Hawaiian Collection
The collection of printed materials from and about the Hawaiian
Islands is representative of the print culture of these
mid-Pacific islands as impressed upon the native
population by the American missionary movement of the nineteenth
century.
The collection includes bibliographies, biographies, Hawaiian history,
Hawaiian language imprints, maps, newspapers, periodicals, and
engravings.
The extent and variety of the collection permit research about the
political and cultural history of the Sandwich Islands as they became
the Hawaiian Islands; the impact of the American missionary movement on an
indigenous culture; and the study of the dissemination of American
printing technology outside the continental borders of the United
States.
The collection of Hawaiian materials at AAS began with the
materials deposited in the mid-nineteenth century by one of the American
Congregational missionaries, the Reverend Mr. Samuel C. Damon, who
also was a member of the Society. However, the major thrust of the
collection derived from the purchase, in 1937, of the Hiram Bingham
Library.
This acquisition was made possible through the interest and generosity of
two descendants of American missionaries, Foster Stearns and James M.
Hunnewell. While comprehensive in its coverage and broad in its scope,
the Hawaiian collection at the Society is not as large as the collections
housed on the Islands themselves at the Hawaiian Mission Children's
Society Library or at the Bishop Museum. In the United States, the major
collections, in addition to that at AAS, are held at the Houghton
Library at Harvard and the Newberry Library. The Society's Hawaiian
collection includes approximately 200 volumes of Hawaiian imprints from
about
1820 to 1896. Most of these were printed on hand presses sent to the
islands
by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in the Pioneer
Company in 1820 and in the Third Company in 1828. The incunabula for
Hawaiian
printing could be considered those materials produced in the period
1822-29
chiefly on the island of O’ahu; the earliest printed piece is The
Alphabet, printed in O’ahu on the Mission Press in January
1822. Other printing locations represented in the collection are from the
islands of Maui and Hawai’i, as well as New York.
Closely supporting the imprint collection is the extensive
accumulation of almost 600 bound volumes, pamphlets, and the reports of
the
Hawaiian Historical Society, which provide historical perspective on the
islands and the missionary movement. Most of this collection of material
is filed together in the Society's Local History section.
Of equal importance to the collection is the broad array of
newspapers and periodicals originating in the Hawaiian Islands. There are
twenty-two English and sixteen Hawaiian-language titles in this
collection. Most of these are listed in Gregory's American Newspapers,
1821-1939 or the Union List of Serials. Newspapers and
periodicals are accessible in the Society’s serials online catalog.
Newspapers are included in the United States Newspaper Program (USNP)
file,
mounted on the OCLC system, as well as in the RLIN file.
Bibliographic control of Hawaiian-language material was for years
dependent upon an unpublished inventory compiled by Howard M. Ballou
in 1908. However, through the urging and support of the late Clarence S.
Brigham, a new and greatly expanded bibliography of Hawaiian imprints
was begun in 1938 by Bernice Judd, librarian at the Hawaiian Mission
Children's Society. In 1963, Janet E. Bell updated and revised Judd's
work, and
with the assistance of Clare G. Murdock, she was able to complete a new
volume, Hawaiian Language Imprints, 1822-1899: A
Bibliography. The Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society and the
University Press of Hawaii published the volume in 1978. The collection of
Hawaiiana at the Society includes more than 140 of the titles listed in
this
bibliography. Volume one of David
W. Forbes’s Hawaiian National Bibliography,
1780-1900, which covers the years 1780-1830, was published in 1998 by
the University of Hawai’i Press.
Hawaiian Engraving Collection
One of the unusual portions of the collection is the assortment of
more than thirty engravings produced by students at the Lahainaluna School
on the island of Maui. See the box list
of this collection. A mission press was introduced at this institution
about 1828 and was used to provide male students with instructions in
the skills of engraving and printing. No complete inventory of Lahainaluna
engravings has been made, but the number reported in various locations
exceeds 100. A checklist made by George T. Lecker in 1927 records
thirty-three maps and fifty-seven sketches of houses and landscapes,
only one of which is of a non-Hawaiian subject. Of interest to residents
of
the greater Worcester, Massachusetts, community is the fact that it is a
view of the town common of Holden, Massachusetts, circa 1840, as sketched
from memory by Edward Bailey, a teacher at the school and a native of
Holden.
- Frederick E. Bauer, retired Associate Librarian; updated by Nancy
H. Burkett, Librarian
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The Depository of the Kings of Hawaii, adjoining the Palace of
Refuge at Honaunau' from: Ellis, William.
Narrative of a tour through Hawaii (London, 1826), facing p. 136
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