Hiram Bingham II

Who was Hiram Bingham II?

Hiram Bingham, formally Hiram Bingham II, was a Protestant Christian missionary to Hawaii and the Gilbert Islands.

Born in Honolulu, Bingham was the sixth child of early missionary Hiram Bingham I and Sybil Moseley Bingham. Both father and mother sailed from Boston, Massachusetts to Honolulu in 1819. Only ten years old in 1840, Bingham was sent to the United States with his siblings Elizabeth Kaahumanu and Lydia Bingham to attend school. Bingham was enrolled at Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts and graduated from Yale University in 1853.

Bingham was ordained a Congregationalist minister in New Haven, Connecticut on November 9, 1856. Nine days later on November 18, Bingham married Clara Brewster in Northampton, Massachusetts. The newlyweds arrived in Honolulu on April 24, 1857 where they both ministered to the native Hawaiians. They eventually traveled and spread Christianity in several Pacific Ocean island communities.

After a brief return to the United States in 1865, they arrived in Honolulu on March 13, 1867 for a stopover en route to the Marquesas Islands. They went through Micronesia and returned to Honolulu again in 1868. There they settled. Bingham was the first to translate the Bible into Gilbertese, and wrote several hymn books, dictionaries and commentaries in the language of the Gilbert Islands.