8vo (184 x 108 mm). 13 engraved plates. (Spotting throughout, dampstain to title-page and several leaves of text and plates near bottom margin.) Original? quarter sheep, drab cloth boards, specked edges (spine ends a bit worn, discoloring to boards, few stains to lower cover). Provenance: presumably owned by Rev. David Belden Lyman (1803-1884), early American missionary to Hawaiʻi; by descent to his sister, Rhoda Phelps Lyman Miller (1816-1864); thence by descent in the family to the present owner.

FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, ONE OF ONLY 500 COPIES of Gallaudet's arguments for the existence and omniscience of God, translated into Hawaiian by Sheldon Dibble (1809-1845). Assigned first to the Hilo mission before transferring to Maui in 1836, Dibble joined the faculty of the Lahainaluna Seminary. Recognizing that Hawaiian students studied the history of other nations but lacked a written history of their own, he organized a project to record oral traditions from Hawaiian chiefs and elders, with his student David Malo taking a leading role. Following a brief return to the United States (1837-1840), where he lectured on Hawaiian history, Dibble resumed the project at Lahainaluna. The resulting History of the Sandwich Islands (1843), printed at the school's press, became the first comprehensive published history of Hawaiʻi based largely on Native Hawaiian sources. Printing in Hawaiʻi began with the arrival of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1820, whose Ramage hand press, operated by Elisha Loomis, produced the first books and pamphlets in the Hawaiian language in January 1822.

PREVIOUSLY OWNED BY AN EARLY HAWAIIAN MISSIONARY. Rev. David Belden Lyman was an American Congregational missionary and educator who arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1832 with the fifth company of missionaries sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Stationed in Hilo for more than fifty years, he founded the Hilo Boarding School and served as its first principal. The Lyman family's mission house, built in 1839, is preserved today as the Lyman House Memorial Museum. The present volume descended through the family of his sister, Rhoda Phelps Lyman Miller (1816-1864), and is believed to have been sent from Hawaiʻi to Connecticut aboard a sailing ship after his ABCFM trip, presumably as a gift from her brother David.

EXCEEDINGLY RARE: According to online records, only one other copy of the first edition has appeared at auction (Swann Galleries, 1971). Judd 200.

[With:] A commonplace book, 1835-1842, 8vo, in original embossed morocco album, owned by Rhoda Lyman Miller, containing numerous unique manuscript contributions and poems in a variety of hands. The opening entry is by Rev. James Huntington (1788-1848) of Groton, Connecticut, the prominent Congregational minister whose church served as an important source of candidates for the ABCFM. It is followed by two entries by "D. Lyman;" another by Rev. Lyman Jewett (1813-1897), the noted linguist, ABCFM missionary, and principal translator of the first complete Telugu Bible in India; and an accomplished original watercolor floral wreath by Lucy Maria Neal. Particularly noteworthy is an original poem by Maria A. Watson, composed for Rhoda on the eve of her departure to Ohio, vividly describing her migration to "the wilds of the West" while expressing enduring affection for the friends she was leaving behind in her native Connecticut. Other surnames include the Watsons, Neals, Seymours, Clevelands, Woodruffs, Potters, Churchills, Harts, Dawsons, Bristols, and others. A complete list is available upon request. A SUPERB ASSOCIATION COPY TO THE ABOVE HOIKE AKUA, PRESERVING A REMARKABLE RECORD OF THE CONNECTICUT CONGREGATIONAL AND MISSIONARY CIRCLE FROM WHICH THE AMERICAN BOARD’S FOREIGN MISSIONS EMERGED.