Kona Coffee | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

December 7, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Charles Hall

In 1825 an English agriculturist named John Wilkinson arrived in Hawai‘i on the frigate Blonde; on the way from England, they stopped in Brazil where he obtained coffee seedlings.

They first landed in Hilo and left some coffee there. Wilkinson went on Oahu and is noted for starting the first commercial coffee in the Islands in Mānoa.

Coffee was planted in Mānoa Valley in the vicinity of the present UH-Mānoa campus; from a small field, trees were introduced to other areas of O‘ahu and neighbor islands.

In 1828, American missionary Samuel Ruggles took cuttings of the same kind of coffee from Hilo and brought them to Kona. Writer Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) later described the region in his Letters from Hawaiʻi …

“The ride through the district of Kona to Kealakekua Bay took us through the famous coffee and orange section. I think the Kona coffee has a richer flavor than any other, be it grown where it may and call it what you please.”

“Mr Hall (was) among the first and oldest coffee growers and (his) brands were considered the best.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, January 13, 1866) Farming in Hokukano, near Kainaliu, Kona in the 1830s, he took a risk and planted fifty acres of coffee. (Teves)

“Some 4 or 5 miles beyond Keauhou I reached Mr Hall’s place where he has an extensive coffee plantation. His thatched house or rather houses is pleasantly located among beautiful shade trees, among them the Pride of India, Kukui, &c &c.”

“He has many thousand coffee trees & after 5 years labor is beginning to find it profitable. He has a native wife & a family of several children.”

“His wife is a daughter of Mr Rice of Kailua. Mr R[ice] was formerly intemperate & his family was left to go to ruin. This daughter was particularly vicious. On his reformation from intemperance he set about the reformation & discipline of his family.”

“This daughter, before he could bring her to submission to his authority he was obliged to keep chained by the ankle in his house for some 3 months; at last she gave up & the effect on her subsequent life was very salutary.” (Lyman)

While he later was a coffee farmer, in 1834, Hall was still practicing his trade of carpentry and was also hunting bullocks, so he was familiar with the mountain. (Greenwell)

Hall “is an American & has spent many years on the Island, has been employed in beef-catching & is familiar with the mountainous regions.”

It was then that naturalist David Douglas (for whom the Douglas fir tree was named), On July 12, 1834, while exploring the Island; “Douglas, a scientific traveller from Scotland, in the service of the London Horticultural Society, lost his life in the mountains of Hawaii, in a pitfall, being gored and trampled to death by a wild bullock captured there. (Bingham)

“When the death of Douglass was known at Hilo (Hall) was sent by the Missionaries to the pit to gather information. There had been a heavy rain the day before he reached the place & all tracks &c were obliterated.” (Lyman)

Some have suggested it was not an accident. “(T)he dead body of the distinguished Scottish naturalist, Douglas, was found under painfully suspicious circumstances, that led many to believe he had been murdered for his money.” (Coan)

“Hall says that he saw Douglass have a large purse of money which he took to be gold. None of any consequence was found after his death.” (Lyman) “Mr. Hall says he has no doubt in his own mind that Douglas was murdered”. (Fullard-Leo)

Hall, a native of Virginia, died at his residence at Kainaliu on March 19, 1880 at the age of 69 year. “He had resided on these lslands for over fifty years, having arrived here in 1829, as a seaman on board an American ship.”

“He was carpenter by trade, and soon got employment with the chiefs. He married the daughter of small chief at Pahoehoe, North Kona, and after her death, he married Hannah, the daughter of the late Samuel Rice, Gov Kuakini’s black-smith, who survives him and by whom he had large family of children, seven of whom are now living.”

“Up to an advanced age and until he was crippled by an accident, Mr Hall was ‘a mighty hunter’ of wild cattle on the mountains of Hawaii, and could outwalk most men of half his years. He was kind and affectionate husband and father and good neighbor. (The Friend, May 1880)

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August 26, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Mānoa – Home of Hawai‘i’s Commercial Agricultural Ventures

Mānoa translates as “wide or vast” and is descriptive of the wide valley that makes up the inland portion of the ahupuaʻa of Waikiki. The existence of heiau and trails leading to/from Honolulu indicate it was an important and frequently traversed land.

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.

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. 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)

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)

“(T)he valley is under almost complete cultivation of taro”. “(T)he whole valley opens out to view, the extensive flat area set out in taro, looking like a huge checker-board, with its symetrical emerald squares in the middle ground.” (Thrum, 1892)

In 1825 an English agriculturist named John Wilkinson, who in his younger years had been a planter in the West Indies, arrived at Honolulu on the frigate Blonde. He had made some arrangement with Governor Boki, while the latter was in England, to go out and engage in cultivating sugar cane … and, probably, rum. (Kuykendall)

Although sugar cane had grown in Hawaiʻi for many centuries, its commercial cultivation for the production of sugar did not occur until 1825. In that year, Wilkinson and Boki started a plantation in Mānoa Valley. Within six months they had seven acres of cane growing and processing. The sugar mill was later converted into a distillery for rum. (Schmitt)

Over the years, sugar‐cane farming soon proved to be the only available crop that could be grown profitably under the severe conditions imposed upon plants grown on the lands which were available for cultivation. (HSPA 1947)

At the industry’s peak a little over a century later (1930s,) Hawaii’s sugar plantations employed more than 50,000 workers and produced more than 1-million tons of sugar a year; over 254,500-acres were planted in sugar.

The sugar industry is at the center of Hawaiʻi’s modern diversity of races and ethnic cultures. Of the nearly 385,000 workers that came, many thousands stayed to become a part of Hawai‘i’s unique ethnic mix.

Hawai‘i continues to be one of the most culturally-diverse and racially-integrated places on the globe. And remember, commercial-scale sugar production started in Mānoa.

That was not the only plantation-scale agriculture started in Mānoa. In 1885, John Kidwell started a pineapple farm with locally available plants, but their fruit was of poor quality. That prompted him to search for better cultivars; he later imported 12 ‘Smooth Cayenne’ plants.

An additional 1,000 plants were obtained from Jamaica in 1886, and an additional 31 cultivars, including ‘Smooth Cayenne’, were imported from various locations around the world. ‘Smooth Cayenne’ was reported to be the best of the introductions.

Kidwell is credited with starting Hawai‘i’s pineapple industry; after his initial planting, others soon realized the potential of growing pineapples in Hawaii and consequently, started their own pineapple plantations.

The “development of the (Hawaiian) pineapple industry is founded on his selection of the Smooth Cayenne variety and on his conviction that the future lay in the canned product, rather than in shipping the fruit in the green state.” (Canning Trade; Hawkins)

The commercial Hawaiian pineapple canning industry began in 1889 when Kidwell’s business associate, John Emmeluth, a Honolulu hardware merchant and plumber, produced commercial quantities of canned pineapple.

Emmeluth refined his pineapple canning process between 1889 and 1891, and around 1891 packed and shipped 50 dozen cans of pineapple to Boston, 80 dozen to New York, and 250 dozen to San Francisco.

By 1930 Hawai‘i led the world in the production of canned pineapple and had the world’s largest canneries. And remember, the first commercial cultivation of pineapple and subsequent canning of pineapple started in Mānoa.

Other smaller scale agriculture activities across the Islands also started in Mānoa. Wilkinson, noted for starting commercial sugar in Mānoa, also started commercial coffee in the Islands in Mānoa Valley.

Coffee was planted in Mānoa Valley in the vicinity of the present UH-Mānoa campus; from a small field, trees were introduced to other areas of O‘ahu and neighbor islands.

In 1828, American missionary Samuel Ruggles took cuttings of the same kind of coffee from Hilo and brought them to Kona. Henry Nicholas Greenwell grew and marketed coffee and is recognized for putting “Kona Coffee” on the world markets.

At Weltausstellung 1873 Wien (World Exhibition in Vienna, Austria (1873,)) Greenwell was awarded a “Recognition Diploma” for his Kona Coffee. (Greenwell Farms)

Writer Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) seemed to concur with this when he noted in his Letters from Hawaiʻi, “The ride through the district of Kona to Kealakekua Bay took us through the famous coffee and orange section. I think the Kona coffee has a richer flavor than any other, be it grown where it may and call it what you please.”

By the 1930s there were more than 1,000 farms and, as late as the 1950s, there were 6,000-acres of coffee in Kona. The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaiʻi. And remember, ‘Kona Coffee’ was the same as that in Mānoa Valley.

Another commercial crop, macadamia nuts, also has its Island roots in Mānoa. Macadamia seeds were first imported into Hawaiʻi in 1882 by William Purvis; he planted them in Kapulena on the Hāmākua Coast. A second introduction into Hawaii was made in 1892 by Robert and Edward Jordan who planted the trees at the former’s home in Nuʻuanu Honolulu. (Storey)

“Brought in ‘solely as an addition to the natural beauty of Paradise’ (Hawaiian Annual, 1940,) it was not until ES (Ernest Sheldon) Van Tassel started some plantings at Nutridge in 1921 that the commercial growing of the plant began. On June 1, 1922, the Hawaiian Macadamia Nut Company Ltd. was formed.” (NPS)

The Van Tassel plantings were at ʻUalakaʻa on a grassy hillside of former pasture land (what we call Round Top on the western slopes of Mānoa Valley.)

Mo‘olelo (Hawaiian stories) indicate that Pu‘u ‘Ualaka‘a was a favored locality for sweet potato cultivation and King Kamehameha I established his personal sweet potato plantation here. ‘Pu‘u translates as “hill” and ‘ualaka‘a means “rolling sweet potato”, so named for the steepness of the terrain.

In order to stimulate interest in macadamia culture, beginning January 1, 1927, a Territorial law exempted properties in the Territory, used solely for the culture or production of macadamia nuts, from taxation for a period of 5 years.

In just over 10-years (1933,) “the Hawaiian Macadamia Nut Company has about 7,000 trees in its groves at Keauhou, Kona District, Hawaii, which are now coming into profitable bearing. The company has also approximately 2,000 trees growing and producing in the Nutridge grove on Round Top, Honolulu, or a total of 9,000 trees.” (Mid-Pacific, October 1933)

Macadamia nut candies became commercially available a few years later. Two well-known confectioners, Ellen Dye Candies and the Alexander Young Hotel candy shop, began making and selling chocolate-covered macadamia nuts in the middle or late 1930s. Another early maker was Hawaiian Candies & Nuts Ltd., established in 1939 and originators of the Menehune Mac brand. (Schmitt)

In 1962, MacFarms established one of the world’s largest single macadamia nut orchards with approximately 3,900-acres on the South Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaiʻi.

Today, about 570 growers farm 17,000 acres of macadamia trees, producing 40 million pounds of in-shell nuts, valued at over $30 million. Additionally, nuts are imported from South Africa and Australia, who currently lead the world market, with Hawai‘i at #3. (hawnnut) And remember, commercial cultivation of macadamia nut’s started at Mānoa.

One last thing, Mānoa was home to the Islands’ first dairy; William Harrison Rice started it at what was then O‘ahu College (now Punahou School.) Later, Woodlawn Dairy was the Islands’ largest dairy (1879.)

As you can see, what became significant commercial-scale agricultural ventures in the Islands – Sugar, Pineapple, Coffee and Macadamia Nuts – all had their start in the Islands, in Mānoa.

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Manoa_Valley_from_Waikiki,_oil_on_canvas_by_Enoch_Wood_Perry_Jr.-1860s

Taro Lo’i Agriculture in Mānoa Valley-(UH_Heritage)-ca_1890

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Buggies on Mt. Tantalus, Honolulu, 1900s.

Old Manoa Valley-1924

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Workers loading sugar cane-1905-BM

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Hawaiian Pineapple Company Canning Lines, Honolulu, O‘ahu, 1958

Coffee

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June 19, 2017 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Kona Hotel

From 1899 to 1926, Hōlualoa was a sugar town; coffee was cut down to make way for fields of sugarcane, which surrounded Hōlualoa. The sugar plantation carried the region’s economy, and Holualoa became its commercial center.

Plantation camps sprang up near the mill and along the length of the railway. Catholic, Protestant and Buddhist churches were established to serve the multiethnic community.

Luther Aungst chose Hōlualoa as headquarters for the Kona Telephone Company, started in the 1890s. Using mules to drag telephone poles across lava flows, Aungst installed a line from Hilo to Ka‘u, and across Kona to North Kohala.

Dr Harvey Saburo Hayashi from Aomori-ken, Japan, one of Kona’s first full-time resident physicians and publisher of Kona’s first newspaper, the Kona Echo, lived there.

The Kona Sugar Company started in 1899 with ambitious plans to create a major sugar plantation in Kona. The company built Kona’s first sugar mill above Kailua Village in 1901.

The mill site was near Waiaha Steam. But water was not sufficient to properly process the cane; in 1903, the company went broke. Other investors tried to keep it alive, but the plantation failed in 1926.

Sugar’s collapse spelled economic ruin for many people. Coffee kept Hōlualoa alive, but just barely. Young people looking for employment left North Kona in droves, finding work in Honolulu or the mainland. (Kona Historical Society)

It was at this time (1926,) when Zentaro and Hatsuyo Inaba opened their 11-room Kona Hotel in 1926, they advertised “Rooms and Meals”.

The business was quickly a going concern in Hōlualoa town and initially catered to traveling businessmen like the Love’s Bakery salesman. They also welcomed the occasional tourist traveling from Hilo, via Volcano, in modified Packard ‘Sampan’ automobiles. (Pulama ia Kona)

“My father was Zentaro Inaba. That’s my stepfather. My mother was Hatsuyo Inaba. Her maiden name was Hatsuyo Miyamoto. Now, my real father, when I was very young, left for the Mainland.”

“And subsequent to that, my [step]father came to Kona and married my mother. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t know my real father. Ever since my childhood, my father was Zentaro Inaba.”

“I think they came here during the latter part of the 1890s. Mother came to Kona with my father – that is, Kitao – and my stepfather came from Pāpaʻikou to Kona. He was one of the contract laborers in Pāpaʻikou.”

“You know, those days, because of the pressures, because of the treatment that they had in the plantation under a contract system, he was dissatisfied. So, he actually ran away from his contract and came to Kona.”

“He used to tell me how he came to Kona. He travelled at night. He was afraid of being caught during the day. And from Pāpaʻikou to Kona, it took him three days to get to Kona.”

“He settled in Kona. As soon as he settled in Kona, he started working for the LS Aungsts – Luther Aungst’s family as a cook. He cooked for the family for 17 years, I think. I think it was about 17 years that he cooked for the Aungst family.”

Then, “they built that hotel – Kona Hotel – in 1926. So, they were running the hotel. … Father used to cook, and mother used to clean the rooms and so on. And they had a girl there that did the rooms. Mother did the laundry and things like that. And father did the cooking.”

“Who were the people who used to stay at the hotel? … Oh, most of them were salesmen … Travelling salesmen. Then, we’d have tourists come in once in a while. Because, at that time, the only hotels were the Kona Inn and Manago Hotel in Kona. And, of course, my folks’ hotel.” (Minuro Inaba, Social History)

“I guess his cooking ability was the reason they opened the hotel. The hotel food was western and Father was quite a cook. He always served soup which was well liked by the customers … beef soup.”

Zentaro and Hatsuyo’s son Goro and wife Yayoko continued the family tradition and today the historic Kona Hotel is still operated by the Inaba ‘ohana. (Pulama ia Kona)

By 1958, just over 1,000 people lived in Hōlualoa area. The construction of Kuakini Highway in the early-1950s reduced traffic through town even further.

Tourism and a coffee boom have brought new life to Hōlualoa. Eager entrepreneurs have transformed old garages and empty houses into galleries showcasing art of every description, some of it produced by artists who grew up in Hōlualoa.

Friendly family-run businesses such as Kimura’s Lauhala Shop, the Kona Hotel, and thrice-named Paul’s Place (formerly Tanimoto General Store in the 1890s, and later Morikami Store in the late 1920s) keep old Kona alive. (Kona Historical Society)

Ranchers herded their cattle to Kailua Bay where they were shipped out. This process involved lassoing the cattle and pulling them into the bay, where they were lashed onto the gunwales of waiting whaleboats and delivered to waiting ships. The last cattle were shipped out in 1956, when the deep harbor at Kawaihae supplanted the Kailua Harbor. (Kona Historical Society)

I fondly remember, as a kid in Kona, we occasionally got to go sheep hunting at Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a. A regular stop for us on the way home was to see the Inabas at Kona Hotel, where we left with them one of the sheep we shot.

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Kona Hotel

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November 7, 2014 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Coffee

Ke kope hoʻohia ʻā maka o Kona.
(The coffee of Kona that keeps the eyes from sleeping.)

The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaiʻi.

Don Francisco de Paula y Marin recorded in his journal, dated January 21, 1813, that he had planted coffee seedlings on the island of Oʻahu. The first commercial coffee plantation was started in Kōloa, Kauaʻi, in 1836.

Coffee was planted in Mānoa Valley in the vicinity of the present UH-Mānoa campus; from a small field, trees were introduced to other areas of O‘ahu and neighbor islands.

John Wilkinson, a British agriculturist, obtained coffee seedlings from Brazil. These plants were brought to Oʻahu in 1825 board the HMS Blonde (the ship also brought back the bodies of Liholiho and Kamāmalu who had died in England) and planted in Mānoa Valley at the estate of Chief Boki, the island’s governor.

In 1828, American missionary Samuel Ruggles took cuttings from Mānoa and brought them to Kona. Henry Nicholas Greenwell grew and marketed coffee and is recognized for putting “Kona Coffee” on the world markets.

At Weltausstellung 1873 Wien (World Exhibition in Vienna, Austria (1873,)) Greenwell was awarded a “Recognition Diploma” for his Kona Coffee. Greenwell descendants continue the family’s coffee-growing tradition in Kona. (Greenwell Farms)

Hermann Widemann introduced the ‘Guatemalan’ variety (known as ‘Kona typica’) to Hawaiʻi in 1892. He gave seeds to John Horner, who planted an orchard of 800 trees in Hāmākua, comparing 400 trees of this new variety with 400 of the then-current variety known as ‘kanaka koppe,’ the so-called ‘Hawaiian coffee’, probably from 30 plants brought from Brazil by Wilkinson. (CTAHR)

“’Coffee-trees are often planted with a crowbar,’ it is said. Strange as this may seem, it is nevertheless true. A hole is drilled through the rock, or lavacrust, and the soil thus reached; the tree, a small twig dug up from the forest, is planted in this hole, and it grows, thrives, and yields fruit abundantly.” (Musick, 1898)

In 1892 it was estimated there were probably 1,000-acres in old coffee throughout North and South Kona; 150-acres new set out by the two companies then under way there, with expectation of setting out fifty more; 170-acres in the Hāmākua and Hilo districts and about 100 in Puna. (Thrum)

“Hardly a mail arrives from abroad but brings further enquiry for coffee lands and information as to area; how obtainable; situation; prices, etc., and the usual multitudinous questions pertaining thereto, all of which gives evidence of the readiness of foreign capital to come in and push forward the reviving industry with vigor. (Thrum, 1892)

More than 140,000 Japanese came to Hawai‘i between 1885 and 1924, with 3-year labor contracts to work for the sugar plantations; when their contract expired, many decided that a different lifestyle suited them better. Many moved to Kona to grow coffee.

By 1905, only a few large plantations were left. At first, they attempted to operate on a share-crop basis, but eventually the land was divided and leased to tenant farmers. (Goto)

This trend was adopted by others, and 5+/- acre parcels were leased primarily to first-generation Japanese families. The downsizing revolutionized and rescued the Kona coffee industry. (Choy)

By the 1890s, the large Kona coffee plantations were broken into smaller (5+/- acres) family farms. By 1915, tenant farmers, largely of Japanese descent, were cultivating most of the coffee.

The 1890s boom in coffee-growing in North Kona was encouraged by rising prices. Although sugarcane plantations expanded with US annexation in 1898, coffee-growing grew in Kona because of its adaptability to land that was too rocky for sugarcane.

During the early coffee boom, Portuguese and then Japanese laborers had filtered into Kona. As one coffee plantation after another gave up when coffee prices fell and sugar plantations became more attractive, these plantations were broken up into small parcels (3 to 5-acres) and leased to these laborers.

Many worked on the newly formed sugar plantations and worked their coffee orchards as side lines. As the coffee prices remained low, the Portuguese abandoned the coffee orchards, and by 1910, the Japanese were about the only growers left to tend the coffee trees. (NPS)

Coffee production was so important to the Kona community; in 1932, the local high school’s ‘summer’ vacation was shifted from the traditional Memorial Day to Labor Day (June-July-August) to August-September-October, “to meet the needs of the community, whose chief crop is coffee and most of which ripens during the fall months.” (It lasted until 1969.) (Ka Wena o Kona 1936; HABS)

At the turn of the last century there was coffee on all the major Hawaii islands. By the 1930s there were more than 1,000 farms and, as late as the 1950s, there were 6,000-acres of coffee in Kona. Today, there are about 700 coffee growers statewide, 600 of them on the Big Island. (Hughes)

The Kona Coffee Cultural Festival (in its 44th year) starts today and runs through November 16, with activities held throughout West Hawaiʻi.

This Festival has created a cultural experience in Hawaiʻi that showcases Kona’s nearly 200-year coffee heritage, culinary delights and the working Kona coffee farmers who work to preserve, perpetuate and promote Kona’s famous harvest.

The image shows Hawaiʻi coffee. 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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September 18, 2014 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Henry Nicholas Greenwell

William Thomas Greenwell (1777–1856) and Dorothy Smales (1789–1871) of Lanchester, Durham, England had a son, Henry Nicholas Greenwell on January 9, 1826.

Henry was educated in the Durham Grammar School and at Sandhurst, the British military college. As fourth son he had little chance of inheriting the family estate called Greenwell Ford.

After graduating from the Royal Military Academy, in 1843, at the age of 17, he became an Ensign in the 70th Regiment of Foot, and a Lieutenant in 1844. Part of his military work included helping feed folks starving during the Potato Famine in 1847.

Finding the military life insupportable, at the age of 23 he left for Australia to make a new start, arriving there on July 4, 1848. In early-1849, he decided Australia was not for him, then got a partner and planned to make a profit by buying goods in Australia and selling them in San Francisco.

“On arrival, all hands took off for the gold fields, leaving the partners to unload the goods themselves. During this process, HNG was severely injured and was forced to go to Honolulu for treatment. He arrived on January 2, 1850 … On recovery he discovered that his partners had run out on him”.

He worked as an agent for HJH Holdsworth in his importing and retail business, and opened a branch of the business at Kailua (Kona) in September of 1850. (Kona Echo, April 1, 1950; Melrose, Kinue)

The Greenwell store was built around 1851 at Kalukalu (Kealakekua, near Konawaena High School) and originally served as a store and post office. (Greenwell also served as the area’s postmaster as well as the area’s general merchandiser.)

The HN Greenwell Store is now a museum set in the 1890s timeframe, with costumed interpreters and period merchandizing. (Admission is $7 for adults, $5 for seniors (60+ years old), $3 for children (5-12 years old) and children under 5 years old are free.)

Greenwell started to buy land, gradually acquired extensive land holdings, and got into the cattle and sheep business on a large scale. (In 1879, he acquired the lease on Keauhou from Dr Georges Trousseau.)

Greenwell grew oranges. “At last we reached a cross-road store, back of which is a vast orange-grove. This is the home of Mrs. HN Greenwell, and is known as Kalu Kalu, South Kona. We drew rein in front of the store and called for some refreshments. … The oranges were the largest and sweetest I ever saw.”

“In a large wareroom the people were packing the oranges in boxes for shipping. There were several hundred barrels of the fruit in a pile, and men and women were wrapping the oranges separately in tissue-paper and placing them in boxes. I was told that the Greenwell plantation produced the largest sweet oranges in the world, and from my own experience I believe the statement true.” (Musick)

He also grew coffee and is recognized for putting “Kona Coffee” on the world markets. In 1873, at Weltausstellung 1873 Wien (World Exhibition in Vienna, Austria (1873,)) Greenwell was awarded a “Recognition Diploma” for his Kona Coffee. Greenwell descendants continue the family’s coffee-growing tradition in Kona. (Greenwell Farms)

At one point Greenwell was accused of 2nd degree murder; he pled not guilty, testimony in support of his plea was made and he was ultimately found not guilty.

Henry married Elizabeth Caroline Hall on April 9, 1868, and they had six sons and four daughters, William Henry Greenwell June 7, 1869,) Dora Caroline (Carrie) Greenwell (October 15, 1870,) Arthur Leonard Greenwell (December 7, 1871,) Elizabeth (Lillie) Greenwell (April 11, 1873,) Christina Margaret (September 16, 1874,) Francis Radcliffe (Frank or “Palani”) Greenwell (August 26, 1876,) Wilfrid Alan Greenwell (November 7, 1878,) Julian Greenwell (September 2, 1880,) Edith Amy Greenwell (August 28, 1883) and Leonard Lanchester Greenwell (December 4, 1884.)

Greenwell died May 18, 1891. His significant land holdings were eventually divided into three main ranches and were run by grandsons of his.

In the North (Honokōhau area,) son Frank first managed and then grandsons Robert and James Greenwell;) relatively central (Kalukalu,) son William, then grandson Norman managed and in the South (Captain Cook,) son Arthur, then grandson Sherwood managed. (The latter two ranches were sold, Lanihau Properties/Palani Ranch are still controlled by Greenwells.)

The image shows Henry Nicholas Greenwell. 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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