About this Resource

Holden, 1838. 
Catalog record

Early Printing in Hawaiian | People in this Collection

* In this resource, the ʻokina and accented vowels are not used when quoting historical spelling. Hawaiian words in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) are not italicized but parenthetical English definitions are provided.

History of the Hawaiian Collection at AAS  

Worcester, Massachusetts, may not be the most obvious site for a hub of Hawaiiana, but the American Antiquarian Society holds one of the largest collections of early Hawaiian printing outside of the islands. This is in part because of strong New England connections with many early US missionaries, sailors, and merchants who traveled to Hawaiʻi. 

One of the first engravings created by a Native Hawaiian in the Islands, for example,  is of Holden, Massachusetts―the hometown of missionary Edward Bailey. Bailey sketched Holden's main street from memory, and George Kapeau, a Native Hawaiian student at Lahainaluna Seminary, engraved the image in copper (see People in this Collection).

Primers like this one were used to teach early literacy. Kumumua, 1843.
Catalog record

The Hawaiian collection at AAS was built primarily in the first half of the twentieth century with important additions in the early twenty-first century. Significant contributions came from descendants of Massachusetts residents who maintained ties with the Islands, as well as from exchanges with historical societies there. The collection grew substantially in 1938 when AAS purchased the library of Hiram Bingham, one of the first missionaries on the Islands. Donations from the Hunnewell family, descendants of an officer on the first missionary vessel to arrive in Hawaiʻi in 1820, continue to enrich AAS's collections to this day.

Additional Resources

Bread Fruit Tree, The Banana, The Bamboo, 1838.
Catalog record

In the last decade, the American Antiquarian Society’s Hawaiian collections have been featured in numerous stories in the news, including television and radio segments in the Boston area and articles in newspapers like Honolulu Civil Beat, as well as in an AAS-produced YouTube video. In 2019 AAS hosted a performance and discussion of “My Name is ʻŌpūkahaʻia,” a theatrical work about one of the first Native Hawaiians to live for a time in New England who is credited with sparking the Protestant mission that would eventually bring the first printing press to the Islands. 

The AAS digital collection is only a small part of a wider web of Hawaiian collections available online. 

  • The Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ (OHA’s) Papakilo Database is a comprehensive database of databases consisting of varied collections of data pertaining to historically and culturally significant places, events, and documents in Hawai'i’s history.
  • See David W. Forbes, Hawaiian National Bibliography, 1780-1900 (Honolulu, 2000) for bibliographical information on Hawaiian books.
    The work is full-text searchable online in the Papakilo Database.
  • For more on Lahaina or Lahainaluna Seminary and engraving, see David W. Forbes, Engraved at Lahainaluna (Honolulu, 2012) or the Lahaina Restoration Foundation.
  • For a detailed history of Hawaiian journalism, see a brief chronicle of the newspapers and newspeople by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
  • For over 200 letters written by 33 ali'i digitized, transcribed, translated, and annotated, see Ali'i Letters by the Hawaiian Mission Houses and the Awaiaulu Foundations.
  • Hawaiian Newspapers Collection on Papakilo is a digital collection of historic Hawaiian Newspapers, ranging from 1834 to 1980.
  • Ulukau, the Hawaiian Electronic Library, makes resources available for the use, teaching, and revitalization of the Hawaiian language and for a broader and deeper understanding of Hawaiʻi.

Vocabulary

Deeper understanding of both current meaning and historical usage of Hawaiian words can be developed using the Ulukau dictionaries.

Some Hawaiian words featured in this resource are:

  • Aliʻi (upper class leaders)
  • Hale pili (grass house)
  • Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians)
  • Moʻolelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian history or genealogy)
  • Nupepa (newspapers)
  • ʻOkina (ʻ) (consonant representing a glottal stop)
  • ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language)
  • Papapala (learning, reading, writing, printing, engraving)

Sources Consulted for this Resource

Funding

Support for this project has been provided by a grant from the Pine Tree Foundation of New York.