Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Thomas R Foster

He was born May 19, 1835 at Fisher’s Grant, Pictou, Nova Scotia, Canada; he later went to work with for his brother, Daniel Foster, in his shipbuilding business in Warren, Bristol County, Rhode Island in the 1850s. In 1857, Thomas and his brother Daniel decided to move to Hawaiʻi to try the shipbuilding business in the Pacific.

Foster met and married Mary Elizabeth Mikahala Robinson, the eldest daughter of James Robinson, the prominent local ship builder in 1861 (they did not have any children.) Foster began Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company. When airplanes came to the Hawaiian Islands, the Inter-Island Navigation Company founded a subsidiary, Inter-Island Airways (Hawaiian Air.)

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Kahana

Forever I shall sing the praisesOf Kahana’s beauty unsurpassedThe fragrance of beauteous mountainsBy the zephyrs to thee is wafted(Written for Mary Foster and her country home at Kahana) The island of Oʻahu is divided into 6 moku (districts), consisting of: ‘Ewa, Kona, Koʻolauloa, Koʻolaupoko, Waialua and Waiʻanae. These moku were further divided into 86 ahupua‘a […]

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Aliʻiolani College

The school seemed to change names, and locations; but, for the most part, it was run by the same person, Leopold Gilbert Blackman. Born on July 4, 1874 in Cheltenham, England, Blackman was the son of Thomas and Harriet (Sutherland) Blackman. He was an associate of Saint Nicholas College, Lancing, England, and was principal of […]

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Foster Botanical Garden

In 1853, Queen Kalama leased 4.6 acres of land to William Hillebrand, a botanist as well as a physician; he and his wife built a home in the upper terrace area of the present garden. The magnificent trees which now tower over this area were planted by him. Six years after his arrival, he and […]

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James Robinson

  James Robinson came to the islands from London, his birthplace, arriving here in 1820, before the first missionaries (while rounding Cape Horn his ship passed the “Thaddeus,” which was bringing the first missionaries from New England.) He was carpenter on the whaling ship “Hermes.”  In 1822, sailing from Honolulu for Japan the Hermes was […]