Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
Samuel Chapman Armstrong is well known for establishing Hampton Institute, the institution most involved with training black teachers in the South after the Civil War. It is less known that he was born in Hawai'i to the missionary couple Reverend Richard and Clarissa Chapman Armstrong. His parents were members of the Fifth Company of missionaries that arrived in Hawai'i in 1831. Reverend Armstrong withdrew from the mission in 1848 to become the Minister of Public Instruction. Until Reverend Armstrong's death in 1860, he was the major force behind education for Hawaiians in both missionary and public schools
1 Missionary Album: Portraits and Bibliographical Sketches of the American Protestant Missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu: Hawaiian Mission Children's Society, 1969), 30–31; Stueber, Ralph K., “Hawai'i: A Case Study in Development Education 1778–1960,” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1964, 94; Talbot, Edith A., Samuel Chapman Armstrong: A Biographical Study (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1904), 42.Google Scholar
2 Armstrong, Mary F. and Helen Ludlow, W., Hampton and Its Students (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1874), 22–23, 38–39; Peabody, Francis G., Education for Life; the Story of Hampton Institute (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page&Co., 1918), 89, 181–83; Talbot, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, 34–36, 42.Google Scholar
3 See Bennett, Charles A., History of Manual and Industrial Education Up to 1870 (Peoria, IL: Charles A. Bennett Co., 1926).Google Scholar
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5 Barlow, , History of Industrial Education, 128; Bennett, , History of Manual and Industrial Education, 106–7; Ham, Manual Training, 245; Vaughn, and Mays, , Content and Methods, 22–23.Google Scholar
6 Bennett relates that manual and industrial education first made its way to the United States in 1809, when the first Pestalozzian school was opened in Philadelphia through the philanthropy of William Maclure. The philanthropist had been in Paris when he met Francis Joseph Nichols Neef, who trained under Pestalozzi. Maclure convinced Neef to come to America and help establish a school. Bennett, History of Manual and Industrial Education, 23–24, 26–27.Google Scholar
7 The following sources mention that Armstrong was influenced by education in Hawai'i but did not specify what he borrowed: Anderson, James D., The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 38; Armstrong, and Ludlow, , Hampton and Its Students, 1, 22–23, 38–39; Peabody, Education for Life, 181–83; Talbot, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, 34–36, 42; Watkins, William H., The White Architects of Black Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001), 43.Google Scholar
8 See Beyer, Carl Kalani, “Manual and Industrial Education during Hawaiian Sovereignty. Curriculum in the Transculturation of Hawai'i,” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Chicago, 2004.Google Scholar
9 Surprisingly, there is no mention of his connection to Hawaiian schools in any of the issues of the Southern Workman or any of the works done by him or others. See Armstrong, and Ludlow, , Hampton and Its Students. See, also, Armstrong, Samuel C., Armstrong's Ideas on Education for Life (Hampton: Hampton Institute Press, 1940); Education for Life; Ideas on Education Expressed by Samuel Chapman Armstrong (Hampton: Hampton Institute Press, 1908). Finally, see Peabody, Education for Life; Talbot, Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Google Scholar
10 In many ways, the upbringing, education, and experience of second-generation missionaries were very different from their parents. Because of their parents’ fear of contamination from Hawaiian contact during the early years, they were raised separately from Hawaiians, children and adults alike. As a result, most of them did not learn to “love” the Hawaiians as their parents did and some even developed an aversion to the people themselves. Stueber, “Hawai'i,” 157–59.Google Scholar
11 Because the Royal School closed in 1850 (well before Armstrong began to contribute to Hawaiian education) and Punahou School primarily educated haole, neither school appears in this paper.Google Scholar
12 Originally, Hawaiians applied the term haole to all foreigners; over time, it has come to be applied primarily to white people of Anglo Saxon Protestant background. Thus, when Portuguese immigrants began to arrive in Hawai'i, they were not referred to as haole. Generally, the term has a neutral connotation, used to designate the background of a person. It can, however, be used negatively, especially when dominance and subordination are involved in its use.Google Scholar
13 The following sources all deal with the colonization of Hawai'i: Benham, Manette K.P. and Ronald Heck, H., Culture and Educational Policy in Hawai'i: The Silencing of Native Voices (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998); Coffman, Tom, Nation Within: The Story of America's Annexation of the Nation of Hawai'i (Kaneohe: He Hawai'i Au (I am Hawaiian), 2001); Dougherty, M., To Steal a Kingdom (Waimanalo: Island Style Press, 1992); Kanahele, George H.S., Ku Kanaka Stand Tall: A Search for Hawaiian Values (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1992); Kent, Noel J., Hawai'i: Islands under the Influence (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1993); Linnekin, Joyce, Sacred Queens and Women of Consequence: Rank, Gender, and Colonialism in the Hawaiian Islands (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Merry, Sally E., Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Osorio, Jonathan K., Dismembering Lahui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002); Trask, Haunani-Kay, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i. Revised Edition (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999); Young, George T.K., Rethinking the Native Hawaiian Past (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). Only Benham and Heck's book relates education to colonization; however, they do not connect Armstrong to this process.Google Scholar
14 Wist, Bernard O., A Century of Public Education in Hawai'i (Honolulu: Hawai'i Educational Review, 1940), 32–34.Google Scholar
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19 “Preface,” in Hilo Boarding School for Boys: Seventy Five Years of Progress (Hilo: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1911), 8.Google Scholar
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41 See Barlow, History of Industrial Education; Ham, Manual Training; Vaughan, and Mays, , Content and Methods; Woodward, Manual Training. Google Scholar
42 Reverend Sereno Bishop, a second-generation missionary, confirms this usage of the term missionary. He says “[t]hat was the name for all among the whites who represented the active Protestant Evangelical Christianity planted here [Hawai'i], and by more latitude was applied to all who stood for morality and decorum against prevalent lewdness, obscene hula dances, drunkenness, opium and lottery, as espoused by the Royal court and reckless whites.” Bishop, Sereno E. “Are Missionaries’ Sons Tending to America a Stolen Kingdom?” The Friend 52, no. 1 (1894): 18–20.Google Scholar
43 After Kamehameha V died, there were no more heirs of the Kamehameha family interested in becoming monarch. As a result, an election was held to determine who from among a select few of the high chiefs was to be the next monarch. See Kuykendall, Ralph S., The Hawaiian Kingdom: 1874–1893 (Honolulu, University of Hawai'i Press, 1967).Google Scholar
44 The Americanization of the schools for Hawaiians were reported in each issue of the Biennial Report of the President of the Board of Education to the Legislature after 1870. This process was accomplished by increasing the number of English select schools within the public school system, altering the language in the missionary schools from Hawaiian to English, primarily teaching the curriculum from American textbooks, and importing American teachers. Evidence of the policy of subordinating Hawaiians was found in the writings of second-generation missionaries that proclaimed the need for haole to lead Hawaiians for generations to come. See Alexander, William D., “Early Industrial Teaching of Hawaiians,” in Thrum's Hawaiian Annual (Honolulu: Thomas Thrum Publishing, 1895); Bishop, Sereno E. “Are Missionaries’ Sons Tending to America a Stolen Kingdom?” The Friend 52, no. 1 (1894). “Christianity and the Native Hawaiians.” The Friend 43, (May 1885), 4–5.Google Scholar
45 Peabody, Education for Life, 182.Google Scholar
46 At this time, most of the missionary schools were still teaching a part of the curriculum using books printed in the Hawaiian language.Google Scholar
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60 The Handicraft was a school journal devoted to short editorials on educational matters, letters from former students, and to everyday events of the school. Harry Townsend established the journal and Thompson, Uldrich was the editor during the first twenty-two years of its existence. “First Graduates.” The Handicraft III, no. 6 (1891): 2.Google Scholar
61 Hudson, Loring, “History of the Kamehameha Schools” (MA thesis, University of Hawai'i, 1935), 156–57; “Kamehameha Graduates,” The Friend 59, no. 4 (1901): 145, 145, “New High School,” Independent, 2 July 1895, 4; Richards, Theodore, “Quarter Century Reflection on Kamehameha,” The Friend LXXIV, no. 8 (1916): 176–177.Google Scholar
62 “Statement by Kau'ai Industrial School Board to the President of the Hawaiian Board,” Smith Papers, Hawaiian Mission Childrens’ Society Collection (1900).Google Scholar
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64 Although in 1889 only the Kamehameha School for Boys existed, plans were in place to open a separate school for girls in 1891. However, due to political unrest, which led to the overthrow of Hawaiian Sovereignty in 1893, the school did not open until 1894. Armstrong, Samuel C. to Dr. Smith, 16 September 1889, Smith Papers, Hawaiian Mission Childrens’ Society Collection.Google Scholar
65 Smith, , “Closing Exercises,” 2.Google Scholar
66 For the sketch, see “Armstrong, Samuel C. to Jared Smith, 6 January 1888,” Smith Papers, Hawaiian Mission Childrens’ Society Collection. The eventual design of the buildings was altered to one building based on advice given in a letter from Sanford Dole to Jared Smith. Dole was concerned that Armstrong's ideas were too cost prohibitive. Dole, Sanford B. to Jared Smith, 17 September 1889, Smith Papers, Hawaiian Mission Childrens’ Society Collection.Google Scholar
67 “Report of the Kau'ai Industrial School,” Smith Papers, Hawaiian Mission Childrens’ Society Collection (1893).Google Scholar
68 Dole, Sanford B. to Jared Smith, 24 September 1889, Smith Papers, Hawaiian Mission Childrens’ Society Collection.Google Scholar
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75 Watkins, William’ important book, The White Architects of Black Education, cites Armstrong as one of the white architects of black education.Google Scholar
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80 Although the education analysis is my own and my dissertation, “Manual and Industrial Education During Hawaiian Sovereignty” does a more thorough job substantiating this interpretation, other works by Native Hawaiians have contributed to this overall analysis. See Benham, “Political and Cultural Determinants”; Kame'eleihiwa, Native Land; Osorio, “Determining Self.”Google Scholar
81 See Alexander, William D., “Biennial Report of the President of the Board of Education to the Legislature” (Honolulu: Hawaiian Government, 1892–1898); “Report of the Minister of Public Instruction” (Honolulu: Territory of Hawai'i, 1898). See, also, Atkinson, Alatau T., “Report of the President of the Board of Education to Territorial Government,” (Honolulu: Territory of Hawai'i, 1905). Finally, see Bishop, Chares R., “Biennial Report of President of the Board of Education to Legislature” (Honolulu: Hawaiian Government, 1880, 1882, 1888), Castle, William R., “Biennial Report of President of the Board of Education to Legislature” (Honolulu: Republic of Hawai'i, 1894, 1896).Google Scholar
82 Waialua Female Seminary closed in 1882 after financial and staffing problems. “Female Boarding Schools,” Supplement to The Friend 21, no. 7 (1873): 23.Google Scholar
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