of fatherless children responsibility for them, not their widowed mothers.

On October 24, 1881, Norton wrote that Mrs. Powers visited her daughters at the seminary and Mrs. Powers asked Margaret about a spot on her sister Emma Powers’ hip.²² The principal sent for the guardian, who sent for Dr. Nathaniel Bright Emerson, the physician son of Protestant missionaries to Hawai‘i who had lately returned to the islands to work at Kalaupapa. He diagnosed this as “incipient leprosy.” Emma joined her mother at Kalaupapa in December 1888. In 1891, principal Ida Pope visited Emma at Kalawao where she lived with her husband, William J. Feary and their son.²³ Feary was then first assistant superintendent of the leprosy settlement.

Margaret Powers remained at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary for 15 years. She enjoyed greater freedom than most students there. She was sent out on errands for the school. The teachers said that a decent Hawaiian girl could not walk down some streets in Honolulu without being insulted, but Margaret Powers was welcomed everywhere and knew everyone. She acted as go-between for seminary principal Mary E. Alexander and her intended, Samuel Fuller of the YMCA. The couple brought her along to chaperone their courtship in the ice cream parlors of Honolulu.²⁴

Principal Ida Pope called Margaret Powers “the brightest girl in the seminary” and noted that she wrote a school essay in Pope’s room.²⁵ The essay titled “Changes at the Seminary” was published in the Hawaiian Gazette.²⁶ It is a mini-history of the school that has much to say to those who can read between the lines. Powers wrote that the seminary was small, damp, crowded, and underfunded while offering the rosiest view of its recent improvements. “I have heard many say, that we do not have enough to eat. This is not so,” she writes, but also acknowledges that teachers occasionally went hungry to give sick children an extra portion. Her intelligence shines through the composition.

Powers trained as a teacher, and in September 1892, she was appointed to the Makapala English School in Kohala. She married Frederick Waldron there in 1897; they had four children. He was an accountant and manager of Volcano House on Hawai‘i Island from 1898 to 1902. Mrs. Waldron is mentioned frequently in the hotel guestbook as an amiable hostess and manager of the kitchen.²⁷

The family was back in Honolulu in 1913. Frederick Waldron had a series of strokes that killed him in March 1914. From 1913 to 1938 Mother Waldron, as she was known, was a teacher at Pohukaina School in Honolulu on a personal Christian mission to help the children of that poor district. She began by organizing free meals for students who came to school hungry. She pressured politicians for appropriations for milk and food and recruited Hawaiian mothers to do the cooking. She reminded “Mr. Candidate” that healthy young Americans needed nourishment.²⁸ She asked for and received support from the Honolulu society ladies she had known at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary.²⁹

She commandeered the kitchens of Pohukaina School after hours and taught the women of the district how to make guava jelly. Guava jelly was then sold to raise money for milk. She taught sewing to girls as a means of self-support. She interceded with civic authorities who threatened the income of the naked little boys who dove for coins at the passenger ship terminal. Mother Waldron found them bathing suits and a clubhouse for dressing.³⁰ Eleanor Heavey mentions her in the 1977 oral history, “Remembering Kakaako.”

She was a bulldog. She always went after the boys that got in mischief, and go help them go out of the jail, and bail em out, and that kind of stuff. See then that’s why they all loved her . . . . Mother Waldron had an iron hand.³¹

Tai Loy Ho agreed in his 1978 interview:

Well she’s a big woman. Big jowls, just like a bull dog. Rough. Big. I would say, almost 300 pounds. And she taught fourth grade in Pohukaina School. You got naughty, quick principal spank you with the hair-brush. If got worse, you go see Mother Waldron. She work you over.³²

She organized playgrounds for the children of the district. She got to know the gangs and found jobs for boys in trouble. She served on civic committees and spoke up for children in court. In 1920, a playground, adjacent to Pohukaina School, was named in her honor, and she was presented with so many lei she could not wear them all. Her many moving obituaries in 1936 recall her good works and call her “Friend of the Poor.”³³

Her sister, Emma Powers, lived a very different life at the settlement on Moloka‘i. After the death of her mother and her first husband, she married Joseph Kamakawele and is listed as “an importer of paiai [pounded but undiluted taro]” in the Independent in 1901.³⁴ Her date of death is not known.

There are two obvious conclusions suggested by this and other biographies of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary students. Ill health had a devastating impact on Hawaiian families of this generation. Family law and practice in courts in Hawai‘i at the time treated the lives of women and children differently from those of men.

Guardianship: Ella and Mary Bridges, Rose Kapalehua and Kela (Sarah) Kapalehua Maewa, and Maria Kahopekaa Puuohau and Konia Puuohau

There are three other instances of students, like the Powers sisters, who lost both parents suddenly. Ella Kamakea Bridges and her sister, Mary Ellen Hanau umi Kanoina Bridges, lost their father, Captain George A. Bridges, to an epidemic, on November 2, 1879; their mother, Maria Kaainahuna Kaleimakalii, soon followed him.³⁵ Their court-appointed guardian, the Reverend Hiram Bingham II, sent them to Kawaiaha‘o Seminary. Maria Kahopekaa Puuohau and her sister, Koni, received the news of the death of both their parents when a steamer “from another island” delivered a message to the seminary on March 29, 1891.³⁶ The guardianship records of students at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary during this period document the neglectful practices of some guardians. Seminary students Rose Loke Kapalehua and Kela (Sarah) Kapalehua Maewa, sisters from Kaua‘i, were placed under the guardianship of Carl Isenberg upon the deaths of both of their parents around 1894. Two years later, when the court demanded his accounts, Isenberg wrote from Germany, resigning his guardianship and passing it to Charles Reed Bishop.³⁷

Helen Norton, then principal of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary, discussed Ella Kamakea Bridges’ serious illness at school with her guardian, Hiram Bingham II:

Saw Mr. Bingham. He did not seem much troubled. Does not feel it is his duty to look after them & even asked if I would not be appointed Mary’s guardian. By no means, I told him.

In the Bridges’ case, the courts imposed guardianship, even when male Hawaiian family members came forward to take responsibility for the orphaned Bridges children. Kawaiaha‘o Seminary was not always a happy home for children during this period, and guardianship practice made fatherless girls more rather than less vulnerable to neglect.

Guarding the Health of the Students: Biographies of Nancy and Mary Ahia

Carrie Winter commented that her Hawaiian students experienced more illness and deaths in their families than was usual among families living in the United States. The Kawaiaha‘o Seminary students at the end of the nineteenth century lost many members of their families. Many students experienced ill health and fourteen died before age 30.³⁸ Students who fell seriously ill at school were usually sent home, but deaths among the students were not uncommon.

The health of the school has been good, there having been little serious illness. Little Isabella Nahale died in February of pneumonia, the first death we have had in the house for over four years. Lucy Trask of Kauai, one of our little girls, died at her grandmother’s in this city in March. The same week Sarah Aea died at her father’s home at Waikiki. She had been a member of this school since she was a little girl and was a bright, happy-natured, faithful young woman always ready to help others. When the time came for her to leave this world, she was ready and went gladly.³⁹

Sarah Aea, daughter of Joseph Kapaeau Aea, musician, composer, and courtier to Queen Liliu‘okalani, died at age 22 of consumption in 1900.⁴⁰ Most historians point to the terrible loss of life experienced by the Hawaiian people in the mid-nineteenth century resulting in a precipitous decline in the population, but the student biographies paint a picture of a continued health crisis in Hawaiian families and young lives deeply impacted by loss and grief.⁴¹

Kawaiaha‘o Seminary had a local reputation for being in an unhealthful location. It built a special hospital cottage in 1890.⁴² In 1890, the government’s Board of Health and the public were much alarmed by the incidence of disease, especially in the capital city.⁴³ Between 1877 and 1890, four students at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary were suspected of having Hansen’s disease, but this fact is not mentioned in official school reports. Winter wrote that the school preferred not to alert the authorities in such cases, but the archival record does not sustain that observation.⁴⁴ Miss Norton sent Ella Kamakea Bridges from school to Kalihi Hospital and indirectly brought Emma Powers’ blemish to the attention of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s leprosy specialist. Lizzie Nathaniel entered Kawaiaha‘o in 1885 and was sent to Kalihi Hospital in 1890 but was later released.

An uneasy atmosphere developed at the seminary during the 1890s. The students were tested twice yearly for Hansen’s disease.⁴⁵ The students knew that some of their classmates were sent to Moloka‘i. Students were constantly monitored for health problems, particularly for any signs of skin disease.⁴⁶ On May 5, 1892, Winter questioned Mary Ahia about one of her fingers, and her sister Nancy leaped to her defense:

When I asked her about it, she was very much confused and said something about Nancy cutting it with an ax. I made inquiries of Miss Pope and she knew nothing of it. In fact none of the teachers had ever seen that finger, and when Mary was spoken to about it, she burst out crying and refused to show it. The doctor looked at it today and said it was all right, but I don’t quite believe him . . . . A while ago they were much alarmed about the mother and feared she had leprosy, but she seems all right now.⁴⁷

These students were being watched, and they knew it.⁴⁸

The Ahia sisters had a different cultural background and life experience than the Powers girls. The Ahias were daughters of Abraham Fred Beckley Kekapala Kepoomahoe Ahia and his wife Melinda Melaina Kale.⁴⁹ Both girls were born on Maui: Nancy in 1876, Mary in 1877. Their mother’s family had longstanding connections to the Baldwin Family in Lahaina. Melinda Ahia was in the service of Queen Lili‘uokalani.⁵⁰ The queen wrote that during her imprisonment she was constantly attended by Milaina Ahia.⁵¹ Nancy married Solomon Mahelona, and Mary married Charles Burnett Wilson. Mrs. Solomon Mahelona (Nancy) served as the assistant matron of the Kalihi Boys’ Home, the institution that housed boys born to patients on Moloka‘i and separated from them at birth.⁵² These sisters married into politically connected Hawaiian families.

The biographies of many Kawaiaha‘o students include serious health challenges but also record an echo of the enormous loss of life in Hawaiian families of earlier generations. That loss of life put fatherless children before the courts, and ill health further isolated children from family care. The biographies reveal the students as vulnerable in health, but they are children from strong, prominent Hawaiian families.

Children of the Mission: The Biographies of Deborah Haina and Rachel Kailiao Haina

Kawaiaha‘o students at the end of the nineteenth century included many daughters of Hawaiian clergy. The Haina Family provides one example.

Figure 4.

The family of the Reverend George Haina and his wife Kaluahine, including son Titus and four of their daughters, all enrolled in Kawaiaha‘o Seminary, June 13, 1878. Photo by A. A. Montano. Courtesy of HMCS.

The Reverend George Haina was a Protestant pastor and missionary teacher affiliated with the Hawaiian Evangelical Association. He was sent by the Hawaiian Board of Missions to the Gilbert Islands and Tarawa, serving there with his wife Kaluahine from 1860 until he was lost at sea in 1886 while making passage from Tarawa to Marakei by canoe.⁵³ The Haina family had eleven children, nine of whom survived their mother, and five of their daughters: Hattie (born 1857), Sarah, Leelia, and Deborah (1872–1930), and Rachel Kailiao Haina (1877–1942) were educated at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary at the expense of the Hawaiian Board. This was a perquisite of missionary service, not charity. The Hawaiian Board did not want missionary children exposed to heathen practices, embarrassing the mission, or diverting the missionaries from their work.

Principal Helen S. Norton reported that Deborah Haina entered Kawaiaha‘o Seminary on May 1, 1878 at age 9.⁵⁴ Rachel Kailiao Haina arrived in Honolulu Christmas Day 1884 on the vessel Jennie Walker and entered Kawaiaha‘o Seminary in 1885 at the age of 8.⁵⁵ Deborah Haina excelled in sewing and is listed in the 1896 Hulsted’s Directory and Handbook of Honolulu and the Hawaiian Islands as a seamstress resident at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary. One of her teachers, Winter, wrote on February 18, 1892 that she caught Deborah Haina, Lucy Leleo, and Margaret Powers sleeping through the 6:30 a.m. rising bell one Sunday morning and assigned them extra reading as punishment.⁵⁶ But Deborah Haina, “or Mother Gunner as we loved to call her,”⁵⁷ is best remembered as a gifted mimic. She made fun of the old maids who taught at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary, and she was so good at it that she made them laugh at themselves. Winter wrote on November 12, 1891 that her students gave an entertainment after Bible class. The brightest performance “was a take-off of an every day event . . . Deborah Haina was dressed as an old woman, and she called in one of the girls to re-dust the table and found fault with her work in regular teacher style.”⁵⁸ Perhaps “Mother Gunner” is the name of the fault-finding character that Deborah Haina invented and performed on this and other occasions to the great amusement of her classmates.

By 1905, Deborah Haina had left the seminary and was working as a seamstress. She lived with her sister Rachel at 817 Punchbowl Street in Honolulu. By 1910, she had four children with a soldier, August Pilger, who would have been 40 at the time. Their eldest child, Elfreda, was born in 1898.⁵⁹ Deborah Haina is listed as Pilger’s widow in a 1926 Honolulu street directory and in her obituary.⁶⁰

Rachel Kailiao Haina was born in the Gilbert Islands on January 27, 1877 and married Richard Antone in Honolulu in 1908. He is listed as John Antone in the 1910 census, living with his family next door to Deborah Haina and her children. His occupation is listed as “plumber” in 1910 but would be “laborer” in subsequent census records. The Antone family were members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, which officiated at Rachel Kailiao Haina Antone’s funeral in 1942. They were survived by their four children and many grandchildren.⁶¹

The story of the Haina family contrasts with a characterization of the student body that appears in school records. Some teachers called students heathens. The Board of Trustees called constantly for spiritual growth among the students and complained that few entered missionary service. However, the biographies reveal most students to be professed Christians brought up in observant homes. Some were daughters and granddaughters of the great Hawaiian evangelists of the nineteenth century.

William R. Castle succeeded the Reverend Hyde as head of the Board of Trustees for Kawaiaha‘o Seminary and had a different view of the student body. He was a missionary son but also a prominent businessman and annexation proponent. He summarized the position of the seminary in 1893:⁶²

For several years it has been very difficult to raise the funds necessary to carry on the school. The tuition and capitation fees have been insufficient to meet necessary expenses and a considerable amount has been realized from gifts. The closest economy has been practiced . . . The school has numbered altogether from 135 to 140 persons . . . . This makes the cost of each girl to the school $93.40 or thereabouts. It is not expensive and is far less than the cost of a like education in the United States or Europe. But the question arises—How long is it wise to continue such a school. Is it proper to furnish education at half its cost, and depend on a charitable public to make up the balance? To become self-supporting this school ought to get from each pupil $100 per annum. It is also worthy of note that at the present time only about a third of the girls are paid for by their own parents or guardians. The remainder are kept in the Seminary by various societies and individuals.

Castle’s statement obscures a significant change of policy and includes an insinuation of charity. The daughters of missionaries serving in the Pacific field were educated in boarding schools by the HEA and Cousin’s Society as a matter of policy. Their tuition should not have been combined with or compared to the fees for children paid by churches or individual donors as charity. The trustees of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary were shifting their responsibility. They depicted the school as a charity in order to stimulate donations, and they were distancing themselves from the seminary’s primary objective, which was to educate the daughters of Native Hawaiian clergy.

This insinuation of charity had political overtones. The students were constantly reminded that they should be grateful for their education, and their teacher, Carrie Winter, went further, suggesting that they owed their political allegiance to National Reform Party candidates in consequence.⁶³ This view was quietly rejected by the student body, which often expressed its loyalty to the monarchy and favored independent Hawaiian candidates in Hawaiian elections.

The biographies of the Haina sisters remind us that the pupils at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary were not neophytes. Their families had earned their place at the seminary through dedicated Christian service.

Overthrow: The Biography of Koni Puuohau

In her 1893 annual report as president of the Woman’s Board of Missions for the Pacific Islands, the wife of Charles M. Hyde acknowledged that serious protests in the Hawaiian churches followed the overthrow of the queen but noted that “the political disturbance has made no material change in the boarding schools”⁶⁴ and that enrollment had not lessened. This statement does not adequately reflect events at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary.

On January 14, 1893, a day that commenced the coup d’état that led to the overthrow of Queen Lili‘uokalani, some families came to the seminary to take their daughters home and threatened to set fire to the houses of the missionaries. Most of the students remained in school to witness the arrival of American troops and the withdrawal of the queen under protest. Winter remarked that the children were remarkably quiet.⁶⁵ The principal, Pope, turned back the clock and kept the students busy sewing and singing hymns.

Koni Puuohau was in school that day. She was the daughter of the Reverend Thomas Puuohau, a Native Hawaiian Protestant pastor,⁶⁶ and Priscilla Nohoanu, his wife. The Reverend and Mrs. Puuohau were married at Waialua, O‘ahu in 1868 and had a large family. Their daughters Emma (born 1871?), Anna (born 1872?), Koni, and Maria Kahopeka‘a Puuohau (1877–1932) were all educated at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary. Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell, a grandson of Maria Kahopeka‘a Puuohau (wife of George H. Piltz), recalled that the Reverend Puuohau served at some time as a coachman to the royal family and that his wife’s family were retainers to the Kalākaua family at Waikīkī, where they had a cottage.⁶⁷

Emma Puuohau was identified as the eldest daughter of the Reverend Puuohau of Honolulu when she entered Kawaiaha‘o Seminary in July 1877. She was described as “an unusually bright child for a Hawaiian as is her little sister Annie, one year younger.”⁶⁸ Koni Puuohau and her sister Anna are listed as students at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary in the 1882 circular.⁶⁹ Koni Puuohau was in Appleton’s class for two years from 1891 to 1893, so she spent at least twelve years at the school. Winter found her troublesome:

We have a certain girl here, by name Koni Puuohau who is capable of giving any amount of trouble but who has been stirred up this past week and not only that but has unsettled the whole school and made disobedience the fashion.⁷⁰

Principal Ida Pope liked Koni Puuohau despite her misbehavior and found her bright and mischievous. She wrote that Puuohau “has never been appreciated and was just pining to have someone love her.”⁷¹ But even Pope acknowledged that she had a fight with one of the teachers and tried to run away in 1890.

While her elder sisters’ school fees were paid by the HEA, Koni Puuohau was one of twenty students whose fees were paid by the Ahahui Hoonaauao Lili‘uokalani (Lili‘uokalani Education Society).⁷² On January 31, 1891, Puuohau was among a group of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary students called to the palace at noon to sing hymns for the grieving queens, Kapi‘olani and Lili‘uokalani, while King Kalākaua lay in state.

Three of the ladies in attendance whispered a few words to Koni our largest girl, a very fine stately girl and in some way related to royalty, and as we filed out and as she passed the royal chair, she very gracefully dropped on her knees and kissed the royal hand of Mrs. Dominis, for you must know that she is Queen now.⁷³

Pope met with Queen Lili‘uokalani in the fall and discussed the Puuohau sisters with her. The queen commanded obedience. “All through the school now you can feel the change and the readiness to obey. Koni has completely given in and once more we teachers breathe freely.”⁷⁴

For the next two years, the teachers made few complaints of Koni Puuohau’s behavior, but serious problems arose again in 1893. The overthrow of the queen occurred in January 1893 and upset all of the pupils. That same month, Puuohau lost her champion, as Pope left Hawai‘i to visit the United States. On March 4, 1893, Winter gave Puuohau permission to visit her doctor:

I let Koni go to see her doctor yesterday afternoon as she had been doing for some time past, and she did not come back. Her grandfather has been trying for some time to get her out, and we all knew she would go soon, but I am sorry she did it while I was on duty.⁷⁵

It was unusual for seminary students to consult an outside physician. Puuohau may have had a serious health problem needing special attention. A few days after she ran away, Winter wrote:

I hunted Koni up . . . and had a talk with her. She was very frank and pleasant with me. To her mind, “It was stay at the Seminary and die” or go as she did and she chose the latter. There is worse behind that.⁷⁶

Appleton also visited her:

At half past ten, having borrowed Miss Winter’s horse, I rode to Waikiki to visit Koni [Puuohau] who ran away from school last Saturday with Anna’s seducer. Koni is one of my own girls . . . Miss Winter has been to talk with her already and came back with the feeling that nothing could bring her back. I felt I could not rest satisfied without one last attempt. It was a fruitless attempt. Koni was insolent and thankless, and I could not talk to her without crying, so finally gave it up and came away. It was noon when I came back and I dallied a little to escape the ordeal of going with the others to the table.⁷⁷

Even after Koni Puuohau left Kawaiaha‘o Seminary, there continued to be political expressions there. In April 1893, Winter quoted her students saying, “Our Queen Liliuokalani is coming back this month we are so glad!”⁷⁸ That sounds mild, but the first principle in Miss Winter’s teaching notebook was, “Do not allow the girls to speak out loud without permission.”⁷⁹ Students at the seminary did not speak out as a rule. This is a rare example of a time they did so.

When Pope returned to the Islands in January 1894, she wrote Miss Winter:

I saw Koni for the first time last week; she looks ghastly, and I do not believe will live long, she is hardly able to move about. She has lost all her dash. I feel very sorry for her. Her choice was deliberate, and she has no one to blame but herself, but she looks most pitiable. Maria was anxious to come back to us, but the powers that be at Washington Place decree otherwise.⁸⁰

The next news we have of Puuohau is her obituary, which was published in the Hawaiian language newspaper, Ka Makaainana.

On the evening of the Sabbath, on the 1st of April, at the home of T. K. R. Amalu in Hookena, Miss Koni Puuohau departed from this life after being ill for a long time. Let us offer sympathy, those who dwell in Kona with its billowed clouds and sea in the calm, to this visitor who arrived in your communities, and lay to rest the bones of the traveler seeking recovery in foreign lands. Our sympathy to the family who did not witness her last breath. Kai Malino. Hookena, South Kona, Hawaii, April 2, 1894.⁸¹

She died at about age 18.

Many children at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary had great difficulty adjusting to the strict discipline and inflexible regime there, but the Puuohau sisters are distinguished by their rebellion. Koni Puuohau is often mentioned by the teachers with affection, despite her misbehavior, so she must have had great charm.

Conclusion

In 1890, Kawaiaha‘o Seminary projected a one-dimensional image of the Native Hawaiian girl: a Christian wife and mother who would be a model for her race. But the students were diverse in cultural upbringing and character. While many of them witnessed the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, only six of them lived long enough to regain their full political rights. Any history of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary must include the student point of view which differs significantly from the perspective of its administrators and staff.

Patricia Sheehan writes that Hawaiian women born in the last decades of the nineteenth century were motivated by the heavy losses they experienced in their own families to serve and preserve their Hawaiian community.⁸² The life history of many of the Kawaiaha‘o students confirms that conclusion. It is often said that the women of this generation “tied the threads that wove the pattern of the Old into the New.”⁸³ More research may reveal what that role cost them.

Research Methodology

A master list of student names for scholars who were at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary in the last decade of the nineteenth century was based first on student lists compiled by Carrie Winter, a teacher at the seminary. The letters and journals of other teachers provided student names. Additional student names were extracted from lists of students published as circulars by the school, programs of school events published in Hawaiian newspapers, and reports of the seminary’s principals, held at the HMCS Library and the Hawaiian Historical Society. Names were found in published reports of Protestant Christian organizations, including the HEA, Woman’s Board, and Cousin’s Society. Some student names were published in The Friend in marriage and death announcements. Student names occasionally appear in government records, such as records of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, which lists teachers and includes twenty students trained as teachers at Kawaiaha‘o Seminary. With a few exceptions, the names on the list were initially composed of a Christian first name and family name, not full birth names. The master list grew to include full birth names, Hawaiian names, nicknames, married names, and spelling variants.

Each student name was searched in newspapers databases. Searches in Ulukau, the Hawaiian Electronic Library, and Papakilo Database yielded many matches, some to Hawaiian language newspapers and published sources, but more often to the genealogy index compiled by the staff of the Hawai‘i State Archives. A search of the catalogs of the HMCS Library, the Hawai‘i State Archives, the Hawai‘i State Public Library System, the Kaua‘i Historical Society, and the Kamehameha Schools Museum Archives yielded names and biographical information. The Kamehameha Schools Museum Archive was a fertile source, as seventeen Kawaiaha‘o Seminary school girls followed their principal, Ida May Pope, when she left Kawaiaha‘o Seminary to become the founding principal of Kamehameha School for Girls in 1894.

The papers of Sereno E. Bishop, Nathaniel Bright Emerson, and others affiliated with the seminary were consulted, as were the biographies and memoirs of individuals closely associated with the school, such as Martha Chamberlain, Oliver P. Emerson, the Reverend Hyde, Queen Lili‘uokalani, and Theodore Richards.

The finding aid to the records of the ABCFM was searched for student names. These archives are so extensive that a more methodical search must be undertaken.

Marriage records for Kawaiaha‘o students and their parents are critical sources for this study. Student married names were key to obtaining obituaries from HMCS Library and the Hawai‘i State Public Library System.⁸⁴ Death certificates were obtained for some but not all students. Hawaiian street directories and census records were searched under maiden and married names of students and spouses. When church membership was known, church records and cemetery records were consulted. Nanette Napoleon’s cemetery indexes were an exceptionally helpful resource.

In four cases, there are biographical articles on students published while they were alive or soon after their death.

Court records yielded guardianship, divorce, and probate files, including information on the students, their parents, and prominent members of their families. While most of these records were found in Honolulu, searches of other jurisdictions were undertaken for the six students who left the islands and settled abroad.

Photographs taken of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary, its faculty, and students in the last half of the nineteenth century are critical sources for this study. These include photographs of the buildings and group photographs of the students taken by professional photographers in Honolulu. One group photograph of Kawaiaha‘o students, ca. 1888, from the collection of HMCS Library, is particularly important, because it identifies students by name. There are about thirty photographs of seminary students, classrooms, and interiors taken by teacher Lilla Estelle Appleton. There are group photographs and portrait photographs of teachers, most identified by name, found in archives in Hawai‘i and on the U.S. mainland. There are professional portrait photographs, wedding portraits, and snapshots of family groups and individual students in archival collections and in family hands. A few families have preserved photograph albums, autograph books, and other materials that document the lives of individual students.

Additional photographs of some students were found in newspapers, including a passport photo of one individual. The Louis R. Sullivan Collection of photographs at BPBM includes a portrait of one Kawaiaha‘o Seminary alumna and photographs of several student spouses and family groups taken in the 1920s.

Many genealogies of Hawaiian families were consulted for this work. Genealogical websites were used to trace descendants of students and their spouses. Laurel Douglass (Seeti) of Maui Film and Research, Inc., an independent researcher with an enormous acquaintance in the islands, helped to trace families. In some cases, family members could confirm kinship with a student on the list and were willing to exchange sources and information. In many cases, families corrected, amended, and criticized the research.

The oral history programs of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa conducted interviews that are important sources for this work. These include interviews with Kawaiaha‘o Seminary students, members of their families, and interviews that mention students and reflect upon the lives of Native Hawaiian women of the late Kingdom, Republic, and Territory periods. In a dozen cases, fresh interviews were conducted with descendants of Kawaiaha‘o Seminary students by telephone, and in six instances, interviews were conducted with descendants, usually grandchildren, who had known their kupuna or kūpuna, ancestor or ancestors, in life.

Many more avenues of research remain to be explored.⁸⁵