Mission House

In May 1817 a group of leading New England clergymen founded a Foreign Mission School in the rural village of Cornwall, Connecticut. In November 1827 they closed its doors for ever. But during the intervening ten years they mounted an unprecedented experiment in the "philosophy of human brotherhood" (as one of them put it), with echoes that reverberate to the 21st century. The story of the Mission House begins with a youth by the name of Obookiah, who was born and raised during the opening years of the century in Hawaii. After a tumultuous childhood he escaped from his community, boarding a passing New England trade ship. Upon arrival he attracted the attention of local ministers and became a kind of personal missionary project for the ministers. They decided to use Obookiah as a centrepiece of a grand scheme for an academy to convert and train indigenous youth from around the world. Thereby they proposed to spread "true religion" to every branch of humankind. However, although the school prospered hugely in its first years, disaster struck when two of its star pupils announced their engagement to two local girls.