Dwight Baldwin

Hawaiian Missionary

1858.

Dwight Baldwin sits on the porch of his home at 120 Dickinson Street in Lahaina, near the corner of Front Street. He takes in the sights and sounds as the day comes to life. The air is pleasantly cool; the westerly breeze rustles the palms. Java sparrows chirp and flutter on the higher fronds. A rooster makes its way across the lawn, clucking to itself and occasionally stopping to peck at the ground. Two spotted doves land beside Dwight but fly off as he reaches for his tea.

Lahaina is a small town at the far western end of Maui, one of the larger islands in the Sandwich Island chain, which will eventually become the islands making up the state of Hawaii. To the east, the land rises and a barren, inhospitable expanse of volcanic clinker gives way to the lush green of a dormant volcano turned rainforest. To the west, beyond the harbor, Lanai, a much smaller, but similarly dormant volcanic island five miles distant, dominates the horizon. Beyond Lanai, the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

From where he sits, a block from the harbor, Dwight sees a schooner has arrived overnight. It rests at the dock as workers, mostly islanders but a few from the mainland, unload cargo. A large burly man, undoubtedly the captain, supervises from the foredeck as others race over and back across a gangway. The harbor comes alive when a ship arrives, and these days ships have been coming more frequently.

Dwight sips his tea, places the cup back on the small table, and rests his hand on the bible that sits on his lap. Dwight looks at his hands and at the Good Book and smiles at his good fortune to have come to know Him.

What, other than a divine presence, could have led him to his wife Charlotte? He recalls the long sleigh ride with a friend to White Hollow, Connecticut on a cold winter night where he met Charlotte and presented her with a letter of introduction, written by Matthew Perrine, a friend and Dwight’s professor at Auburn Theological Seminary. That same evening Dwight asked for Charlotte’s hand in marriage. Dwight left asking that Charlotte take a week to consider his proposal saying that he prayed he could return in a week to a favorable response. How preposterous it must have sounded to Charlotte: give up a life in New England to do God’s work in a far-off land.

And yet she accepted his proposal. They married a week later. Was that really twenty-five years ago?

Charlotte Fowler Baldwin from Hawaiian Mission Children's Society

Within five weeks they boarded a ship with three other missionary couples bound for the Sandwich Islands. That ship, the New England, seemed so steady when tied to the pier in New Bedford and so small and fragile on the open ocean. Oh, they had been sick for so many weeks. It was truly a test of their will and commitment to stay below deck in that tiny room as the New England tossed and turned, pitched and rolled, rounding Cape Horn. How they all prayed for safe passage and how their prayers seemed answered on that glorious day after rounding the Horn. With calm seas and a steady breeze they basked in the sun and open air, racing across the ocean, whales breaching in the distance. The cold New England winter seemed a world away.

Once at the islands, months later, the work was never-ending but Dwight, Charlotte, and the others who arrived with the fourth company of missionaries were committed to spreading the Word and there was no shortage of souls to save. Though he never regretted missionary work, it was not easy and those first months living in a grass hut made it harder still. Moving to an actual house in Lahaina was certainly a blessing: big windows facing the prevailing winds, and thick walls made of coral to keep the house cool in the heat of the day. Yes, life at the corner of Front Street was more comfortable than the hut.

Dwight sips his tea as a group of children race through the yard, and he notices a bandage wrapped around a young forearm. Days earlier he stitched a nasty cut on that same forearm where a thorn had torn the skin. Oh how the child had screamed. As medical challenges went, a few stitches were respite. More daunting was disease. Smallpox had come to the island five years back and natives, lacking immunity, quickly fell ill. Dwight thanked the Lord, as well as the missionaries and islanders who had helped with the quarantines and mass vaccinations. Though any loss of life was heartbreaking, thanks to their work and his guidance—and His guidance—Maui had been lucky to lose only 200 souls while the other islands lost tens of thousands.

Charlotte comes out to the porch with a letter from their twelve-year-old son Henry. Dwight misses Henry, though he’s glad the boy can continue his schooling in Honolulu.

“His studies are going well, Dwight, though I do wonder what path he will choose.”

“I have prayed on it, Charlotte, and I sense great things for our Henry.”

Sitting on the porch in Lahaina, Dwight cannot imagine the challenges and success that Henry will face in the years to come. Henry will crush and then lose his right arm in a sugarcane grinder. Undeterred, he will later be instrumental in constructing the 17-mile Hamakua Ditch, which will provide reliable irrigation to the dry side of the island. Later he will form a shipping company, Alexander and Baldwin, that will become one of Hawaii’s “Big Five” companies. But for now Henry studies in Honolulu and writes home when he can.

Dwight and Charlotte sit in silence for a moment taking in the morning. Soon Dwight will be busy meeting with others to discuss efforts to continue progress toward temperance on the islands. The sins that followed over-consumption seem never-ending, and though the King has been supportive, temptation comes with sailors arriving from distant ports. Charlotte too has a busy day before her, working with other women to educate the hundreds of children in the parish.

But for the moment they sit gazing out toward the harbor and the island of Lanai, now in the full light of the rising sun in the distance.

Yes, in his sixty years Dwight has been blessed with such good fortune, with a loving wife, healthy children, and a growing church. But mostly he is grateful for the gift of God and the calling to spread His word.

References: Wikipedia (Dwight Baldwin), Hawaiian Mission Children's Society, The Pilgrims of Hawaii: Their own Story of their Pilgrimage from New England, The Maui Snooze by Mazie Sanford.

Dwight Baldwin and Charlotte Fowler were Sam's 3rd great grandparents (Maternal)