Guide to the Elisha Loomis Papers,
1816-1859

Printer, linguist, missionary, educator.

Filmed papers consist of four journals (1819-27, 65 ft. microfilm) dealing with Loomis's experiences as a Congregational missionary in the Hawaiian Islands, with his pioneering work in reducing Hawaiian to a written language, printing Hawaiian spelling books, hymnals, and tracts, and teaching native English and Hawaiian, and with religious instruction, sermons, and conversions; contain scattered references to native religion, child-rearing habits, polygamy, and other customs, conflicts between the missionaries and other white men, particularly sailors, and instances of backsliding among both native converts and missionaries; also included are comments on Hiram Bingham, the unofficial leader of the missionary group, Captain Cook, whose death Loomis saw as divine retribution for Cook allowing himself to be treated as a god, and the Society Islands, which he visited on his return to the mainland in 1927.

Original papers (19 ft. microfilm) include ten outlines, essays, and lectures (1831-32) that give Loomis's views on educational theory and methods and contain discussions of school administration, the teaching of the alphabet, arithmetic, geography, and English grammar, natural philosophy, Pestalozzi's system, and good manners; correspondence during his career as a missionary-teacher to the Hawaiians and to the Ojibway Indians and his school in Rushville, Ontario and Yates Counties, New York; letters from Mackinac, Michigan (1830-32), pertaining to his proposed Ojibway alphabet and other subjects; letters (1836) from his brother, Chester, discussing his battle against banking interests in the New York State Legislature, and from his wife, Maria Sartwell Loomis, and others in Rushville and Rochester, New York; and a journal (1 vol., 1816-[1935-36]-1845) concerning his family's life in Rushville, with later entries made by his wife, fair copies of eighteen letters (1816-17) from Loomis to his cousin, Joseph Webb, two letters (1833) to Henry Howe describing his school in Rushville, two letters (1859) to Chester Loomis from Elisha's son concerning his father's estate, photocopy of an incomplete letter from Loomis (19 pp., 1830) correcting errors in a book about Hawaii published by the American Sunday School Union.