Henry Opukahaia


The Foreign Mission was one of the state's three notable educational sites. The others: Yale and Hartford's The American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb.


This 1835 sketch of the village by John Warner Barber shows the buildings
used by the Foreign Mission School, to the right of the church at center.
The school used the building from 1817 to 1826


Within this Cornwall cemetery grave Opukahaia's coffin had a viewing glass and a heart-shaped
decoration picked out with brass tacks. Opukahaia died in 1818, age 26.

Foreign Mission School

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions established the first Foreign Mission School in the United States in 1817 in Cornwall, Connecticut. The purpose was to prepare “tawny and dusky youth” for missionary work in their native countries.  The Board wanted to place the school in an area relatively rural, away from the dangerous influences of urban life.  The fear was that these outside influences would unduly sway the “heathen” youths from the religious path the school was setting for them.
 
The search was then on for the perfect American rural town with a suitably pious congregation willing to foster the school. Many towns lobbied for the school since people around New England were following the well-publicized plight of Obookiah, his fellow Hawaiians, and their future school. In the end, probably because of its location near the homes of many influential ministers, its relatively isolated location, and the out-pouring of support from the town for the project led to its choice as the new site of the Foreign Mission School.
 
The Foreign Mission School literally put the town of Cornwall on the map: a Connecticut map printed in 1820 lists Cornwall among only seven places: Hartford, New London, New Haven, Norwich, Stratford, Fairfield, and Cornwall.
 
Between 1817 and 1826, the Foreign Mission School (FMS) educated around 100 young men and boys, including students from Hawaii, China, Greece, and the South Pacific, as well as Native Americans. The students brought 24 different native languages to Cornwall. While they were objects of curiosity, admiration and sympathetic interest, they were not coddled. The climate was harsh; strict rules applied for study, labor and behavior.
 
Not all the boys became converts or success stories. They did field work on the school lands and wood lot;  seven hours were devoted to study daily; attendance at church and prayers was mandatory. Besides the three R’s, blacksmithing and coopering, the curriculum included astronomy, calculus, theology, geography, chemistry, navigation and surveying, French, Greek, and Latin. Two students independently calculated the next eclipse.
 
The first primary group of students were Hawaiians, the most famous of whom was Obookiah. None of the Hawaiians set out from Hawaii to attend the school. Instead, they left their homes on American ships that were often part of the China trade.  Along their voyages, they were often captured by other ships, impressed into military service, or merely thrown ashore. Discovered by ministers and congregations around the northeast, they usually arrived at the school destitute, dependent upon the school, ministers, and patrons.

As the school developed, students from all over the world who were found by concerned ministers were brought to the school.  They also began to educate students from various Native American groups.  By the 1820s, the Cherokee represented the largest group of students.  These students usually set out to Cornwall with the intention of being educated at the school.  They also were often well provided for as sons of chiefs and other prominent Cherokee.
 
In 1824 and in 1826, the marriages of two Cornwall girls to Cherokee FMS students - later distinguished leaders of the Cherokee Nation - caused a public scandal and contributed to a rethinking of the strategy of the entire U.S. missionary education movement. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions concluded that youth would best be educated in their native lands rather than in the United States and abruptly closed the school in 1826.
 
For historians, the Foreign Mission School is a treasure trove for research into its influences on:
 
·  The U.S. missionary movement and how it evolved after the school was closed.  
·  The leadership of the Cherokee Nation and the signing by Elias Boudinot and John Ridge, both students of the Foreign Mission School, of the treaty that led to the Trail of Tears.
·  The missionary settlement of Hawaii.
·  Chinese American relations, demonstrating, as many scholars have suspected, that the Chinese presence in New England long preceded the far better documented and studied settlement of the West Coast.
·  The education of people of color.
 
For more information on the Foreign Mission School, please order the book, Educating the Heathen: The Foreign Mission School Controversy and American Ideals.  Also, the Cornwall Historical Society will hold an exhibit on the Foreign Mission School in June.  Check the website in May for further details.