Hiram Bingham I

Bingham was descended from Deacon Thomas Bingham, who emigrated to the American colonies in 1650 and settled in Connecticut Colony. He was born October 30, 1789, in Bennington, Vermont, one of thirteen children of his mother, Lydia, and father, Calvin Bingham.{{cite news|year=1871|title=Congregational Necrology|volume=13|pages=593–596|work=The Congregational quarterly|publisher=American Congregational Association|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o-rNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA593}} He attended Middlebury College and the Andover Theological Seminary.{{cite journal | author=Sarah Johnson and Eileen Moffett | title=Lord, Send Us: A Kaleidoscope of evangelists | journal=Christian History & Biography | date=Spring 2006 | volume=90 | pages=37–38 |url= http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/2006/issue90/13.35.html}} He had as private tutor Rev. Elisha Yale, who taught him Greek and Latin and prepared him for higher education.[https://fr.scribd.com/document/434193223/God-s-Generals-The-Missionaries God's Generals - The Missionaries], Rober'ts Liardon, Whitetaker House, 2014, p. 153 [https://uex.dk/archive/bible-study-material/dvd-the-bibles-fight-to-live/003%20Text/005%20Bible%20Reference%20Works/001%20%20McClintock%20and%20Strongs%20Cyclopedia%20of%20the%20Bible/Library/MSE_1105.PDF CYCLOPEDIA of BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL and ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE], Becan - Binney, Joseph Getchell by James Strong & John McClintock, 2000, p. 361

After breaking his first engagement Bingham found a new bride, Sybil Moseley. He needed to be married to be accepted as a missionary. On October 23, 1819, the young couple sailed out of Boston aboard the brig Thaddeus along with Asa and Lucy Goodale Thurston to lead a mission in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.{{cite book| author= Lucy Goodale Thurston| author-link= Lucy Goodale Thurston|title=Life and Times of Mrs. Lucy G. Thurston: Wife of Rev. Asa Thurston, Pioneer Missionary to the Sandwich Islands |year=1872 |publisher=reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2007 |isbn=978-1-4325-4547-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f1MXAAAAYAAJ }}

Bingham and his wife arrived first on the island of Hawaii in 1820, and sailed on to Honolulu on O{{okina}}ahu on April 19. In 1823, Queen Ka{{okina}}ahumanu and six high chiefs requested baptism. Soon after, the Hawaiian government banned prostitution and drunkenness, which resulted in the shipping industry and the foreign community resenting Bingham's influence.

{{cite book

|last1 = Fortune

|first1 = Kate

|editor-last1 = Lal

|editor-first1 = Brij V.

|editor-link1 = Brij Lal (historian)

|editor-last2 = Fortune

|editor-first2 = Kate

|chapter = History: Religion and Christianity: Missionary biographies

|title = The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia

|date = January 2000

|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=T5pPpJl8E5wC

|location = Honolulu

|publisher = University of Hawaii Press

|publication-date = 2000

|page = 188

|isbn = 9780824822651

|access-date = 9 May 2022

|quote = Bingham was content to accept [the requests for baptism] as a victory for Christianity, and to bear the brunt of the opposition of the foreign community to subsequent royal bans on prostitution, gambling and drunkenness.

}}

Bingham wrote extensively about the natives and was critical of their land-holding regime and of their "state of civilization". He supported the introduction of market values along with Christianity: historians now reference his writings to illustrate the imperial values that were central to the attitudes of the United States towards Hawaii.Compare: Alfred L. Brophy, [http://blurblawg.typepad.com/files/how_missionaries_thought.pdf "How Missionaries Thought: About Property Law, For Instance", Hawaii Law Review] (2008) 30: 373-99. - "Not surprisingly, Bingham, because he was a missionary, focused on the goal of conversion to Christianity and 'civilization.' What did that mean? What was the role of property and the 'rule of law' in 'civilization'? In part it meant respect for property rights. There were in Bingham's short recitation of the history of the islands echoes of celebration of property rights. He portrayed land ownership as a feudal system—which in the early nineteenth century was viewed with universal disdain in the United States—and suggested that such patterns of ownership, and lack of the rule of law more generally, left the people without an incentive to develop economically [...]." Bingham became involved in the development of the spelling system for writing the Hawaiian language, and also translated parts of the Bible into Hawaiian.{{cite book |title= Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions | author= David Stowe | year= 1999 | chapter= Bingham, Hiram | editor= Gerald H. Anderson |pages= 63–64 |publisher= William B. Eerdmans Publishing |isbn= 978-0-8028-4680-8 |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=oQ8BFk9K0ToC&pg=PA63 }}

Bingham designed the Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu on the Hawaiian Island of O{{okina}}ahu. The building, constructed between 1836 and 1842 in the New England style typical of the Hawaiian missionaries, is one of the oldest standing Christian places of worship in Hawai{{okina}}i.

Bingham used his influence with Queen Kaʻahumanu to instigate a strongly anti-Catholic policy in Hawaii, considerably impeding the work of the French Catholic missionary Alexis Bachelot (1796-1837) and resulting in decades of persecution of those Hawaiians who converted to Catholicism. This was motivated by opposition to the spread of French influence in Hawaii as well as by the religious Protestant-Catholic rivalry and enmity.

{{Cite book|last= Tabrah|first= Ruth M.|url= https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/11030410|title= Hawaii : a history |date= 1984|publisher= Norton|others= American Association for State and Local History|isbn= 0-393-30220-2 |edition= 1st|location=New York|oclc=11030410}}

• A math building in Punahou School is named after Bingham.
• Bingham Tract School was an academically rigorous elementary school, named after him, and operated on the Bingham lands until the mid-1990s.

The board grew concerned that Bingham was interfering too often in Hawaiian politics and recalled him. The Binghams left on August 3, 1840 and reached New England on February 4, 1841.{{cite book |title=Portraits of American Protestant missionaries to Hawaii |author= Hawaiian Mission Children's Society |url= https://archive.org/details/portraitsofameri00hawarich |year=1901 |location=Honolulu |publisher=Hawaiian gazette co. |page=[https://archive.org/details/portraitsofameri00hawarich/page/2 2]}} It was intended to be a sabbatical owing to Sybil's poor health, but the board refused to reappoint Bingham as a missionary, even after Sybil's death on February 27, 1848. He published a memoir, A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands, in 1847.{{cite book |author= Hiram Bingham I |title=A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands |publisher=H.D. Goodwin |orig-year=1848 |year=1855 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T1VFAAAAYAAJ |edition=Third }}

Bingham remained in New England, where he served as the pastor of an African-American church. In 1852 he remarried, to Naomi Morse, who ran a girls' school. He died on November 11, 1869, and was buried at Grove Street Cemetery, in New Haven, Connecticut. Leonard Bacon gave the address at his funeral.

Bingham was the leader of a group of missionaries that included Asa Thurston and Artemas Bishop and they translated the Christian Bible into the Hawaiian language. The New Testament was published in 1832 and the Old Testament in 1839. The entire NT/OT Bible was revised in 1868 and was republished as Ka Baibala Hemolele (The Holy Bible) in 2018 in print and electronic forms.{{cite web|url=https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/43986/1/07_1lyon.pdf|title=No ka Baibala Hemolele: The Making of the Hawaiian Bible1 (Jeffrey Lyon, 2018), p. 124|website=Hawaii.edu|access-date=April 8, 2019}}

Binamu (Bingham's Hawaiian name) also composed Hawaiian hymns{{cite web|url=http://hymnary.org/Bingham_Hiram/|title=Hiram Bingham - Hymnary.org|website=Hymnary.org|access-date=April 8, 2019}}{{Dead link|date=August 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} such as ‘Himeni Hope’ (closing hymn), starting with "Ho'omaika'i i ka Makua Ke Akua o kakou, ...", meaning ‘Blessings to the Father, the God of us all, ...’, which were typically quiet and reflective but powerful. His hymns are still sung in Hawaii at the churches and by the choruses in concert.

Bingham's son, Hiram Bingham II, was also a missionary to the Kingdom of Hawai{{okina}}i. His daughter Lydia married the later Hawaiian missionary Titus Coan.

His grandson Hiram Bingham III was an explorer who brought Machu Picchu to the attention of the west and became a US Senator and Governor of Connecticut. Another grandson, Edwin Lincoln Moseley, was a naturalist.

His great-grandson Hiram Bingham IV was the US Vice Consul in Marseille, France, during World War II and gave American visas to thousands of refugees, mostly Jews, fleeing Nazi Germany. Another great-grandson, Jonathan Brewster Bingham, was a long-time Reform Democratic Congressman from The Bronx from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s.

{{libship honor|name=Hiram Bingham|type=his}} It was hull number 1726.

Bingham was caricatured as the character Reverend Abner Hale in James Michener's novel Hawaii.

• Bible translations into Hawaiian

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book |author= Hiram Bingham I |title= Selected writings of Hiram Bingham, Missionary to the Hawaiian Islands: To Raise the Lord's Banner |editor= Char Miller |year= 1988 |publisher= E. Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY |isbn= 978-0-88946-675-3 }}
• {{cite book |author= Char Miller |title= Fathers and sons, the Bingham family and the American mission |publisher= Temple University Press |year=1982 |isbn= 978-0-87722-248-4 }}

{{commons category|Hiram Bingham (missionary born 1789)}}

• {{cite web |title= Queen Kaahumanu — Part 2: First Arrival of Missionaries |work= Keepers of the Culture |publisher= U.S. GenWeb Archives web site |author= Darlene E. Kelley |date= November 19, 2000 |url= http://files.usgwarchives.org/hi/keepers/koc33.txt |access-date= 2010-02-20 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110719014957/http://files.usgwarchives.org/hi/keepers/koc33.txt |archive-date= July 19, 2011 }}
• {{Find a Grave|12073|Hiram Bingham}}

{{Protestant missions to Pacific Islands}}

{{Christianity in Hawaii}}

{{Kawaiahaʻo Church Kahus}}

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Category:1789 births

Category:1869 deaths

Category:People from Bennington, Vermont

Category:American people of English descent

Category:American Congregationalist missionaries

Category:Congregationalist missionaries in Hawaii

Category:American expatriates in the Hawaiian Kingdom

Category:Translators of the Bible into Polynesian languages

Category:Burials at Grove Street Cemetery

Category:Translators of the Bible into Hawaiian

Category:American hymnwriters

Category:Congregationalist hymnwriters

Category:19th-century American translators

Category:American missionary linguists