American missionaries began arriving in the Hawaiian Islands in 1820. A bestselling book from that time Memoirs of Henry Obookiah alarmed the missionaries and motivated them to leave New England and sail around Cape Horn on a mission to the Hawaiian Islands. Their pioneering effort was courageous and indeed a leap of faith.
The pioneer American Mission company was led by Reverend Hiram Bingham a graduate of Middlebury College and the Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts. The missionaries were given a section of land on Oahu where they established a mission station. That land was called Ka wai a Ha'o (the water of Ha'o) in reference to the fresh water spring located there in which Chiefess Ha'o bathed. Next to the spring Reverend Bingham established the first church in Honolulu he called it Kawaiahao.
The Pioneer Company of missionaries initially set up three mission stations on the islands of Hawaii, Oahu and Kauai. Reverend Bingham directed the mission station expansion from the Honolulu mission station. From behind the Kawaihao church the business of the missionaries was conducted. Over the next twenty years nineteen mission stations were established at population centers in the Hawaiian Islands. As new missionaries arrived from America they would stay at the Honolulu mission station until they were assigned to one of the nineteen mission stations. Also at the Honolulu mission station a mission depository was built that served as a warehouse where shipments were received and provisions were sent to the remote stations.
One of the most challenging tasks the missionaries faced was learning the Hawaiian language. The language did not exist in a written form. They had to develop an alphabet that would capture all of the nuances of the Hawaiian language. Once that was done they began translating the Bible from the original Greek and Latin directly into the Hawaiian language.
The pioneer and subsequent mission companies arriving from New England brought with them printing presses and additional supplies for the mission stations and for the Mission Press. The first Mission Press building was constructed at the Honolulu mission station just few feet from the Mission Depository. Over the first twenty years of operation the Mission Press printed 113,017,173 Hawaiian language pages. All supplies for the Mission Press, the paper, the ink powders, (pigments, driers and extenders) were stored in the Mission Depository.
When the American Missionaries arrived no postal system existed. The Mission Depository received deliveries that included mail in addition to supplies. When mail was delivered mail that had been written by mission members was waiting to go out. Samuel N. Castle who operated the Mission Depository wrote in his Journal a Post Office Law that he would have the master of the ship read before he would entrust them with mission mail. Mr. Castle kept detailed records of mission correspondence, dates sent, to whom and on which ship the mail was carried. Of particular importance was mail that was sent to J.B. Moore the postmaster of San Francisco. Mr. Castle contacted Mr. Moore to establish a regular postal delivery between Honolulu and San Francisco. Those letters were sent in August and September of 1850.
In October of 1850 Henry M. Whitney was given postal responsibility for California. Mr. Whitney was the adult child of an American mission family. He had been sent back to America for education when he was a child. He learned the printing trade and returned to Hawaii to direct the government printing office in Honolulu. In November of 1850 Whitney hired William S. Emerson as his apprentice. The young men were both mission children, since their parents called each brother and sister they liked to call each other cousins. William was given added responsibility at the post office when Henry went to visit his sister Maria Pogue in March of 1851. The first postage stamps issued by the Kingdom of Hawaii were also issued in 1851, they have become known as the Hawaiian Missionaries.
In 1918 George Grinnell a Los Angeles school teacher said he was given some Hawaiian Missionary stamps by a man named Charles Shattuck. When Grinnell sold some of them a few years later they were seized by the United States Secret Service and were the subject of a superior court case. The court decided that the stamps Grinnell offered for sales were worthless pieces of paper.
Much has been learned since the trial. It was later learned the mother of Charles Shattuck and the mother of William Emerson were friends. They had written to each other. The Grinnell stamps are typographically different those stamps that are thought to be genuine. Also the cancellations are different that those that are thought to be genuine. The solution to the mystery lies in the journal of William Emerson where he recorded the dates and hours he worked for Whitney. Those work records which were found by Patrick Culhane a Shattuck descendant at the Mission Houses museum library in Honolulu. The cancellation dates that appear on the used Grinnell stamps do not show a year. The author believes that the dates were applied in January, February and March of 1851 when William had added responsibility at the post office. The work record of William Emerson corroborates this, eighty percent of the dates that show on the Grinnell stamps are dates that William Emerson was working at the post office.
Conclusion: The Grinnell Hawaiian Missionary stamps are Genuine.
They are a first printing created by William Emerson as part of his apprenticeship to Henry Whitney in the first quarter of 1851 when he had added responsibility at the post office. The existence of these in the hands of only one family suggests that William was testing out his design.
Anthony R. Kassel is a member of the Hawaiian Historical Society. This year he published a book on the Hawaiian Missionaries both the People and the Stamps.
To read more about this interesting topic and to purchase a copy of the book please visit the Hawaiian Missionaries website
Anthony R. Kassel is also a member of the American and Hawaiian Philatelic Societies he has turned his stamp collecting hobby into the web based business. Click this link to visit the Antonios-Philatelics website where you can view and purchase thousands of collectible postage stamps.
