“Bad Books. These are dangerous next to bad men, therefore shun them.” So advised Richard Armstrong when his son William was about to embark for America in November of 1850. Books that turn the young against serious matters and “inculcate loose morals” are a “perfect poison,” the father warned. Armstrong took his own advice to heart. The next year, in 1851, he opened the first library in the islands, the Honolulu Atheneum.

Armstrong, a Protestant missionary from New England, was a successful newspaper editor, minister of public instruction under Kamehameha III, and pastor at Kawaiaha‘o Church. A love of reading and learning led him to found the Honolulu Atheneum Society. He wrote letters in which he asked the recipients in the United States to spread the word of Honolulu’s need for books, magazines, pamphlets, and other reading matter. Armstrong described Honolulu to them as “a place of considerable commerce” and “destined to be a city of great importance”—by 1850, there were a thousand foreign residents, plus three to four thousand visitors a year. The Atheneum’s constitution and bylaws arranged for annual subscriptions of $10 to pay the rent and expenses of a reading room and materials.

The Atheneum was the forerunner of the “Workingmen’s Library and Reading Room,” in 1879, which in turn led to the Hawai‘i public library system which we all enjoy today.

By Helen G. Chapin