Description

Hiram Bingham led the first Calvinist missionaries to Hawai’i, who arrived in 1821, The task of teaching industry and guilt to millions of carefree natives was a big one, and so Bingham sent for reinforcements. Among the Fourth Company were the newlywed Reverend and Mrs. Sheldon Dibble, who arrived in Honolulu after a voyage of 161 days, on June 7, 1831.

Born in the Village of Skaneateles in 1809, Sheldon Dibble studied at Hamilton College and the Auburn Theological Seminary, and was ordained in Utica, New York. He married Maria Tomlinson three weeks after his ordination and less than two months after that the Rev. and Mrs. Dibble sailed from New Bedford, Mass., bound for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) to heed the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19), to go and make disciples of all nations.

During his Hawaii tenure, he taught at the missionary school, the Hawaiian College, in Lahainaluna. He played a key role in committing the islands’ oral history to paper, publishing its 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 Hawai’i by Hawaiians.

Dibble died in the islands on January 22, 1845, at Lahainaluna, Maui. His wife and four surviving Dibble children returned to the mainland. Mrs. Dibble died in Washington, D.C., in 1897.

DECORATIVE MAPS OF HAWAII

This distinctive map collection includes a selection of some of the most important maps in the history of Hawai i’.

Carolyn Quan is an Internationally-Collected Fine Art Photo Collage Artist who spent many years living in the Hawaiian Islands, first on Maui and then Oahu. When she was approached by Tradewinds Production Group to create a series of decorative collages integrating these wonderful historical maps of the islands, she gladly accepted and began to uncover some of her original photos most significant to the subject matter. Her photo archives include thousands of images and so began the search for the images that best suited the look and feel of the historical maps. All of the photographs were shot on 35mm film and then digitally collaged together with the maps using multiple layers of altered and enhanced imagery to create the compositions that make up the artwork. Although, the technique may be complex, the result is a simple and artistic sense of the story behind the map and it’s historical significance whether it’s the Carthaginian that symbolizes the journey or the view of the West Maui Mountains that the explorers may have seen when they voyaged across the sea.