Puʻu O Mahuka

Pu‘u o Mahuka ("hill of escape”) is located on the north side of the valley; it is the largest heiau on Oʻahu (covering almost 2 acres.)  Archaeological research has indicated several changes in the heiau structure over time.

A story of its origin notes, in 1773, a leadership change was decided on Oʻahu where Kahahana would replace Kumahana.  Puʻu O Mahuka included a Hale O Papa, a specialized heiau designated specifically to women; kapu (forbidden) to men.

Click HERE for more images and information.

Hilo Hattie

Clarissa Meleka Haili, Hilo Hattie, turned professional in 1936 when she entertained with the Royal Hawaiian Girls Glee Club.  She took part in the Kodak Hula Show. Clara participated in the summer shows from 1937 through 1940.

After the WWII, she became a disc jockey for Honolulu radio station KPOA. The notable song she sang and dance was ‘When Hilo Hattie Does The Hilo Hop.’

Click HERE for more images and information.

ʻEwa Field

It started as a mooring mast for blimps, airships and dirigible balloons (lighter than air craft using gas to lift the craft.)  Back then, runways weren’t needed/used for the airship; a line from the mast was tied to the bow of the airship to hold it there, while not in use (however, none ever visited the station.)

Sometime later, the Navy also constructed an oil-surfaced, emergency landing field at ʻEwa.  What would become Marine Corps Base ʻEwa (ʻEwa Field) was part of the US military and economic expansion into the Pacific region starting in the 1930s and early-1940s.  ʻEwa was officially closed on June 18, 1952 and its property assumed by Naval Air Station Barbers Point.

Click HERE for more images and information.

Ralph Sheldon Hosmer

“The forests and timber growing therein, shall be considered as government property, and under the special care of the minister of the interior, who may from time to time convert the products thereof into money for the benefit of government.”  (King Kamehameha III's Act No. 2)

On May 13, 1903, the Territory of Hawaiʻi, with the backing of the Hawaiʻi Sugar Planters' Association, established the Board of Commissioners of Agriculture and Forestry.  The next year, Ralph Sheldon Hosmer (one of the Society founders) became the first Superintendent of Forestry in the Islands.

Click HERE for more images and information.

Infanticide

“I have often wondered why there were no more children here than there appear to be, upon asking a white man who has resided here many years …”

“… the reason he replied that many infants are strangled to death by their mothers, especially if they are not able to support them and many die for want of care when young. We have seen a number of latter case.”

Click HERE for the full post.

“Your Affectionate & Unhappy Friend”

Queen Victoria is associated with Britain's great age of industrial expansion, economic progress and, especially, empire. (At her death, it was said, Britain had a worldwide empire on which the sun never set.)  Emma was adopted by Dr Rooke, an Englishman. On June 9, 1856, Emma married Alexander Liholiho, King Kamehameha IV, and then became Queen Emma.

The two queens were unlike in more than the size of their realms.  Victoria was almost a generation older than Emma.  Victoria had nine children, the last one born in 1857, a year before Emma’s one and only child.  Queen Victoria and Queen Emma wrote each other from time to time, sharing news of family events, happy and tragic.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

A new post has been added to Images of Old Hawaii®

Makanau A small hill, called Makanau, was where Keoua, the last rival of Kamehameha, surrendered himself up to the warriors under Kaʻiana, by whom he had been conquered in two successive engagements. A heiau was visible to Stokes during his evaluation of Hawaiʻi heiau (1901-1919;) however, later destroyed when sugarcane was planted there. As you drive this area of Kaʻū, you can look up the side of Mauna Loa and see Makanau, the tabletop hill. Click the following link for more: http://ift.tt/1boBlyL
from Hookuleana LLC http://ift.tt/1boCuq8
via IFTTT

The King vs Greenwell

Henry Nicholas Greenwell was indicted for murder in the Second Degree.  “(A) Chinaman (Salai) had run away … and the Chinaman was down and Mr Greenwell was beating him with his fists.”  He died.

The matter was handed over to the jury. “The jury after an absence of half an hour returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty.”  (Hawaiʻi Reports; Supreme Court, 1853)

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Royal Palm

The Royal Palm is symbolic in the design of Hawaiʻi’s State Capitol.  Forty columns, 60-feet high surround the building, representing Royal Palm trees.

On September 9, 1850 Gerrit Parmele Judd's wife shaked out some small round seeds after his trip to Kingston, Jamaica.  The Judds then first planted the seeds on the grounds of Judd's sister, Mrs Asher B Bates (at the corner of Bates and Nuʻuanu.)

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Hilo Yacht Club

While the Club’s website suggests it formed in 1913, the January 20, 1897 issue of Pacific Commercial Advertiser noted, “The past week has recorded another innovation in Hilo the organization of the Hilo Yacht Club ….”  The original site of the Club was the CC Kennedy home situated near Reeds Bay.

By 1919 the growth and success of the Club prompted members to begin a drive to replace the Kennedy house. Having lost the lease, the Hilo Yacht Club, in 1939, moved, again, relocated and renovated the Keaukaha home of Frank Harlocker, on 2.84-acres.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Future Farmers

Boys were leaving the farms. In 1928, 33 students from 18 states gathered in Kansas City to form the Future Farmers of America.  On April 20, 1929, Charter Number 13 of the Future Farmers of America was issued to the Hawaiian Association.

By winning the State association award in 1934, the Hawaiian Association became the outstanding association of the Future Farmer organization for that year.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Bingham Tablet

The land at Punahou was given to the Binghams (it was considered to be a gift from Kaʻahumanu, Kuhina Nui or Queen Regent at that time,) but by missionary rules, it was really given to the mission as a whole.  Their home site is now marked by a tablet.

“The memorial tablet is a simple but beautiful affair. On a grass mound in the shape of a truncated pyramid is a pedestal of lava rock on which is a great rough lava boulder hewn out from the slopes of Rocky Hill. On its rough face is an oval bronze tablet”.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

General Meeting

The missionaries were scattered across the Islands, each home was usually in a thickly inhabited village, so that the missionary and his wife could be close to their work among the people.

Very prominent in the old mission life was the annual “General Meeting” where all of the missionary families from across the Islands gathered at Honolulu from four to six weeks.  The primary object of this gathering was to hold a business; it was also social.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Pan Am

On October 28, 1927, competitive firms joined forces and formed Pan American Airways, Inc and began scheduled mail service between Key West and Havana. Passenger service started on January 16, 1928.  An expansion of major proportions began.  Within 2-years Pan Am routes extended from Miami to Brazil and Buenos Aires, and from both Miami and Brownsville, Texas, via Central America to Panama.

Then, on April 17, 1935, the Pioneer Clipper landed in Hawaii; the next day it headed to the Philippines and the Orient. On October 21, 1936, Pan American initiated regular six-day weekly passenger service between San Francisco and Manila via Honolulu. Then, in rapid succession, Pan Am sold its routes and then the sudden closing of all operations in Hawaiʻi on April 26, 1986.  Pan Am ceased operations on December 4, 1991.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Hoʻomana Naʻauao

Hoʻomana Naʻauao o Hawaiʻi was the first independent Hawaiian Christian organization in the Islands.  It was founded by John Kekipi Maia; he named his denomination "Hoʻomana Naʻauao," which members translate as meaning "reasonable service."  It started with the help of John Hawelu Poloailehua.

April 16, 1853 (the date which Kekipi considers was the beginning of the church) is when Poloailehua, still a 15-year-old boy, started his mission work after he recovered from his illness.  Hoʻomana Naʻauao was established on the concept of a passage in Romans: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

John Rudolph Slattery

John Rudolph Slattery graduated fifth in his class at West Point Class in 1900.  Typical for a new engineer officer, after graduation, Slattery was assigned to the Philippines to work on bridges and roads.  Within a couple of years he was living and working in Honolulu.

On April 15, 1905, Slattery opened the first Honolulu Engineer District office in the Alexander Young Building on Bishop Street – this marked the birthdate of the Honolulu Engineering District for the Army Corps.  Slattery’s duties were divided between land acquisition and lighthouse matters.  The bridge to Sand Island is named for him.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

John Thomas Gulick

John Thomas Gulick did the first modern evolutionary study on Hawaiian land snails. He was a missionary and son of a Hawaiʻi missionary.   A collector of land snails since his teen years, he became a convert to evolutionary thinking even before reading On the Origin of Species (by Darwin.)

Gulick was among the first to recognize the critical role for geographical separation in the diversification of ecologically similar Hawaiian land snails. His ideas were discussed by Darwin, as well as leaders in the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis who saw an important role for geographical isolation in speciation.  Gulick extended his ideas to societal evolution in human beings.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

For the Sake of Public Health

“For the Sake of the Public Health” presents a series of people who were intimately involved with the health, care and welfare of the people of Hawaiʻi.  Hawaiʻi faced many public health crises and had many healthcare needs during the days of the Kingdom, the Republic and the Territory.

Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives presents it's highly popular Cemetery Pupu Theatre series; actors are dressed in period costume, telling the life events of select individuals buried at O‘ahu Cemetery, at their respective grave sites.  Each ‘stage’ is at the respective subject’s gravesite at Oʻahu Cemetery in Nuʻuanu.  There was nothing ghoulish about it; rather, it was very effective storytelling. (Follow the links in the full post to YouTube videos of the performances.)

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

To the Jubilee

The longest-reigning British monarch, Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee on June 20 and 21, 1887, marking 50 years of her reign.  Fifty foreign kings and princes, along with the governing heads of Britain's overseas colonies and dominions, attended.  Queen Kapiʻolani and an entourage represented Hawaiʻi.

They first stopped in San Francisco for a week; then, a special train of three cars took them across the US, making several stops along the way.  Queen Kapiʻolani, met with President and Mrs Cleveland, the first Queen to cross the White House threshold.  After a few days in New York City, Queen Kapiʻolani and her entourage departed for England, where they attended the Queen’s Jubilee.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Benjamin Douglas Baldwin

Benjamin Douglas Baldwin (grandson of the Rev Dwight Baldwin) was born at Kohala, Hawaii, April 12, 1868, son of David D and Lois M Baldwin. Baldwin began his career in the sugar cane industry on Haiku Sugar Co plantation, Hāmākuapoko, Maui, on January 1, 1889.

Then, “Mr Benjamin D Baldwin, head luna of Hāmākuapoko plantation has accepted the position of assistant manager of the Hawaiian Commercial Company”.  He later “settled as manager of Makaweli plantation of Kauai.” “Makaweli is the banner plantation of Kauai” and by the end of Baldwin's management, in 1928, the company was noted as one of the most profitable and progressive in the Territory.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

The Spirit of Liliʻuokalani

The statue standing between ʻIolani Palace and the Capitol is called ‘The Spirit of Liliʻuokalani.  In 1975, the Legislature found “that the representation of the monarchy in the state capital will bring to the people of the State, and our many visitors, increased awareness, and a permanent reminder of the people who played important roles in the development of Hawaiʻi".

‘The Spirit of Liliuokalani’ is a 6-foot sculpture by artist Marianna Pineda. It was dedicated April 10, 1982, after being cast in Boston and shipped to Hawaiʻi.  A similar, smaller (4-foot) statue stands in the courtyard of the Queen Liliʻuokalani Children’s Center in Kalihi.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Wailuku Female Seminary

In 1835, at the general meeting of the Mission, a resolution was passed to promote boarding schools for Hawaiians; several male boarding schools and two female boarding schools were begun (Wailuku Female Seminary on the island of Maui and the Hilo School for Girls on the island of Hawai'i.)

Wailuku Female Seminary (or the Central Female Seminary, as it was first called) was the first female school begun by the missionaries. In 1837 the missionaries opened the Wailuku Female Seminary to educate girls to be “good Christian wives” for the graduates of Lahainaluna a school for boys at Lahaina. A boarding school, they thought, would have a deeper influence than day classes.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Fort Weaver

The Army acquired land along the ʻEwa shoreline in about 1905 to support the coastal defense. The Navy took control of the property in August 1916.  It became known as Puʻuloa Military Reservation of Oʻahu. Until 1922, it was known as Iroquois Point Military Reservation (“Iroquois Point” was derived from the name “USS Iroquois;” it is believed the ship was anchored nearby.)

In 1922, the coastal defense facility was named Fort Weaver; named after Erasmus Morgan Weaver, Jr, a US Army Major General who served as the first chief of the Militia Bureau and the Chief of the Army’s US Army Coast Artillery Corps.  The guns were protected only by camouflage netting and paint (they were not protected with concrete encasements, like many of the other Forts and Batteries on O‘ahu.)

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Shashin Hanayome

The first major waves of Japanese Shashin Hanayome “picture brides” began in 1908.  In general, the picture bride practice conformed to traditional marriage customs as parents or relatives in Japan chose wives for single migrant men working in America and Hawaiʻi.

Between 1907 and 1923, over 14,000 picture brides arrived in Hawaiʻi from Japan.  In addition to being wives and mothers who took care of the home, Japanese women immigrants also worked alongside their husbands in the fields.  Husbands were usually older than wives by ten to fifteen years, and occasionally more.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Hale O Keawe

The Hale O Keawe in Honaunau was called Ka-iki-ʻAlealea (The little ʻAlealea,) and was a puʻuhonua – a place to which one who had killed could run swiftly and be saved.  The house stood by the entrance of a wooden enclosure, with door facing inland towards the farming lands of South Kona.

Several carved male and female images of wood were placed on the outside of the enclosure; some on low pedestals, under the shade of an adjacent tree; others on high posts, on the jutting rocks that hung over the edge of the water.  “The principal object, that attracted our attention, was … a sacred depository of the bones of departed kings and princes, probably erected as a depository for the bones of the king whose name it bears, and who reigned in Hawaii, about eight generations back.”

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Happy Easter

Missionary Travel to the Islands

“What wonder that we so long for release from this little prison-house!”  From 1820 to 1847, there were 12-Companies of missionaries sent under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to the Islands.  Every group of missionaries arrived by ship, sailing from New England, around Cape Horn and finally reaching the Hawaiian Islands, usually after a five-month sea voyage.

Travel wasn’t easy. "We were hardly able to stand even by holding on with both hands ….”  Sea sickness was a constant issue for these non-sailors.  Things were stored everywhere … The “day commenced (with) the study of the Owhyhee language. … This evening held our first singing school. It is greatly to be wished that we could all join with our hearts and voices too …”

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Kaluaʻaha Congregational Church

Harvey Rexford Hitchcock was assigned to Molokai and established the first permanent Mission Station on the Island at Kaluaʻaha in 1832.  In the mid-1840s, they were working on building a new church; it was dedicated on April 3, 1844.  Kaluaʻaha Church, known as the Mother Church on Molokai, is the oldest Congregational Church on the island.

It is also one of the largest churches built in its time in Hawaiʻi.  It fell into disrepair; used off and on; on May 15, 1967 the steeple, which had tilted for years, fell from its base to the ground.  Remnants of the church are still there; in 2009, a new roof was built inside the walls of the existing church.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Charles Furneaux

A successful farmer and responsive diplomat … but, Furneaux is best known as an artist.  His reputation is mainly based on the paintings he created in Hawaiʻi, especially those of erupting volcanoes.  Charles Furneaux (1835–1913) was born in Boston and became a drawing instructor in that area.

For many years he lived in the town of Melrose, Massachusetts.  In 1880, Furneaux came from Boston to Hawaiʻi as a tourist; he decided to stay.  Furneaux spent the rest of his life in Hawaiʻi as a painter, teacher and coffee farmer.  He died in Hawaiʻi in 1913.  A lane in downtown Hilo is named for him.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.

Pahikaua – Rebellion of 1831

From 1825 until her death in 1832, Kaʻahumanu was one of the staunchest friends of the missionaries and one of the foremost supporters of their cause.  Kaʻahumanu was missionizing throughout the islands, proclaiming the new taboos against murder, adultery, Hawaiian religious practices, hula, chant, ʻawa and distilleries.

In 1824, Boki and Liliha, actively opposed Kaʻahumanu and the missionaries. Chief Abner Paki, Liliha’s cousin and konohiki (land agent/overseer) of some of the lands under their control, joined with Liliha in an attempt to take over Oʻahu.  Pahikaua (literally war knife or sword) was the attempt made by followers of Liliha to retaliate against Kaʻahumanu; the Pahikaua rebellion failed.

Click HERE for the full post and more images.