Hiram Bingham

1875-1956

    Hiram Bingham was born on November 19, 1875 in Honolulu, Hawaii and was descended from Deacon Thomas Bingham, who had come to the American colonies in 1650 and settled in Connecticut. His grandfather lived from 1789-1869 and was the first Protestant missionary to go to the Hawaiian Islands. His father, who was also a missionary, is mostly remembered for his work in the Gilbert Islands and his translation of the Bible into Gilbertese.

    From 1882-1892 Bingham attended the Punahou School and  Oahu College  and the Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts for the following two years before entering Yale University. He received his B.A. degree from Yale University in 1898 and for 8 months afterward served as a superintendent of a mission in Honolulu. For the next four months, he was a chemist with the American Sugar Company. He then went back to school, first at the University of California, Berkeley from 1899-1900, then Harvard University , from 1900-1905 for postgraduate study in history and political science. Bingham attained his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1905. He was a professor of history and politics, first at Harvard, then at Princeton, where he spent one year as a Preceptor at Princeton University.

    In November 1906 Bingham sailed to South America to follow the route Bolivar (an explorer Bingham had studied) had taken in 1819. He wrote about his travels and his writings were published under the title Journal of an Expedition Across Venezuela and Columbia. Next, he explored the old Spanish trade route from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Lima, Peru. His writings of that journey were published in 1911 and were entitled Across South America. In 1911, Bingham again set out for South America, this time as the Director of the Peruvian Expedition. On this expedition he located the site of the last Inca capital Vitcos. He was the first to ascend the 21,763 ft. Mt. Coropuma. The following year Bingham made another discovery, perhaps his most important one, the discovery of Machu Picchu, the "lost city." In 1980, Bingham was a delegate to the First Pan American Scientific Congress at Santiago, Chile.

    As World War I began, Bingham turned to politics and the military as a way of life. In 1916, he was a captain in the Connecticut National Guard and by 1917, was a aviator. In May, 1917, he organized the United States Schools of Military Aeronautics. Bingham earned the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps.  From August through December of 1918, he commanded the flying school at Issoudun, France.

     Bingham was Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut from 1922-1924. In 1924, Bingham was elected Governor of Connecticut, a position he held only briefly, as he was elected to serve as a Senator to fill the vacancy left due to the death of Senator Frank B. Brandegee. Bingham was reelected in 1926 and served for eight years. 

    Bingham was Chairman on the Committee on Printing (Seventieth Congress) and served on the Committee on Territories Insular Possessions ( Seventieth through seventy-second Congress)  He was censured in 1929 by the Senate for hiring a lobbyist.  In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge appointed him to be a member of the President's Aircraft Board. Bingham served on the Board of the Washington Loan and Trust Company, and as  Vice President of the Colmena Oil Company. He wrote two biographies and gave many lectures during World War II on the South Sea Islands at Naval Training stations. He served as Chairman of the Civil Service Commission's Loyalty Review Board from 1951-1953.

    Hiram Bingham married Alfreda Mitchell on November 20, 1900 and had seven sons. He later got divorced and in June 1937 Bingham married Suzanne Carroll Hill. Bingham was a member of the Royal Geographical Society and the National Geographical Society. Bingham was also a member of the Sigma Psi Fraternity. He died in Washington at the age of 80, on June 6, 1956.

 

References:

Biographical Directory of United States Congress

www. bioguide.congress.gov

 

 

Written By: Anthropology Students at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Edited By: Lillian Dolentz, 2008