Fanny Gulick | |
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Personal | |
Born | Frances Hinckley Thomas April 16, 1798 Lebanon, Connecticut, U.S. |
Died | May 24, 1883 Kobe, Japan |
Religion | Presbyterian |
Spouse | Peter Johnson Gulick |
Children | 8, including Luther Halsey Gulick Sr. and J. T. Gulick |
Profession | Missionary |
Senior posting | |
Profession | Missionary |
Fanny Gulick (born Frances Hinckley Thomas; April 16, 1798 – May 24, 1883) was a 19th-century American Presbyterian missionary to the Hawaiian Kingdom and to Japan. Fanny and her husband, Rev. Peter Johnson Gulick had eight children, seven of whom also became missionaries. She was the first to instruct the island women in plaiting the straw-like covering of the sugarcane blossom into materials for hats and bonnets[1] — an industry that soon became an important one.
Frances Hinckley Thomas was born, April 16, 1798 in Lebanon, Connecticut, on Goshen Hill.[2] Her parents were John Thomas (1775-1814) and Elizabeth "Betsy" Hinckley (1774-1811). Fanny's siblings were: Elihu (b. 1792), Charles (b. 1798), and Eliza (b. 1804).[3]
In the year 1825, Gulick put herself under the preaching of Mr. Finney, at Utica, New York, and was converted, though not with several attendant circumstances narrated in Mr. Finney's Autobiography, there having evidently been some confusion in his remembrance of the events.[2]
Having been united in marriage with the Rev. Peter Johnson Gulick on September 5, 1827,[3] they sailed from Boston in November 1827, for the Sandwich Islands, with the fourth company of missionaries to that group.[2]
She brought up a family of seven sons and one daughter, six of whom served in foreign missionary service. Having been engaged in Sunday schools in New York City, among the very earliest of those efforts in the U.S., she took to her remote field among the islanders many of the methods then so novel. She accomplished much indirect missionary work. Early on, she taught the native women how to sew and make simple apparel for themselves and their families. She was the first to instruct them in plaiting the straw-like covering of the sugarcane blossom into materials for hats and bonnets — an industry that soon became an important one.[2]
Gulick struggled with feeble health for more than half a century. In 1872, their active career having finished, Mr. and Mrs. Gulick removed from the Sandwich Islands to Japan, to spend their remaining days with their missionary children in Kobe. They touched at San Francisco on their way to Japan, but did not visit the home of their youth in the Eastern United States, which they had left in 1827, and which they never revisited. Mr. Gulick died a few weeks after celebrating the couple's missionary semi-centennial.[2]
Julia, Orramel, John, and Sidney are buried in the Mission House cemetery at Kawaiahaʻo Church.[19] Since Julia had not yet been born when her brother Luther Halsey Gulick left for the United States in 1840, the family never was all together in the same place at one time.
All the children except Luther graduated from Punahou School[20] Luther Gulick served as a trustee from 1865 to 1870.[21]
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Notes: |
She had been very feeble for several preceding months, and during April, having completed her eighty-fifth year, her physical powers failed rapidly, though her mental faculties remained unclouded to the last. She arranged all her business and delivered all her messages to her family and to the native Christians of Japan. Early in the morning of May 24, 1883, she died at her home in Kobe, Japan.[2]