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August 2, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Brother Joseph

Ira Barnes Dutton was born April 27, 1843 on a family farm in Stowe, Vermont, son of Methodist parents Ezra Dutton and Abigail Barnes. His family moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, four years later.

In 1861, he enlisted with the 13th Wisconsin Infantry and served in the Union Army during the Civil War as a quartermaster, as well as nursing the wounded and burying the dead. He was discharged in 1866 as a Captain, but stayed in the South tracing missing soldiers, collecting their remains and settling survivors’ claims.

This and a failed marriage led him into alcoholism, and by his own account he spent the next decade in a drunken stupor (“I never injured anyone but myself.”) When he emerged from the gutter in 1876, wanting to do penance for his “wild years” and “sinful capers,” he began to study religion and in 1883 joined the Trappist Monastery at Gethsemane, Kentucky.

It was only after reading about Father Damien that he found his “real vocation;” he sought to help Damien on Molokai. His motive was not to hide from the world, but “to do some good for my neighbor and at the same time make it my penitentiary in doing penance for my sins and errors.” From San Francisco, he sailed for Molokai. (McNamara)

When he arrived on July 29, 1886, although he never took religious vows, he became known as “Brother Joseph” and “Brother Dutton,” “brother to everybody.” (McNamara)

His days were spent as a janitor, cleaning the primitive shelters, scrubbing floors, while also building latrines and outbuildings and bandaging sores, as well as helping Mother Marianne Cope in keeping records and organizing arriving patients. Like Mother Marianne and unlike Father Damien, he never contracted Hansen’s Disease. (Rutler)

Every day he marveled more and more at what he saw around him, bravery, he often said, greater than in the war he had been through. He enjoyed the playing of the church organist; one day he saw that one of the man’s hands was so diseased that all that was left was a stump which the organist had fastened to a stick and with which he struck the bass notes. (Burton)

Damien knew how different they were in temperament “but there is love between us,” he said. Damien had urged Dutton to become a priest; but Dutton felt unfit. “That requires a high character and great purity,” he said and he evidently felt that his early life had disqualified him. (Burton)

On Molokai, Dutton found real peace and joy. One peer recalled: “Dutton had a divine temper; nothing could ruffle it.” At 83, Joseph wrote: “I am ashamed to think that I am inclined to be jolly. Often think we don’t know that our Lord ever laughed, and here my laugh is ready to burst out any minute.” (McNamara)

He never left Molokai; he never wanted to. “Seek a vacation?” he asked. “Anything else would be slavery … The people here like me, I think, and I am sure I like them.” He added: “I would not leave my lepers for all the money the world might have.”

The one exception was in 1917, when the 74-year-old patriot tried “to buckle on my sword-belt again” and re-enlist. His application was rejected, but he wasn’t heart-broken. (McNamara)

Brother Joseph taught the children the games he had played as a child. Molokai became very proud of its baseball teams, coached and uniformed by Brother Joseph himself.

The one thing that had troubled Father Damien was what would happen to his children when he died. Now he could smile and say, “I can die now. Brother Joseph will take care of my orphans.” (Burton) (Damien came to Kalawao in 1873, he died in 1889. Brother Joseph worked with Damien for three years; he continued to serve the patients there for several more decades.)

In 1908, while the fleet of the US Navy toured the Pacific, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the ships to sail with flying colors as they passed the leper colony of Molokai in order to acknowledge the years of selfless service given by Brother Joseph. Despite such an honor, Brother Joseph’s desire was to work and pray in obscurity. (Heisey)

Still, more honors came. A bill in the Hawaiʻi Territorial legislature proposed to give Brother Joseph a $50 monthly pension for his “inspiring services;” the bill was tabled at his request and he said he “was in good health and wanted no reward for his work among the lepers.” (Arkansas Catholic, July 19, 1919) In 1929 Pope Pius XI sent his apostolic blessing. (Heisey)

On the eve of his 86th birthday, the 1929 session of the legislature adopted a resolution of appreciation of Brother Joseph Dutton’s services that briefly notes, “Resolved, that this House put on record its appreciation of the great and inspiring service and influence for good in the splendid and effective service he has rendered in their behalf during the past 40 years by Brother Joseph Dutton, in his ministration to the afflicted in Kalawao and Kalaupapa, and that the thanks of the House of Representatives be extended to him in this memorial.” (Thrum)

Brother Joseph died on March 26, 1931. Former president Calvin Coolidge in his daily syndicated newspaper column noted, “Far out in the islands of the Pacific the soul of Brother Joseph Dutton has been released from the limitations of this earth … (T)his man died a saintly world figure.”

“His faith, his works, his self-sacrifice appeal to people because there is always something of the same spirit in them. Therein lies the moral power of this world. He realized a vision which we all have. The universal response to the example of his life is another demonstration of what mankind regard as just and true and holy.”

“He showed the power of what is good and the binding force of the common brotherhood of man.” (Milwaukee Sentinel, March 29, 1931)

A couple interesting side notes relate to Brother Joseph and Stowe, Vermont. After fleeing Austria in 1938, the von Trapp family (Trapp Family Singers (of Sound of Music fame; refugees from pre-war Austria)) bought a farm in the mountains of Stowe in 1942 and made it their adopted home.

When the town was looking for a site for a new church, Maria von Trapp, the family matriarch, provided support for acquisition of land and building of the Blessed Sacrament Church (they purposefully purchased a portion of the Dutton’s former farm where Brother Joseph was born.) The first mass was held on March 6, 1949.

The church windows, walls and ceilings were painted and decorated by internationally renowned French artist Andre Girard. Twelve exterior panels depict the life of Damien and Brother Joseph at Kalawao. The church and its panels were recently restored.

In March 1952, the Trapp Family Singers visited Molokai and sang over Brother Joseph’s grave. (Yenkavitch) “Gently, Johannes placed our Mount Mansfield pine wreath at the foot of the cross. Then we began to sing. How often have I felt with deepest gratitude this great glory of our life as a singing family: that, whenever words failed to say what was taking place in our hearts, we could always express it in music.” (Maria von Trapp, The News and Tribune, January 3, 1960)

Recently, a 7-foot marble statue of Brother Joseph, depicting him as a young Civil War Union soldier, was placed at Molokai’s St. Joseph Church in Kamalo (the church Damien built;) a second statue is expected to be installed at Damien Memorial School in Honolulu (it is planned to be placed in back of the school, facing the campus’ running track.)

August 1, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘Bloody Monday’

In 1935, as part of the New Deal initiatives, Congress passed the Wagner Act legalizing workers’ rights to join and be represented by labor unions.

In Hawaiʻi, business was dominated by the Big Five: Alexander & Baldwin, C. Brewer, Castle & Cooke, AmFac and Theo. Davies. Nearly everything of significance, from banks to shipping lines and sugar plantations to newspapers, was tightly controlled by the Big Five.

One third of the population of the islands was living on the plantations, with seventy percent of the people directly dependent on plantation economy.

The Hilo Longshoremen’s Association was formed on November 22, 1935, when about 30 young longshoremen of almost every ethnic and racial origin common to the territory agreed to join forces and organize all the waterfront workers regardless of race or national origin.

By the summer of 1937, with the help of the longshoremen, Hilo had the following unions: Hilo Laundry Workers’ Association, Hilo Longshoremen’s Association, Hilo Canec Association, Hilo Clerks’ Association, Hilo Railroad Association and the Honuʻapo Longshoremen’s Association.

By 1938, during the height of the Great Depression, labor discontent escalated over low pay and poor working conditions. Negotiations were underway between the unions and employers on two major issues: 1) parity or equity of wages and conditions with the West Coast workers; and 2) the closed or union shop or some kind preferential hiring arrangement.

But Hawai’i employers were committed to fight the issue of wage parity or mainland wage standards in every industry as a matter of principle.

The Hilo Longshoremen’s Association struck against the Inter-Island Steamship Navigation Co.

The Inter-Island Steam Navigation Co., Ltd. had been controlled since 1925 by Matson Navigation and Castle & Cooke, the days before commercial airline transport between the islands. Its ships carried virtually all passenger and light freight traffic.

After three weeks of striking, the unions had decided to fall back somewhat and draw their line at the return of the two larger ships, the SS Waiʻaleʻale and the SS Hualalai.

Inter-Island scheduled another return of the Waiʻaleʻale to Hilo Harbor. Expecting confrontation, the night before the scheduled arrival, nearly 70-Police officers and special volunteer deputies began to assemble at the wharf to be sure that the union men would not get there before they did.

They had a small arsenal of 52-riot guns with bayonets, 4-Thompson sub-machine guns, tear gas grenades and an adequate supply of ammunition including both buckshot and birdshot cartridges for the riot guns.

In addition, the Hilo Fire Department was assigned to dispatch a pumping truck and enough firemen as might be needed to repulse the marchers with water hoses.

In addition to the official police force that was assembling, the Inter-Island Navigation Company had also prepared a squad of its own ‘specials.’

The Waiʻaleʻale was expected around 9 am on August 1, 1938. Some of the longshoremen started to gather as early as 6:30 am, and by 8:30 the majority of the unionists began to arrive.

Over two hundred men and women belonging to several different labor unions attempted to peacefully demonstrate against the arrival of the SS Waiʻaleʻale in Hilo.

Without any specific order, the crowd formed up and began to march down singing as they went, “The more we get together, together, together; The more we get together, the better we’ll be!” While in the back the women were singing, “Hail, hail the gang’s all here.”

They were met by a force of police officers who tear gassed, hosed and finally fired their riot guns into the crowd. In the scuffle, at least 16 rounds of ammunition were fired: seven birdshot and nine buckshot.

When it was over, fifty people, including two women and two children, had been shot; at least one man bayoneted and another’s jaw nearly broken for speaking up for his fallen brother.

In the confusion and uncertainty of the moment, the remaining, uninjured unionists left the docks Monday afternoon and the Waiʻaleʻale was unloaded without incident. But that night a rally was held at Moʻoheau Park which was attended by a huge crowd.

Reminiscent of the violence unleashed in the West Coast Strike four years earlier, the Hilo shooting closely paralleled the San Francisco police attack of July 5th that had left two strikers slain and a hundred others wounded.

The West Coast event had been called Bloody Thursday; here, they were already calling August 1st Hilo’s Bloody Monday.

The strike was soon settled.

A Grand Jury found: “That evidence is not sufficient to warrant an indictment against any person or group of persons”. The union subsequently filed a lawsuit for damages, which they lost.

Lots of information and images here are from Hawaii-edu and The Hilo Massacre: Hawaii’s Bloody Monday, August 1st, 1938 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, Center for Labor Education & Research, 1988.)

July 31, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ka La Ho‘iho‘i Ea

Kamehameha III commissioned and dispatched three Ministers – an American, Briton and a trusted childhood friend – William Richards, Sir George Simpson and Timoteo Haʻalilio, to secure the recognition of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s independence and protection of public international law that accompanied recognition. (Hawaiian Journal of Law & Politics)

In April 1842, Simpson left soon for England; Haʻalilio and Richards departed in July for the US. By December 1842, the US had recognized the Hawaiian Kingdom; shortly thereafter they secured formal recognition from Great Britain and France.

However, for about five months in 1843 the islands were under the rule of the British commission set up by Lord George Paulet. Queen Victoria, on learning these activities, immediately sent an envoy to the islands to restore sovereignty to its rightful rulers.

Finally, Admiral Richard Thomas arrived in the Islands on July 26, 1843 to restore the kingdom to Kamehameha III. Then, on July 31, 1843, Thomas declared the end of the Provisional Cession and recognized Kamehameha III as King of the Hawaiian Islands.

“The Commander-in-Chief confidently hopes that this act of restoration to the free exercise of his sovereign authority, will be received by the King of the Sandwich Islands as a most powerful and convincing proof not only of the responsibility he is under to render immediate reparation for real wrongs committed upon British subjects or their property …”

“… but also of the importance which attaches to the maintenance of those friendly and reciprocally advantageous relations which have for so many years subsisted between the two nations …”

“… and he further hopes that neither His Majesty nor his successors will ever forget that to the illustrious circumnavigator Captain Cook, as the first discoverer, the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands owe their admission into the great family of civilized man, and from the lips of Vancouver (another Englishman) Kamehameha I heard mention for the first time of the true God …”

“… which ultimately led to the abrogation of a false worship, idolatry, and human sacrifices, and by the well directed energies, the ceaseless perseverance of the American Missionaries to the establishment of a religion pure and undefiled …”

“… accompanied by the advantages of instruction and civilization, the which combined and duly cultivated, bring in their train, security of life and property, social order, mental and moral improvement, internal prosperity, and the respect as well as good will of other nations more advanced in the knowledge of the true faith, and the science of good government.” (Admiral Richard Thomas)

“A parade of several hundred English marines appeared on the plain of Honolulu, with their officers, their banners waving proudly and their arms glittering in the sunbeams. Admiral Thomas and the suspended king proceeded thither in a carriage, attended by the chiefs and a vast multitude of people.” (Bingham)

“Kauikeaouli emerged from the grounds of Kanaina; he and Kekuanaoa, Paki, Keoniana, Kanoa, Kivini, and some foreigners on horseback, and they rode for Kulaokahua.”

“Admiral Thomas was there with his troops and mounted guns in all his grandeur, and also there were the young chiefs, and a crowd of natives and foreigners awaiting the arrival of the King.”

“When he arrived, Admiral Thomas came to him holding the Hawaiian flag in his hands. The King and all his people dismounted and the Admiral came and opened the flag to the wind, and then gave it to Kauikeaouli’s flag bearer.”

“Right then, 21 mounted guns fired as a salute to the Flag, and the British flag was lowered on Puowaina (Punchbowl), while the Hawaiian flag was drawn up again, whereupon 21 guns of Puowaina sounded.”

“Then the British flag was pulled down at the Fort and the Hawaiian flag was raised, so the Fort fired a 21 gun salute, followed by 21 guns from the ship Carysfort, 21 from the Dublin, 21 more from the Hazzard, and then the American ship Constellation fired a 21-gun salute. When that was over, the 21 mounted guns fired a salute in honor of the King.”

“The British soldiers stood in a circle saluting the King, and when that was done the King returned to the palace. At 1 o’clock the King, his soldiers and the crowd of people all went to the church of Kawaiaha’o and gave thanks to God for his grace in restoring the sovereignty of the Nation.”

“At three o’clock, the King went aboard the ship Dublin to a dinner hosted by the Admiral, and when the Carysfort saw the King’s flag on the launches, a 21-gun salute was fired, followed by 21 guns from the Hazzard, then the Dublin, and then a final 21 gun salute came from the Constellation.”

“When the dinner on board the ship was finished, the King and his retinue came ashore and the Dublin fired a salute, followed by the Carysfort, then the Hazzard and the Constellation, 21 guns each.”

“The next day the great feast at Luakaha was held for the Admiral, and Kauikeaouli decided that the 31st of July would become a holiday for the Nation and the people.” (Judd, 1865; Nogelmeier; SCS)

The Kulaokahu‘a, the plains, was the comparatively level ground below Makiki Valley (between the mauka fertile valleys and the makai wetlands.) This included areas such as Kaka‘ako, Kewalo, Makiki, Pawaʻa and Mōʻiliʻili.

“It was so empty that after Punahou School opened in July 1842, mothers upstairs in the mission house could see children leave that institution and begin their trek across the barren waste. Trees shunned the place; only straggling livestock inhabited it.” (Greer)

This flat plain would be a favorable place to play maika, a Hawaiian sport which uses a disc-shaped stone, called an ‘ulu maika, for a bowling type of game.

In the 1840s, it was described as “nothing but a most exceedingly dreary parcel of land with here and there a horse trail as path-way.” (Gilman) The flat plains were also perfect for horse racing, and the area between present-day Piʻikoi and Makiki Streets was a race track.

The Plains were described as dry and dusty, without a shrub to relieve its barrenness. There was enough water around Makiki Stream to grow taro in lo‘i (irrigated fields,) and there was at least one major ʻauwai, or irrigation ditch.

The area of the restoration celebration was at an area that was not yet a park, but ultimately became the first public park in the Islands – Thomas Square – in 1850.

The Privy Council records for January 22, 1850 noted the approval of “Wyllie’s suggestion to set apart a day for marking out the boundaries of the square on the Plains of Waikiki, to be called by the name of Admiral Thomas.” The square remained unimproved until 1873, when plans to fence the area and plant trees were announced. (Schmitt)

“(I)t will be highly pleasing to him, to know that he has not been forgotten on this occasion. I will take care to communicate to him that he has not been forgotten. The Act of Restoration, commemorated on this day, will associate his name indelibly with the history of this young nation …”

“… in which, I can assure you, the Admiral takes the most lively interest. It was a source of great gratification to him, after performing that act, to find that he had judged correctly of the just and liberal views of HBM’s Government towards these Islands.” (Wyllie at First Anniversary)

“(T)he example and influence of Admiral Thomas of the British, and of Commodore Jones of the U. S. Navy, strengthened and encouraged both the native population and the missionaries.”

“Following the misrule and licentiousness consequent upon wresting the government out of the hands of the legitimate rulers, their counsels and aid were most opportune for the restoration of things to order, and a healthful moral state.” (ABCFM)

“During these struggles of the Hawaiian government to settle their relations with foreign powers on a proper basis without subjugation, the American Board, with the co-operation of the American Bible and Tract Societies, and the agency of their missionaries, used their endeavors to urge the nation forward to a state of independence in respect to foreign missionary aid.”

“Messrs. Richards, Andrews, Green, and Judd, of our mission, having resigned as missionaries and been discharged, with the expectation of contributing to the stability of Hawaiian institutions, took, with other foreigners, the oath of allegiance to His Hawaiian Majesty, and became his adopted naturalized subjects.” (Bingham)

“The king being restored to the free use of his sovereignty under the constitution, and once more regarding himself as the head of the people, took the lead again by example and influence, and by such means as were in his power, to favor the cause of temperance and order.” (Bingham)

Hawaiian Flag – 1816-1845

July 30, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

George Washington Houghtailing

George Washington Houghtailing (April 7, 1817 – September 2, 1887,) a Dutchman from the Hudson-Mohawk Valley in New York, came to Hawai‘i around 1845.

He married a Hawaiian woman in 1850, and ran the Bay Horse Saloon on Bethel and Hotel Street in Honolulu. (Cultural Surveys)

His first wife died after their daughter Sara was born (Sara married Jerome Feary.) Houghtailing remarried (Elizabeth Thompson) and had ten more children (5-boys and 5-girls,) nine of whom lived to adulthood.

During the Māhele, he was given several kuleana, later consolidated into a 15-acre tract along a road later named after him, Houghtailing Road. The family home was between School and Vineyard Streets.

“On the premises there was a large pond which had a natural spring and which also fed the lower land where we had taro patches and cultivated the other truck gardening on the land. The land was quite open.”

“We had a couple of bay horses and raised chickens and pigs for family consumption. There was a large open area fronting Houghtailing Road which was used as a park for the neighborhood kids.” (Houghtailing Jr; Cultural Surveys)

Mr. Houghtailing located the ponds, taro fields, and rice patches from School Street to Liliha Street; other taro patches were in the area “between Pālama Street and Liliha Street, below School Street down to what in now Vineyard Street”.

The rice ponds and taro patches, usually operated by the Chinese, were cultivated up to the 1920s, when many were filled in for the development of residential subdivisions.

The Japanese took over some of the land as truck farms, and the Japanese also gradually took over the small stores once operated by the Chinese. Additionally, the development of one of the first subdivision, the McInerny Tract was developed around 1918-1920.

“The upper part of McInerny Tract used to be planted with pineapple. The other part was more grazing and open area where guavas and other natural types of fruits, like mangoes, grew. … The sugarcane fields in the Pālama area, ran all the way up to what would be now the Dole (cannery) parking lot … extended above what is now Vineyard Street.”

“The management of that plantation at that time was the Honolulu Plantation, where the mill was located in Aiea. … Cane growing in the Kapālama area phased out about the late ‘20s. I think.”

“The phasing out program took place because lands were being purchased by the federal government to expand military reservations, including Hickam Field.” (Houghtailing Jr; Cultural Surveys)

Back to the Bay Horse … “On Sunday the 17th inst. Geo. Houghtailing an employee of the Bay Horse Saloon was arrested for selling liquor on that date and placed under bonds. At the same time James Gibbs was arrested for selling liquor without a license at the same time and place, and also placed under bonds to appear on the following Monday.” (Hawaiʻi Holomua, June 27, 1894)

The warrants were later seen as defective and “After the close of the prosecution the defense moved for their discharge, and the court discharged Mr. Houghtailing as there was no evidence against him, and after viewing the premises did charge Mr. Gibbs on the grounds that there was no evidence to hold him guilty of the offence charged.” (Hawaiʻi Holomua, June 27, 1894)

At the end of World War II, the Catholic Diocese of Honolulu saw the need for a second Catholic School on Oʻahu. The new school was named after Saint Damien de Veuster.

The Congregation of Christian Brothers, students, and parents volunteered to turn the land, which included 4-acres of taro patches and a good deal of uneven swampland into a school campus, because the company that started the construction on Damien went bankrupt.

Damien Memorial School is now situated on what was part of the Houghtailing homestead in Kapālama.

Regarding the name, the theory is that all Houghtailings and various spellings in the United States are descended from Conrad Mathias Houghtaling who emigrated from the Netherlands around 1650.

Reportedly, the correct pronunciation for Houghtailing Street (named for the family,) is Ho-tailing (Hough as in dough, not as in cough.) (Midweek) (Lots of information here from Houghtailing message boards, as well as Cultural Surveys.)

July 29, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Harry and Billy

Flowing water turned wheels to grind wheat into flour more than 2,000-years ago. Back then, wind was also turning windmills for grinding and pumping water. Fast forward to the mid-1700s, a French hydraulic engineer wrote of the development of the science of hydraulics.

Beginning with Benjamin Franklin’s experiment with a kite one stormy night in Philadelphia, the principles of electricity gradually became understood.

In 1880, a brush arc light dynamo driven by a water turbine was used to provide theater and storefront lighting in Grand Rapids, Michigan; and in 1881, a brush dynamo connected to a turbine in a flour mill provided street lighting at Niagara Falls, New York.

Before light bulbs, outdoor lighting was via arc lights (lamps that produce light by an electric arc (also called a voltaic arc – through two electrodes separated by a gas.))

The world’s first public electrical supply was provided in late-1881, when the streets of the Surrey town of Godalming in the UK were lit with electric light.

That system was powered from a water wheel on the River Wey and supplied a number of arc lamps within the town. The supply scheme also provided electricity to a number of shops and premises to light 34-incandescent Swan light bulbs.

In 1882, water from the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin served the first operational hydroelectric generating station in the United States, producing 12.5 kilowatts of power; the total electrical capacity generated was equivalent to 250-lights.

Shortly thereafter, hydroelectricity that powered public electric lighting made its way to Hawaiʻi.

“This has been a work of great labor and anxiety, and was really only brought to a completion on Monday night. Some days previous to that the Waterworks staff … had laid the necessary piping, bringing the water into the Electric building … was to be turned into the new wheel for the first time in these islands”. (Daily Bulletin, March 21, 1888)

“The conditions of electrical power transmission have been thoroughly studied by competent engineers, and are now so well understood that those conversant with the practical aspects of the subject are well assured that within a few years even the smallest towns and villages will supply themselves with electric light and power plants.”

“The management of an electric power plant requires no unusual scientific knowledge. Once the station has been established it can be carried on by the ordinarily intelligent class of mechanics and workmen who are to be found in every village.” (Daily Bulletin, March 26, 1888)

“Punctually at 7 pm yesterday (March 23, 1888,) the Princess Liliʻuokalani and Princess Kaʻiulani, attended by His Excellency the Hon. LA Thurston, Minister of Interior, arrived at the Electric Light Station in the Valley and was there received by the Superintendent Mr. Faulkner and Mr. Eassie.” (Daily Bulletin, March 24, 1888)

“The moon three quarters full rose brightly in the sky Friday night. The usually dark streets were softly lighted by the lunar rays. Speculation was rife as to whether the electric lights would be turned on or not as it had been announced previously that Friday evening would witness a new era in the civic history of Honolulu.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 27, 1888)

“A few minutes after 7, HRH (Kaʻiulani) was accommodate with a chair for her feet and under the guidance of Mr. Superintendent Faulkner in full working costume connected the circuits and had the honor of illumining the streets of Honolulu for the first time with the new light.”

“Suddenly as the sun emerging from behind a cloud brightens and gladdens the face of nature, did the turning of that wheel brighten and gladden the anxious intellectual mirrors of the assembled cognoscenti. The work and anxiety of the last few weeks was at an end.”

“Mr. Faulkner immediately hurried away to the town to see the lamps some of which were not burning, but after the lapse of half an hour or so, he had the satisfaction of seeing that all with the exception of 3 or 4 were glowing brightly and steadily; and it is confidently expected that to-night all the lights will burn from the jump.” (Daily Bulletin, March 24, 1888)

“At 7:30 pm the sound of excitement in the streets brought citizens, printers, policemen and all other nocturnal fry rushing outdoors to see what was up. And what they did see was Honolulu lighted by electricity. The long looked for and anxiously expected moment had arrived.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 27, 1888)

“The lamps are of 2,000-candle power each arranged to burn one side at a time each carbon lasting from six to seven hours. After a carbon is burned out the current is automatically transferred by a lever which immediately trips the other side of the carbon and then that one burns six to seven hours.”

“The Electrical Works are just two and a half miles from Merchant Street up the Nuʻuanu Valley. On a knoll by the roadside on the way to the Pali stands a neatly finished dwelling house thirty three feet front by twenty-seven feet wide the residence of the superintendent and engineer.”

“A few yards to the rear rises an unpretentious looking two story building dimensions forty feet long by thirty feet wide and thirty five feet high to the peak of the roof where the motors and machinery of the electric works are in operation.”

“The water pressure at the wheel is 130-pounds to the square inch. The water power in its impact on the wheel is regulated by a governor operating exactly like that of a steam engine. By the time the turbine is reached the water has come rushing through 6,000-feet of pipe from the head source which is 300-feet above the level of the main in the building.”

“It is estimated that the discharge of water into the turbine is at present 2,000,000-gallons every 24-hours but that the discharge may be 3,000,000-gallons if required.”

“The turbine makes 1,275-revolutions per minute and is equivalent to a 130-horse power engine. The revolution of the turbine is communicated to the dynamo motors on the second floor by belting. The two dynamos are respectively 42 and 10-horse power.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 27, 1888)

“Before closing this brief account of the event at the station we feel bound to offer one or two remarks on what can be only regarded as a strange anomaly, that at this late period in the history of science and amongst persons of high intelligence and practical experience and scientific attainments there should have been one who could dive into the dim recesses of superstitious gloom and having found what he wanted remarked that the wheel would have no luck unless it were christened.”

“There was such a one and he no Scotchman, and he had brought his tools with him in the shape of a bottle of ‘potheen,’ (whiskey) but the strangeness of the anomaly was nothing to the strangeness of the alacrity with which the assembled few agreed with that person and the strange appreciation they showed for the ‘potheen.’”

“Suffice it to say that the wheel was christened and its health drunk with heartily expressed wishes for its success. This took place on the ground floor – the distinguished company was above.” (Daily Bulletin, March 24, 1888)

A year later, the first of a handful of houses and businesses had electricity. By 1890, this luxury had been extended to 797 of Honolulu’s homes.

It’s interesting to note that the first electric lighting was installed in the White House in 1891 – after ʻIolani Palace (1886.) (Contrary to urban legend that it also pre-dated the British palace, Buckingham Palace had electricity prior to ʻIolani Palace. It was first installed in the Ball Room in 1883, and between 1883 and 1887 electricity was extended throughout Buckingham Palace.)

Oh, “Harry and Billy” in the title?

“Mr F (Faulkner) has two dynamos here the larger known as Harry and the smaller as Billy. Harry supplies power to 50 arc lights – Billy only runs 12 but Billy is getting old, having been working in America 8 years ago.” (Daily Bulletin, March 21, 1888)

A special thanks to John Wehrheim for images (past and present) of the Nuʻuanu Hydroelectric facility.