Fanny Gulick

Fanny Gulick (April 16, 1798 – May 24, 1883) was a 19th-century American Presbyterian missionary to the Hawaiian Kingdom and to Japan. Fanny and her husband, Rev. Peter Johnson Gulick had eight children, seven of whom also became missionaries. She was the first to instruct the island women in plaiting the straw-like covering of the sugarcane blossom into materials for hats and bonnets — an industry that soon became an important one. Early life and education Frances "Fanny" Hinckley Thomas was born, April 16, 1798, in Lebanon, Connecticut, on Goshen Hill. Her parents were John Thomas (1775-1814) and Elizabeth "Betsy" Hinckley (1774-1811). Fanny's siblings were: Elihu (b. 1792), Charles (b. 1798), and Eliza (b. 1804). In the year 1825, Gulick put herself under the preaching of Mr. Finney, at Utica, New York, and was converted, though not with several attendant circumstances narrated in Mr. Finney's Autobiography, there having evidently been some confusion in his remembrance of the events. Career Having been united in marriage with the Rev. Peter Johnson Gulick on September 5, 1827, they sailed from Boston in November 1827, for the Sandwich Islands, with the fourth company of missionaries to that group.