Old Mission School House

“Very soon I gathered up 12 or 15 little native girls to come once a day to the house so that as early as possible the business of instruction might be commenced. That was an interesting day to me to lay the foundation of the first school ever assembled”.  (Sybil Bingham)

“Mother Bingham … teaching at first in her own thatched house, later in one room of the old frame house still standing on King Street … until the station report of 1829 finally records, in the Missionary Herald of September, 1830:”

“As evidence of some progress among the people, we are happy to mention the erection of a large school house, 128 feet in length by 37 feet in breadth, for the accommodation of our higher schools, or classes, on the monitorial plan.” (The Friend, December 1, 1924)

“That such structures of native thatch were frail and temporary is evidenced by the next mention of this huge school house which was more than twice as long as the present one, its successor.”

“The fine large school house built at our station was blown down last fall and all the benches, doors, etc., were crushed in the ruins. It was altogether too large, 120 feet long - badly lighted, having no glass windows, the seats and desks of the rudest kind imaginable”.

“Mr Bingham has succeeded in inducing the natives to rebuild it, and when I left home, the work had commenced. It will he almost 66 feet by 30. It will be more permanent than before, and as it is for the accommodation of the weekly meetings, it will be a very useful building."  (Judd, October 23, 1833; The Friend)

"When I was little, very little, I mean, we always spoke of that adobe school house as Mrs Bingham's school house. The Hawaiians and everybody always thought of it and spoke of it as her school house, because she was the only one of the mission mothers who could manage to carry on school work even part of the time.”  (The Friend, December 1, 1924)

“I cannot tell you when the old school house was first opened for a Hawaiian school. It must have been when I was very little, perhaps even before I was born. But I do know that Mrs Bingham and occasionally some of the other ladies taught the Hawaiian Mission School there all the year, until it came time for the general meeting of the Mission in May or June.”

“That was the time when the whaleships might be expected from around the Horn, and if there was to be a reinforcement of the mission, it was appropriate to have it arrive when all the members of the mission were gathered at Honolulu.”  (Henry Parker, Pastor of Kawaiahaʻo Church; The Friend)

“We have a very good school house built of mud and plastered inside and out with lime made of coral. It is thatched with grass, has a floor, seats and benches in front to write upon… All our scholars assemble in it and after prayers the native teachers take their scholars into the old grass meeting house, leaving us with about 60, which we manage ourselves.” (Juliette Cooke; The Friend)

“(T)his old room speaks so unmistakably of other days, of other modes of building as of other modes of thought, that one is led instinctively to make inquiry into its origins.”  (Ethel Damon; The Friend)

“The desks were long benches, running from the center aisle to the side of the long single room of the building. Attached to the back of each seat or bench was the sloping desk or table, at a proper height for the sitter, and under this desk, was a shelf for books, slates, etc.”

“The school furniture was all made of soft white pine and it was not long before it began to show that not even missionary boys with sharp knives could resist the temptation to do a little artistic carving.”  (William Richards Castle; The Friend)

The early Mission School House, built about 1833-35 was also the regular meeting place of the annual missionary gathering, known as the “General Meeting.” This building stood south of Kawaiahaʻo Church, at the foot of a lane.  (Lyons)

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 design of their coming together would naturally suggest itself to any reflecting mind. They are all engaged in one work, but are stationed at various and distant points on different portions of the group, hence they feel the necessity of occasionally coming together, reviewing the past, and concerting plans for future operations.”  (The Friend, June 15, 1846)

The primary object of this gathering was to hold a business meeting for hearing reports of the year's work and of the year's experiences in more secular matters, and there from to formulate their annual report to the Board in Boston.

Another important object of the General Meeting was a social one. The many stations away from Honolulu were more or less isolated-some of them extremely so.  (Dole)

Later (1852,) the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society (HMCS – members were typically referred to as ‘Cousins’) was formed in the Old Mission School House as a social organization, as well as to lend support for the Micronesian mission getting started at the time.  (Forbes)

At its first annual meeting its president spoke of its year's survival as having been “amid the sneers of a few, the fears of some, and the ardent hopes and warm good wishes of many.” It is pleasant to feel that sneers have been hushed, fears have been banished and that hopes have been largely realized.  (Annual Report of HMCS, 1892)

In 1855, Ann Eliza Clark became a bride in the old school house to young Orramel Gulick, the second president of HMCS.  “I was only seven or eight, too little to be allowed to take any part; but I can tell you it was the most wonderful wedding I ever saw in all my life.”

“I can remember all of the bride’s party. There was Charles Kittredge and William Gulick, and Caroline and Sarah Clark. The two girls wore little leis of papaia buds in their hair. I had worked hard all day stringing those leis, so that they should be just right, without any broken petals.”

“I was too little to be privileged to adorn the bride with jasmine buds and her veil, but I remember her lei, too, just as well as if I had strung it myself - it was made of jasmine, of the just-opening buds. And that wedding was the most wonderful one I ever saw in all my life." (Julia Ann Eliza Gulick, sister of the groom; The Friend)

In 1895, the Free Kindergarten and Children's Aid Association was formed, one of Hawaiʻi’s first eleemosynary organizations.  It offered the first teacher training program and free kindergarten to all of Hawaiʻi’s children.

Some of the children were taught in the old Mission School House, “the great single room … on Kawaiahaʻo Street. Cool, spacious, dignified, generous in the proportions of its ample length and breadth, of its lofty ceiling, of its deeply recessed windows….” (The Friend, December 1, 1924)

The teacher training program was eventually moved to what became the University of Hawaiʻi, and the kindergartens were taken over by the Territorial Department of Education.  The image shows the Old Mission School House.

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John Henry Wise

On a cold Saturday afternoon November 19, 1892, Oberlin's Yeomen football team took the field in Ann Arbor against the heavily favored Michigan Wolverines (which had trounced them handily the year before.)  Oberlin's new coach, Johann Wilhelm Heisman, brought an undefeated team with him to Ann Arbor.

(After several successful years of coaching, Heisman became director of the Downtown Athletic Club in Manhattan, New York.  The club awarded a trophy to the best football player east of the Mississippi River.)

(On December 10, 1936, just two months after Heisman's death, the trophy was renamed the Heisman Memorial Trophy; it's now given to the season's most outstanding collegiate football player.)

OK, back to Oberlin and their fateful game.

One of Oberlin's players was from Hawaiʻi, theology student John Henry Wise, half-Hawaiian and half-German; he came to Oberlin after graduating from Kamehameha Schools (he was part of the KS inaugural class in 1887.)

It is believed Wise was the first Hawaiian to participate in college football.  He was considered their best lineman.

Newspapers noted Wise’s immense strength, reporting that he was “able to run with three men on his back without noticing the extra weight,” and referred to Wise and his fellow lineman ‘Jumbo’ Teeters as “two of the biggest men ever seen on a football field.”

Football was quickly becoming a dominant pastime on college campuses across the country, and this young Hawaiian was one of its rising stars.  (Williams)

It's not clear what the ‘official’ outcome of the game was.  The team captains agreed on a shortened second half, to end at 4:50 pm, so Oberlin could catch the last train home.  With less than a minute to go it was Oberlin 24, Michigan 22. As Michigan launched its last drive, the referee (from Oberlin) announced time had expired, and the Oberlin squad left the field to catch the train.

Next the umpire (from Michigan) ruled that four minutes remained, owing to timeouts that Oberlin's timekeeper had not recorded. Michigan then walked the ball over the goal line for an uncontested touchdown and was declared the winner, 26 to 24. By that time the Oberlinians were headed home clutching their own victory, 24 to 22. (oberlin-edu)

Who really won that game in 1892? The Michigan Daily and Detroit Tribune reported that Michigan had won the game, while The Oberlin News and The Oberlin Review reported that Oberlin had won.  Both schools continue to claim victory.  (oberlin-edu)

But being the first Hawaiian to play college football is only part of Wise's legacy.

When Wise returned home in 1893, the Islands were in turmoil - Queen Liliʻuokalani was overthrown and a Provisional Government had been formed.  Wise became a key member of the resistance, helping plan a January 1895 counter-revolution to restore Queen Lili‘uokalani to the throne by force.

From January 6 to January 9, 1895, patriots of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and the forces that had overthrown the constitutional Hawaiian monarchy were engaged in a war that consisted of battles on the island of Oʻahu.

It has also been called the Second Wilcox Rebellion of 1895, the Revolution of 1895, the Hawaiian Counter-revolution of 1895, the 1895 Uprising in Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian Civil War, the 1895 Uprising Against the Provisional Government or the Uprising of 1895.

In their attempt to return Queen Liliʻuokalani to the throne, it was the last major military operation by royalists who opposed the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.  The goal of the rebellion failed; Wise and over three hundred royalists (including Prince Kūhiō) were arrested.

On February 5, 1895, Wise was tried under martial law, but refused to testify against his compatriots and pleaded guilty to “misprision of treason” (knowing of a treasonous plot and failing to inform the government.)

He was sentenced to three years’ hard labor.  Wise, though sentenced to a shorter term than many who were freed, remained behind bars. He was part of a final group of eight prisoners released on New Year’s Day 1896. (Williams)

In 1907, Prince Kūhiō, along with other prominent Hawaiian men including Wise, reorganized and restored to public light, the Royal Order of Kamehameha I. In 1917, Prince Kūhiō, along with four other prominent Hawaiian men (John C. Lane, John H. Wise, Noah Aluli and Jesse Ulihi,) established the Hawaiian Civic Clubs.  (ROOK)

Wise got into politics, serving in leadership positions for all three of the major political parties of the era: Independent Home Rule, Democratic and Republican, always as an advocate fighting for the rights of native people. (Williams)

On November 13, 1914, 200-Hawaiians (including Wise) attended a meeting at the Waikīkī residence of Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole and agreed to form the Ahahui Puʻuhonua O Na Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian Protective Association), an organization which would work to uplift the Hawaiian people. US Delegate to Congress Prince Kūhiō, together with others, including Wise, were selected to draft the constitution and by-laws of the organization.  (McGregor)

In December 1918, the association's legislative committee finalized the draft of a "rehabilitation" resolution.  Wise (who was serving as Territorial Representative (and later as Senator)) introduced it when the Territorial legislature opened in January 1919 - this set the foundation for the legislative effort to have the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act passed by Congress.

By April 25, 1919, the Territorial House of Representatives passed the resolution, and Wise was appointed to a Territorial Legislative Committee responsible for carrying the Territory's legislative package to Congress.

In testimony before Congress, Wise stated, "The Hawaiian people are a farming people and fishermen, out-of-door people, and when they were frozen out of their lands and driven into the cities they had to live in the cheapest places, tenements. That is one of the big reasons why the Hawaiian people are dying. Now, the only way to save them, I contend, is to take them back to the lands and give them the mode of living that their ancestors were accustomed to and in that way rehabilitate them."

"We are not only asking for justice in the matter of division of the lands, but we are asking that the great people of the United States should pause for one moment and, instead of giving all your help to Europe, give some help to the Hawaiians and see if you can not rehabilitate this noble people."  (Congressional Record, 1920)

The effort to pass the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act took from December 1918 to July 1921; on July 9, 1921, the bill passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law.  The US Congress set aside close to 200,000-acres of former Crown and Kingdom lands for exclusive homesteading by Hawaiians of at least half Hawaiian ancestry.

It called for the formation of the Hawaiian Homes Commission to administer the homesteading program and noted that lands would be parceled out for homesteading under 99-year leases at a charge of $1 per year.

Wise retired from politics in 1925 and took up the quiet life of a farmer on Moloka‘i, where he raised pigs and grew taro. But he soon returned to Honolulu - there, he helped restore Hawaiian language instruction at his alma mater, Kamehameha Schools.

Frank Midkiff, KS president and later trustee, reminisced: “I thought it would be good to help our young people learn Hawaiian. So we got the trustees to make Hawaiian language a required course. The students were very interested in it and happy. But soon several parents came in and objected. ‘Why do you teach our children Hawaiian? ... Before, here, our children were punished if they spoke Hawaiian. They were required to speak English. That is what they need.’"  (Eyre)

Midkiff continued: “I hated to give up what I knew was good for them. I took it to the trustees. ... The trustees said, ‘Well, let’s make it elective. Maybe that will be acceptable.’ But before long, after it was made elective, several gave it up and before long the courses had to be withdrawn. All followed the parents' inclination and the teaching of Hawaiian language and culture was given up for that time being.” (Eyre)

But Midkiff, a speaker of Hawaiian, did not give up. Later that year, he and Wise wrote and published a Hawaiian language textbook, “A First Course in Hawaiian Language.” (Eyre)

One year later, and two years after the first Hawaiian language course was dropped, John Wise was hired and Hawaiian was reinstated in the curriculum, using the Midkiff/Wise textbook.  (Eyre)  In the same year, Wise was also hired by the University of Hawai‘i as its second-ever professor of Hawaiian language. (Williams)

John Henry Wise was born on July 19, 1869 in Kapaʻau, North Kohala; he died of pneumonia on August 12, 1937, at the age of 68.  At a meeting soon after his death, the University of Hawai‘i, which he helped found by sponsoring the bill that created it in 1919, named the school’s athletic field Wise Field (it was torn up and relocated long ago.) (Williams)

The image shows John Henry Wise.  In addition, I have added other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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“Miss Ball Won The Fight For Others”

A healer touches people.

A good healer touches a person’s body, mind and spirit.

A great healer touches many people’s lives.

In attempting to describe a healer who touches the lives of thousands of sufferers around the world may lead us to call that individual a saint.

Saint Damien is appropriately recognized for his commitment in easing the suffering and caring for the thousands of suffering souls, banished to Kalaupapa because they had Hansen’s disease.

An almost forgotten healer was a young (24-years old) Black chemist and pharmacist, who made a revolutionary discovery that changed the lives of Hansen's disease sufferers.

Once known as leprosy, the disease was renamed after Dr. Gerharad Armauer Hansen, a Norwegian physician, when he discovered the causative microorganism in 1873, the same year that Father Damien volunteered to serve at Kalaupapa.

Born on July 24, 1892 in Seattle, Washington, Alice Augusta Ball was the daughter of James P Ball and his wife, Laura; she lived in a middle or even upper-middle class household.

Ball’s grandfather, JP Ball, Sr, a photographer, was one of the first Blacks in the US to learn the art of daguerreotype and created in Cincinnati one of the more famous daguerreotype galleries. During his lifetime, Ball also opened photography galleries in Minneapolis, Helena, Montana, Seattle and Honolulu, where he died at the age of 79.

After moving to Hawaiʻi in 1903 and attending elementary school here, Alice Ball and her family moved back to the continent where she attended high school in Seattle, earning excellent grades, especially in the sciences.

After a stint with the family living in Montana and then returning to Seattle, Alice Ball entered the University of Washington and graduated with two degrees in pharmaceutical chemistry in 1912 and pharmacy in 1914.

In the fall of 1914, she entered the College of Hawaiʻi (later called the University of Hawaiʻi) as a graduate student in chemistry.

On June 1, 1915, she was the first African American and the first woman to graduate with a Master of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Hawaiʻi. In the 1915-1916 academic year, she also became the first woman to teach chemistry at the institution.

But the significant contribution Ball made to medicine was a successful injectable treatment for those suffering from Hansen’s disease.

She isolated the ethyl ester of chaulmoogra oil (from the tree native to India) which, when injected, proved extremely effective in relieving some of the symptoms of Hansen’s disease.

Although not a full cure, Ball’s discovery was a significant victory in the fight against a disease that has plagued nations for thousands of years.  The discovery was coined, at least for the time being, the “Ball Method.”

A College of Hawaiʻi chemistry laboratory began producing large quantities of the new injectable chaulmoogra.  During the four years between 1919 and 1923, no patients were sent to Kalaupapa – and, for the first time, some Kalaupapa patients were released.

Ball's injectable compound seemed to provide effective treatment for the disease, and as a result the lab began to receive "requests for their chaulmoogra oil preparations from all over the world.”

“The annals of medical science are incomplete unless full credit is given for the work of Alice Ball. … It was no easy task.  One after another the various preparations were tried and put aside. … It led to the discovery of the preparation which bids fair to become a specific in the treatment of leprosy. Miss Ball won the fight for others”.  (American Missionary Association, April 1922)

The “Ball Method” continued to be the most effective method of treatment until the 1940s and as late as 1999 one medical journal indicated the “Ball Method”  was still being used to treat Hansen disease patients in remote areas.

At the time of her research Ball became ill.  She worked under extreme pressure to produce injectable chaulmoogra oil and, according to some observers, became exhausted in the process.

Unfortunately, Ball never lived to witness the results of her discovery. She returned to Seattle and died at the age of 24 on December 31, 1916. The cause of her death was unknown.

On February 29, 2000, the Governor of Hawaiʻi issued a proclamation, declaring it “Alice Ball Day.” On the same day the University of Hawaiʻi recognized its first woman graduate and pioneering chemist with a bronze plaque mounted at the base of the lone chaulmoogra tree on campus near Bachman Hall.

In January 2007, Alice Augusta Ball was presented posthumously the University of Hawaiʻi Regents’ Medal of Distinction, an award to individuals of exceptional accomplishment and distinction who have made significant contributions to the University, state, region or nation or within their field of endeavor.

The image shows Alice Augusta Ball (1915 UH graduation) and the memorial chaulmoogra tree (outside Bachman Hall.)  (Lots of information from UH They Followed The Trade Winds.)  In addition, I have included other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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University of Hawaiʻi – Mānoa

“An act to establish the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts of the Territory of Hawai‘i” was passed by the Hawai‘i’s Territorial Legislature and was signed into law by Governor George Carter on March 25th, 1907.

The University of Hawaiʻi began as a land-grant college, initiated out of the 1862 US Federal Morrill Act funding for “land grant” colleges.

The Morrill Act funded educational institutions by granting federally-controlled land to the states for them to develop or sell to raise funds to establish and endow "land-grant" colleges.

Since the federal government could not "grant" land in Hawaiʻi as it did for most states, it provided a guarantee of $30,000 a year for several years, which increased to $50,000 for a time.

Regular classes began in September 1908 with ten students (five freshmen, five preparatory students) and thirteen faculty members at a temporary Young Street facility in the William Maertens' house near Thomas Square.

The Territory had just acquired the Maertens' property as a potential site for a new high school. Instead, it became temporary quarters for the new college.

Planning for a permanent University campus originally called for Lahainaluna on Maui as the site; Mountain View, above Hilo, was also considered.

The regents chose the present campus location in lower Mānoa on June 19, 1907. In 1911, the name of the school was changed to the “College of Hawaiʻi.”

The campus was a relatively dry and scruffy place, “The early Mānoa campus was covered with a tangle of kiawe trees (algarroba), wild lantana and panini cactus”.  It appears the first structures built were a poultry shed and a dairy barn.

1909 marked the beginning of the school’s first football team, called the Fighting Deans; the team played its opening game against McKinley High School ... and won.

In 1912, the college moved to the present Mānoa location (the first permanent building is known today as Hawaiʻi Hall.)  The first Commencement was June 3, 1912.

The "orienting" of the new campus was determined by the Morrill Act, which saw "land grant" colleges as occupying large squares or rectangles, arranged by surveyors along the cardinal points of the compass. Thus the original quadrangle of so many campuses (including UH) is laid out on a true compass base, ignoring in the process our mauka/makai orientations, ignoring the flow of the trade winds.

With the addition of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1920, the school became known as the University of Hawaiʻi.  The Territorial Normal and Training School (now the College of Education) joined the University in 1931.

The University continued to grow throughout the 1930s. The Oriental Institute, predecessor of the East-West Center, was founded in 1935, bolstering the University’s mounting prominence in Asia-Pacific studies.

World War II came to Hawaiʻi with the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Classes were suspended for two months and gas masks became part of commencement apparel. In 1942, students of Japanese ancestry formed the Varsity Victory Volunteers and many later joined the 442nd Regiment and 100th Infantry Battalion.

Statehood brought about a significant shift in the relationship of the University to the land it occupied.  Under territorial government, the land was really on loan; the Territory had title.

The new state constitution stated, "The University of Hawaii is hereby established as the state university and constituted a body corporate. It shall have title to all the real and personal property now or hereafter set aside or conveyed to it. ... "

One effect has been that now the State may occasionally choose to lease land to the University, rather than set it aside, because once given, such land becomes University property.

UH Mānoa’s School of Law opened in temporary buildings in 1973. The Center for Hawaiian Studies was established in 1977 followed by the School of Architecture in 1980.

The School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology was founded eight years later and in 2005 the John A Burns School of Medicine moved to its present location in Honolulu's Kakaʻako district.

From its initial enrollment of 10 in 1907, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa now schools over 20,000.

In the 1950s, after three years of offering UH Extension Division courses at the old Hilo Boarding School, the University of Hawai‘i, Hilo Branch, was approved; the UH Community Colleges system was established in 1964.

Today, the University of Hawai‘i System includes 3 universities (Mānoa, Hilo and West Oʻahu,) 7 community colleges (Kauaʻi, Leeward, Honolulu, Kapiʻolani, Windward, Maui and Hawaiʻi) and community-based learning centers across Hawai‘i.

The fall 2012 opening enrollment for the University of Hawai‘i System reached yet another high in the institution’s history with over 60,600 students.

The image shows an aerial view of the initial UH-Mānoa campus in late-19102 (UH Manoa.)  In addition, I have added other related images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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College Hill

In 1829, Governor Boki gave the land to Hiram Bingham – who subsequently gave it to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) – to establish Punahou School.

Founded in 1841, Punahou School (originally called Oʻahu College) was built at Kapunahou to provide a quality education for the children of Congregational missionaries, allowing them to stay in Hawaiʻi with their families, instead of being sent away to school.  The first class had 15 students.

The land area of the Kapunahou gift was significantly larger than the present school campus size.  Near the turn of the last century, the Punahou Board of Trustees decided to subdivide some of the land – they called their subdivision “College Hills.”

Inspired by the garden suburb ideals then becoming popular both in North America and Europe, and especially England, College Hills was initiated as a way of raising revenue for the school.

College Hills was one of several enclaves for Honolulu’s wealthier residents and marked the true beginning of park-like suburban developments in Hawaiʻi.

Following upon earlier subdivisions, such as the 1886 Seaview Tract in the area now known as “lower Manoa,” the College Hills Tract was an important real estate development in the history of Honolulu.

Using nearly 100 acres of land previously leased out as a dairy farm, Punahou subdivided the rolling landscape into separate parcels of from 10,000- to 20,000-square feet.

The “Atherton House” was built on one of the most attractive of these parcels (actually six lots purchased together.) Situated on a slight rise, and protected by the hillside of Tantalus rising to the west (Ewa) side, the Atherton House, part of the new wave of Mānoa residences. It represented the move of one of Hawaiʻi’s elite families into an area thought before to be countryside.

College Hills soon became a desirable residential area served by a streetcar, which traveled up O‘ahu Avenue and made a wide U-turn around the Atherton home on Kamehameha Avenue.

The Atherton House was the residence of Frank C Atherton and his wife Eleanore from 1902 until his death in 1945. (Mrs. Atherton continued living in the house until the early-1960s.)

Designed by architect Walter E Pinkham, the shingled two-story wood-framed house reflects the influence of the late Queen Anne, Prairie and Craftsman styles, but its lava rock piers, ʻōhia floors and large lanai denote it as Hawaiian.

The house was a gift to Atherton from his father, Joseph Ballard Atherton, the family patriarch in Hawaiʻi, who was one of a small group of North Americans and Europeans that became prominent in Hawaiʻi’s business and political life toward the end of the 19th century.

Arriving in Honolulu from Boston in 1858, JB Atherton worked first for the firm of DC Waterman, before taking a position with the larger company of Castle and Cooke.

In 1865, JB Atherton married Juliette Montague Cooke, a daughter of the Reverend Amos Starr Cooke, one of the islands’ early missionaries. Together they had six children (including Frank.)

JB Atherton became a junior partner of Castle and Cooke; by 1894, as the sole survivor of the firm’s early leadership, he became president.

He worked closely with the Pāʻia Plantation and the Haiku Sugar Company on Maui, and in 1890 was one of the incorporators of the ʻEwa Plantation Company. Together with BF Dillingham, he organized the Waialua Agricultural Company, Ltd and became the first president

Atherton served for many years the president of Castle and Cooke, one of the “Big Five” companies in Hawaiʻi. At Castle and Cooke, he distinguished himself as an energetic and progressive leader, who helped transform Hawaii’s economy away from the single agricultural crop of sugar toward greater diversity.

Eventually, Frank C Atherton would become vice-president and then president of Castle and Cooke.

For 60 years the “Atherton House” was the home of the Atherton family; the Atherton's children donated it to the University of Hawaiʻi in 1964 to serve as a home for the University of Hawaiʻi president – the University named the home “College Hill.”

While it is the designated home for the University of Hawaiʻi president, and now bears the name "College Hill," it didn't get its name because the UH president lives there.  (The Mānoa residence was built five years before the University was founded.)

Oʻahu College - as Punahou School used to be called - was located nearby. Thus, the Mānoa Valley section where Frank and Eleanore Atherton had their country home was called "College Hills Tract."

The image shows Atherton House – College Hill in its earlier years.  In addition, I have included other related images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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Mānoa

Mānoa translates as "wide or vast" and is descriptive of the wide valley that makes up the inland portion of this ahupuaʻa.

The ahupuaʻa of Mānoa has been a well-populated place. The existence of heiau and trails leading to/from Honolulu indicate it was an important and frequently traversed land.

John Papa ʻI'i wrote of the many trails leading into and throughout Honolulu and the surrounding areas. A trail led out of town at the south side of the coconut grove of Honuakaha and went on to Kalia.  From Kalia it ran eastward along the borders of the fish ponds and met the trail from lower Waikīkī.  The trail went above the stream to Puʻu o Mānoa.

The evidence of numerous agricultural terraces indicates an abundant food source, probably to support a fairly large population. Its inclusion in many legends and tales also suggests Mānoa Ahupua'a was a significant and well-loved area.

One legend explains Mānoa misty rain, the weeping in grief by a mother, Kuahine, for the death of her beautiful daughter Kahalaopuna (“Ka Ua Kuahine O Mānoa” (the Kuahine rain of Mānoa.))

Mānoa Valley was a favored spot of the Ali‘i, including Kamehameha I, Chief Boki (Governor of O‘ahu), Ka‘ahumanu, Ha‘alilio (an advisor to King Kamehameha III), Princess Victoria, Kana‘ina (father of King Lunalilo), Lunalilo, Ke‘elikōlani (half sister of Kamehameha IV) and Queen Lili‘uokalani.

Mānoa was given to the Maui chief Kame‘eiamoku by Kamehameha I after his conquest of O‘ahu. After Kame‘eiamoku death, the land was inherited by his son Ulumāheihie (or Hoapili), who became the governor of Maui during the reigns of Kamehameha II and Kamehameha III.

Liliha, the daughter of Hoapili, inherited the lands in 1811 and brought them with her to her marriage with the high chief Boki, governor of O‘ahu.

In early times Mānoa Valley was socially divided into “Mānoa-Aliʻi” or “royal Mānoa” on the west, and “Mānoa-Kanaka” or “commoners’ (makaʻāinana) Mānoa” on the east.

An imaginary line was said to have been drawn from Puʻu O Mānoa (Rocky Hill) to Pali Luahine.  The Ali‘i lived on the high, cooler western (left) slopes; the commoners lived on the warmer eastern (right) slopes and on the valley floor where they farmed.

Mānoa is watered by five streams that merge into the lower Mānoa Stream: ‘Aihualama (lit. eat the fruit of the lama tree), Waihī (lit. trickling water), Nāniu‘apo (lit. the grasped coconuts), Lua‘alaea (lit. pit [of] red earth) and Waiakeakua (lit. water provided by a god).  (Cultural Surveys)

In 1792, Captain George Vancouver described Mānoa Valley on a hike from Waikīkī in search of drinking water: “We found the land in a high state of cultivation, mostly under immediate crops of taro; and abounding with a variety of wild fowl chiefly of the duck kind … The sides of the hills, which were in some distance, seemed rocky and barren; the intermediate vallies, which were all inhabited, produced some large trees and made a pleasing appearance. The plains, however, if we may judge from the labour bestowed on their cultivation, seem to afford the principal proportion of the different vegetable productions …” (Edinburgh Gazetteer)

One century later, before it was urbanized, Mānoa Valley was described by Thrum (1892:)  “Manoa is both broad and low, with towering hills on both sides that join the forest clad mountain range at the head, whose summits are often hid in cloud land, gathering moisture there from to feed the springs in the various recesses that in turn supply the streams winding through the valley, or watering the vast fields of growing taro, to which industry the valley is devoted. The higher portions and foot hills also give pasturage to the stock of more than one dairy enterprise.”

Handy (in his book Hawaiian Planter) writes that in ancient days, all of the level land in upper Mānoa was developed into taro flats and was well-watered, level land that was better adapted to terracing than neighboring Nuʻuanu.  The entire floor of Mānoa Valley was a “checkerboard of taro patches.”

Oahu's first sugar plantation was established here in 1825, by an Englishman named John Wilkinson. Wilkinson died in 1826, the mill for the sugar was moved to Honolulu.

The plantation was sold and new owners wanted to turn it into a distillery. When Ka‘ahumanu heard of this, she was outraged and made Boki give them to Hiram Bingham and his wife as a base for mission work (and later, Punahou School.)

The well-watered, fertile and relatively level lands of Mānoa Valley supported extensive wet taro cultivation well into the twentieth century. Handy and Handy estimated that in 1931 “there were still about 100 terraces in which wet taro was planted, although these represented less than a tenth of the area that was once planted by Hawaiians.” (Cultural Surveys)

In the early part of the nineteenth century, the Japanese began to move in to the upper valley to start truck farms, growing strawberries, vegetables, such as Japanese dryland taro, Japanese burdock, radishes, sweet potatoes, lettuce, carrots, soy beans and flowers to sell to the Honolulu markets.

“Though the valley is under almost complete cultivation of taro, largely by Chinese companies, an effort was made by them in 1882 to divert it to the growth of rice, but after two years struggle with high winds, cold rains and myriads of rice birds it was abandoned.”  (Thrum, 1892)

Today, Mānoa is primarily a residential community in Honolulu’s Primary Urban Center.  It is home to over 20,000 permanent residents and University of Hawaiʻi-Manoa (with a student body population of around 20,000) (and several other schools, businesses, etc.)

The image shows Mānoa Valley taro loʻi (UH Heritage, 1890.)  In addition, I have added other related images in a folder of like kind in the Photos section on my Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/peter.t.young.hawaii

© 2012 Hoʻokuleana LLC