Edward Bailey

teacher, engineer, naturalist, surveyor, architect, artist, ...

Wailuku and Iao Valley from Sand Hills

"a place where I had preferred above all others to dwell.."

At age 35, Edward Bailey found himself on a island in the Pacific with a family to support. He and his wife had come from Massachusetts as missionary teachers, both of them age 22 and wed a week before the ship sailed. Now in 1849 the funding for the Wailuku Female Seminary had run out; and Caroline was pregnant with their fifth son.

Bailey was an amazingly versatile man, and although he said that "a taste for making money was left out of my makeup", he tried his hand at a number of ways to earn money: surveying land for the Kingdom of Hawaii, supervising road and bridge building, growing and milling sugar cane, supervising government schools.

Although Mr. Bailey seems never to have had any formal training, he had sketched throughout his life; he made many of the drawings which were engraved at Lahainaluna. When visiting artists encouraged him to take up oils, he began to paint landscapes of his beloved island, for sale as well as gifts to his many friends. He exhibited in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Paris in the 1870s. However, he complained that sales were too few to help him financially and said that he was dependent on his sons for support.

As a surveyor and a naturalist, Bailey knew the island in detail. Superintendent of government schools as well as a missionary teacher, and being fluent in Hawaiian, he had come to know the island's people and their activities. His paintings are a detailed and accurate record of Maui in the 19th Century, and repay a careful look with a magnifying glass or enlarged on your screen.

The Maui Historical Society holds the principal collection of Edward Bailey's paintings. Come see them at the Bailey House Museum.

All photographs of Mr. Bailey's paintings are copyright by the Maui Historical Society.

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