Mary Tenney Castle

Mary Tenney Castle (October 26, 1819 — March 13, 1907), known as Mother Castle, was an American missionary and philanthropist in the Hawaiian Islands.

Mary Tenney Castle
Mary Tenney Castle as a young woman, from a 1907 publication.

Early life

Mary Ann Tenney was born in Plainfield, New York, the daughter of Levi Tenney and Mary Kingsbury Tenney. She attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts.[1]

In Hawaii

Mary Tenney arrived in Hawaii as a new bride in 1843. She raised her niece, Mary, and had nine more Castle children, all born in Hawaii between 1844 and 1862. She was known as "Mother Castle".[2] She was interested in progressive education, with advice from John Dewey, a family friend.[3] "Mother Castle lived with a serenity and cheerfulness that made her home a Mecca to all visitors interested in the better side of Hawaiian life," recalled one obituary in 1907.[4]

In widowhood, she set up the Samuel N. Castle Memorial Trust, to fund educational scholarships, health programs, and building projects in Honolulu. Her gift of $10,000 started the Free Kindergarten and Children's Aid Society of the Hawaiian Islands in 1895.[5] The trust is now the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation.[6][7]

Personal life and legacy

Mary Tenney married her late sister Angeline's widower, Samuel Northrup Castle, in 1842.[8] She outlived three of her children: her son Albert died as a boy in 1864, and her son Charles died in 1874. Another son, Henry, died in 1895. She was widowed when Samuel died in 1894. Mary Tenney Castle died in 1907, at "Pu'uhonua", her home in the Manoa Valley, aged 87 years.[9] Some of her manuscript letters are reproduced online in the Hawaiian Mission Houses Digital Archives.[10] The Castle Foundation Papers are in the Hawaiian Mission Houses Archives.[11]

The Mary Tenney Castle Memorial Graduate Fellowship at the University of Hawaii at Manoa funds students interested in early childhood education.[12] The Samuel and Mary Castle Art Center at Punahou School is named for the Castles,[13] as is a building at the University of Hawaii.[14]

She was mother-in-law to psychologist George Herbert Mead[15] and businessman William Drake Westervelt. Descendants of Mary Tenney Castle included her sons William Richards Castle, a lawyer, and James Bicknell Castle, a businessman; and grandsons Harold Kainalu Long Castle and William Richards Castle Jr.

Family tree

References
  1. Alfred L. Castle, Diplomatic Realism: William R. Castle, Jr., and American Foreign Policy, 1919-1953 (University of Hawaii Press 1998): 3-9. ISBN 9780824820091
  2. W. D. Westervelt, "Mrs. Mary Castle" The Friend (April 1907): 7.
  3. Alfred L. Castle, "John Dewey and the Beginnings of Progressive Early Education in Hawai'i" Educational Perspectives 47(2015): 23-27.
  4. "Mother Castle" The Friend (April 1907): 1.
  5. The Collected Letters of Henry Northrup Castle (Ohio University Press 2012): xii-xiii. ISBN 9780821444313
  6. History, Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation website.
  7. Alfred L. Castle, A Century of Philanthropy: A History of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation (University of Hawaii Press 2004). ISBN 9780824828738
  8. Hawaiian Mission Children's Society, Portraits of American Protestant Missionaries to Hawaii (Hawaiian Gazette Company 1901): 58.
  9. M. L. D., "A Mother in Israel" Life and Light for Woman (May 1907): 194-195.
  10. Mary Tenney Castle Papers, 1873-1885, Hawaiian Mission Houses Digital Archives.
  11. Castle Foundation Papers 1898-1936, Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives.
  12. "What is the Mary Tenney Castle Memorial Graduate Fellowship" University of Hawaii at Manoa, College of Education.
  13. "History" Castle Art Center, Punahou School website.
  14. "U. H. Honors Mary Castle" Honolulu Advertiser (May 1, 1941): 5. via Newspapers.comopen access
  15. Daniel R. Huebner, Becoming Mead: The Social Process of Academic Knowledge (University of Chicago Press 2014): 63-64. ISBN 9780226171401
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