When Yankee Missionaries Went to Hawaii

by Jeffrey Bingham Mead
Greenwich Time. Looking Back: August 15, 1993

In the early 1800s, the Hawaiian boy named Opukahaia swam out to a Yankee trading ship Kealakekua Bay. He joined the crew as a cabin boy and traveled the world, eventually ending his journey in New Haven.

After converting to Christianity, he took the name Henry Obookiah.

Edwin Dwight, son of the president of Yale, taught Henry to read and write. The young Hawaiian furthered his studies at the foreign mission school in Cornwall, where you translated the Bible into his native language and prepared a Hawaiian alphabet, which did not previously exist.

Pencil sketch of the Foreign Mission School by Charlotte E. Clarke
(Image Credit: Cornwall Historical Society)

Sadly, Henry succumbed to typhus fever and died in 1818. The publication of his memoirs was a bestseller. Many were so moved that they left their lives in New England for new adventures as missionaries in Hawaii.

Henry Obookiah probably did not visit Greenwich, but some of those missionaries who set sail for Hawaii came from here. All this occurred during the Second Great Awakening, and a rebirth of religious faith led by great Congregationalist orators here in New England.

Horton Owen Knapp joined the North Greenwich Congregational Church in 1830 and married Charlotte Close in 1836. Within a month's time, they sailed out of Boston and arrived in Hawaii in April of 1837.

The Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives, Honolulu. 

There, Horton assisted missionary scholars and coordinating facts for a Concordance of the New Testament. He taught and set up mountings for maps of the islands. 

In 1845, Horton Owen Knapp died, aged 32, and he is buried in the missionary cemetery in Honolulu.

The Missionary Cemetery behind Kawaiahao Church, Honolulu. Horton Owen Knapp and Charlotte Close Knapp Dole are interred here. 

Charlotte Close Knapp was a devoted missionary wife, adept at kitchen duties, spinning, weaving and so on. She also was a scholar in Hebrew and knew Latin and Greek, as well.

1846, she married the Rev. Daniel Dale, principal of Punahou School, which still exists today.

The Rev. Daniel Dole, and his second wife, Charlotte Close Knapp of Greenwich, Connecticut. 

Her stepson, Sanford Ballard Dole, spent his summers in Greenwich.

Melicent Knapp, a sister of Horton Knapp, was born in Greenwich in 1816. She married Dr. James Smith, physician and member of the Stanwich Congregational Church in 1842. The newlyweds embraced the missionary cause and sailed for Hawaii, their trip lasting 143 days.

Dr. and Mrs. Smith were stationed on the island of Kauai. He was the only doctor on the island and was obliged to make routine and hasty house calls.

Dr. Smith died on Kauai in 1887, Mrs. Smith in 1891.

A renewal of faith and youthful dedication thrust these Greenwich Yankees to new lives and what was then an unknown land. They never returned to their hometown, but nevertheless participated in a higher purpose and, with little fanfare, secured for themselves a place in the annals of history.


Jeffrey Bingham Mead is a freelance writer and direct descendant of one of the town's founding families. He grew up in backcountry Greenwich and is a member of the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich.