Lyman House Memorial Museum, Historic missionary residence in Hilo, Hawaii, United States.
The Lyman House Memorial Museum is a wooden house built in 1838 on Haili Street in Hilo, Hawaii, now serving as a museum dedicated to missionary life and Hawaiian natural history. A modern wing was added alongside the original structure to house additional exhibits, including a notable mineral collection.
Reverend David Belden Lyman and his wife Sarah Joiner Lyman arrived in 1832 as missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Their mission house was built in 1838 with native koa and ohia woods in a New England style. In 1931 their descendants founded a museum in the house; the collections moved to an adjacent building designed by Vladimir Ossipoff in the late 1960s.
The house shows how a New England missionary family lived, cooked, and taught on the islands during the 1800s. The original rooms are largely intact and give a direct sense of daily life from that period.
The museum sits on Haili Street in central Hilo and is easy to reach on foot from many parts of town. Plan enough time to see both the original house and the exhibits in the newer wing, as they cover very different ground.
Orlymanite, a mineral in the museum's collection, is named for Orlando Hammond Lyman (1903–1986), who founded the museum in 1931 and was a great-grandson of David and Sarah Lyman. The museum has been an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution since 2002.
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