Foreign Mission School
Cornwall, Connecticut
Reinternment gravesite and memorial at Kahikolu Congregational Church
`Opukaha`ia Sunday
February 16, 2003
Henry `Opukaha`ia
1792 - 1818
Hawai`i's first Christian
(also known as Obookiah or Opukahaia)
From his tombstone:
IN
Memory of
HENRY OBOOKIAH
a native of
OWHYHEE.
His arival in this country gave rise to the Foreign Mission school, of which he was a worthy member. He was once an Idolater, and was designed for a Pagan Priest; but by the grace of God and by the prayers and instructions of pious friends, he became a Christian.
He was eminent for piety and missionary Zeal. When almost prepared to return to his native Isle to preach the Gospel, God took to himself. In his last sickness, he wept and prayed for Owhyee, but was submissive. He died without fear, with a heavenly smile on his countenance and glory in his soul.
HENRY OBOOKIAH'S STORY (his name is written `Opukaha`ia in Hawaiian) is one of the most remarkable in Christian history. The young Hawaiian lad of 17 arrived in New England in 1809, having sailed from the islands on the ship Triumph with a Yankee sea captain who took him to New Haven. There Edwin Dwight, a Yale student, discovered Obookiah sitting on the college steps, weeping because, as he said, "No one gives me learning." "Do you wish to learn?" Dwight asked him, to which Obookiah replied, "I do."
E. Dwight and other Yale students began to tutor him, and Yale President Dr. Timothy Dwight took him into his own home. Students from Andover Seminary and people of the New England churches befriended the orphan boy. Under their tutelage, in a single decade, Obookiah went from illiteracy to eloquence and excellence in speech and writing. More important, "by the prayers and instructions of pious friends, he became a Christian." He was the first Hawaiian convert to Christianity.
Determined to go back to Hawai`i to carry the Gospel to his own people, Obookiah was preparing himself at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut, when on February 17, 1818, at the age of 26, he died, a victim of typhus fever.
After Obookiah's death, his early friend, Edwin Dwight, published the young islander's "Memoirs" in the form of a brief biography. The little book so aroused the interest of New Englanders in Hawai`i as a field for missionary work that the American Board chartered a ship and engaged a pioneer company to go to the islands. Two ministers, two teachers, a doctor, a printer, a farmer and their wives, plus five children and four Hawaiian youths were on the Thaddeus when it left Boston, October 23, 1819. Obookiah's was the face -- and the faith -- that launched that ship!
Hawai`i's churches observe the third Sunday in February as a day of commemoration in honor of Hawai`i's first Christian.
adapted from
Na Himeni O Ka Ekalesia (The Hymns of the Church)
Original gravestone at Cornwall Cemetary, Connecticut. Photo by eobancestry
February 17, 1818
at the age of 26
This Epitaph remains on his tombstone in Cornwall Cemetary. In August 1993, Henry `Opukaha`ia's remains were exhumed and returned home to their final resting place in a cemetary at Kahikolu Congregational Church, Kealakekua, Kona, Hawai`i.
Hawaii