FEATURING ARTWORK: NANTUCKET SLEIGH RIDE

Hiram Bingham was one of the early Christian missionaries to Hawaii. The task of teaching industry and Christian values to the Hawaiians was a big one, and so Bingham sent for reinforcements who arrived in the form of the newlyweds Rev. and Mrs. Sheldon Dibble.

During Dibble’s Hawaii tenure, he taught at the missionary school in Lahainaluna on Maui. He played a key role in recording and saving the oral history of Hawaii. He was the author of the first written history, “A History of the Sandwich Islands,” in 1834, which included the Lahainaluna map, engraved and printed by Dibble’s students from copper sheeting.  The maps printed at Lahainaluna were some of the first maps of Hawaii to be printed in Hawaii by Hawaiians.