Portraits of Hiram and Sybil Moseley Bingham, 1819, by Samuel F. B. Morse

Sybil Moseley Bingham (September 14, 1792 — February 27, 1848) was an American teacher in the Hawaiian Islands, a member of the first company of missionaries sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM).

Early life

Sybil Moseley was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, the daughter of Pliny Moseley and Sophia Pomeroy Moseley. She was an orphan by age twenty, left to support three younger sisters.[1] She was a teacher for nine years as a young woman,[2] some of that time living in Canandaigua, New York.[3]

Mission years in Hawaii

Hiram Bingham I was a missionary in Honolulu for twenty years, from 1820 to 1840,[4] and founder of the Kawaiahaʻo Church.[5] As his wife, Sybil Moseley Bingham shared the work.[6] "I believe God appoints my work," she wrote in her journal in 1823, "and it is enough for me to see that I do it all with an eye to his glory."[7] She is credited with starting the first missionary school in the Hawaiian Islands, teaching Hawaiian adults in her home. The Binghams helped to develop a written Hawaiian alphabet, and some of the first printed materials in Hawaiian were made for use in her classes. She founded a weekly prayer meeting, attended by more than a thousand Hawaiian women.[2] She also served as an unofficial nurse and midwife among the missionary families.[1]

After 1829, the Binghams lived in the Manoa Valley, on a banana and sugarcane plantation given for their use by Queen Kaahumanu.[8] The estate later became the site of the Punahou School.[9][10][11]

Personal life and legacy

Sybil Moseley married Hiram Bingham in 1819; they had met a few weeks before, and boarded a ship for Hawaii twelve days later.[12] Samuel F. B. Morse painted a portrait of the newlyweds before they left New England. Sybil Moseley Bingham and her husband returned to New England in 1841; she was ill with tuberculosis, and died in 1848, in Easthampton, Massachusetts.[8]

The Binghams had seven children, all born in the Hawaiian Islands, beginning with Sophia Bingham, the first female American missionary child born on Oahu. Another daughter, Lydia Bingham Coan, wrote a biography of Sybil Moseley Bingham, published in 1895.[13] Two sons died in infancy, in 1823 and 1825; Hiram Bingham II was the only surviving son. Her grandson Hiram Bingham III was an explorer in South America, a Senator, and Governor of Connecticut.[1] Her grandson Edwin Lincoln Moseley was a naturalist. Her great-grandson Hiram Bingham IV was an American diplomat; another great-grandson, Jonathan Brewster Bingham, was a Congressman. Living descendants of Sybil Moseley Bingham include musician Sam Endicott.

The Bingham family's papers, including Sybil's journal of her life in Hawaii in the 1820s,[14] are archived at Yale University, with another large collection at the Hawaiian Historical Society and the Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library in Honolulu, donated by a descendant in 1966.[15][16]

References

  1. 1 2 3 H. B. Restarick, "Sybil Bingham, As Youthful Bride, Came to Islands in Brig Thaddeus" Honolulu Star-Bulletin (August 15, 1931): 6. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  2. 1 2 Barbara Bennett Peterson, "Sybil Moseley Bingham" American National Biography.
  3. ↑ Herbert J. Ellis, "Early Canandaiguan Helped Modernize Hawaiian Tongue" Daily Messenger (April 28, 1972): 32. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  4. ↑ Brij V. Lal, Kate Fortune, eds., The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia, Volume 1 (University of Hawaii Press 2000): 188. ISBN 9780824822651
  5. ↑ Emma Lyons Doyle, "Souls to be Saved, So Missionaries Came" Honolulu Advertiser (June 23, 1959): 37. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  6. ↑ Jennifer Thigpen, Island Queens and Mission Wives: How Gender and Empire Remade Hawaii's Pacific World (UNC Press Books 2014): 46. ISBN 9781469614304
  7. ↑ Dana Robert, "Evangelist or Homemaker? Mission Mission Strategies of Early Nineteenth-Century Missionary Wives in Burma and Hawaii" International Bulletin of Missionary Research 17(1)(1993): 6. via ProQuest
  8. 1 2 Alfred M. Bingham, "Sybil's Bones, A Chronicle of the Three Hiram Binghams" Hawaiian Journal of History 9(1975): 3-36.
  9. ↑ History, Bingham Hall, Punahou website.
  10. ↑ "Kaahumanu Memorial at Kawaiahao Church" Evening Bulletin (August 31, 1903): 4. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  11. ↑ Charles E. Hogue, "Mrs. Bingham at Punahou" Honolulu Advertiser (February 2, 1949): 16. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  12. ↑ Char Miller, "The Making of a Missionary: Hiram Bingham's Odyssey" Hawaiian Journal of History 13(1979): 43.
  13. ↑ Lydia Bingham Coan, A Brief Sketch of the Missionary Life of Sybil Moseley Bingham (Women's Board of Missions for the Pacific Islands 1895).
  14. ↑ Marjorie Shell Wilser, "Living Sacrifices: Women Missionaries' Personal Writings, 1812-1860" (PhD diss., San Jose State University, 1997): 19. via ProQuest
  15. ↑ Charles Turner, "Bingham Donates Historic Collection" Honolulu Advertiser (January 20, 1966): 22. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  16. ↑ "A Finding Aid for the Bingham Family Papers", Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives.
  • An 1819 silhouette portrait of Sybil Moseley Bingham in the Historic New England.
  • Sybil Moseley Bingham at Find a Grave
  • Michelle Ruth Stonis, "'On Heathen Ground': The Double Bind of Women's Roles in the Sandwich Islands Mission, 1819-1863" (M. A. thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2005). via ProQuest
  • Joy Schulz, "Empire of the Young: Missionary Children in Hawai'i and the Birth of U. S. Colonialism in the Pacific, 1820-1898" (PhD diss., University of Nebraska Lincoln, 2011). via ProQuest
  • Jennifer Thigpen, "'Obligations of Gratitude': Gender, Interaction, and Exchange in the Nineteenth-Century Hawaiian Islands" (PhD diss., University of California Irvine 2007). via ProQuest
  • Jennifer Thigpen, "'You Have Been Very Thoughtful Today': The Significance of Gratitude and Reciprocity in Missionary-Hawaiian Gift Exchange" Pacific Historical Review 79(4)(November 2010): 545-572. DOI:10.1525/phr.2010.79.4.545 via ProQuest
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