Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young 4 Comments

Carlotta

In 1898, Carlotta Stewart, at eighteen years of age, came to Hawai‘i with her father (probably at his urging,) to continue her education and to begin planning her future. (Guttman)

The third child of Thomas McCants Stewart and Charlotte Pearl Harris, Carlotta was born in 1881 in Brooklyn, New York, where she attended public schools during her formative years.

Although her father had spent several years in Liberia, Africa, Carlotta had never traveled outside of the continental United States before coming to Hawai‘i.

Her father – a noted black lawyer, civil rights leader and friend of Booker T Washington – was the first African American to be admitted to practice law in Hawaiʻi (1898.) (jtb-org)

She attended Oʻahu College (Punahou,) where she played on the girls’ basketball team. After she graduated from there, she continued with basketball, playing for the YWCA and serving as timekeeper for the local games.

Her brothers McCants and Gilchrist had attended Tuskegee Institute, the Southern vocational school established by Booker T
Washington (1881,) Carlotta lived with her father following a bitter divorce from his first wife. (Broussard)

She graduated from Oʻahu College in 1902, one of eight members in the senior class. The course of study there included classes in philosophy, religion, English, Latin, Greek, French or German, history, economics, mathematics and science.

After graduation, Carlotta completed the requirements for a Normal School certificate (later known as the Teachers’ College,) which she received in 1902, and she promptly accepted a teaching position in the Practice Department of the Normal School.

She had converted to Catholicism during the early-1900s, despite the fact that her father was an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and that she visited the Priory (an Episcopal school) often as a young teacher to pray, study and dine with other females. (Broussard)

Stewart remained at the Normal School for several years, where she taught English; she is listed in the Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to the Governor of the Territory of Hawaii between 1902 and 1924.

Her father and stepmother left the Islands in 1905; Carlotta later noted “Sometimes I get quite blue not having a single relative in the Islands. … I soon get over it, for I have such good friends. I want for nothing.”

In 1906, in addition to teaching, she was busy with classes, vacations, camping, surfing and frequent parties. “We took in two dances a week at the Seaside Hotel and played cards at home the other evenings or made up moonlight bathing parties.” (Stewart; Broussard)

In 1909, Carlota was noted as a teacher assigned to Koʻolau Elementary School (Kauai,) a later newspaper story noted that she was identified as principal there. “This school (is) situated on the government road near the north side of Moloa‘a Valley, between Anahola and Kilauea”.

Initially, total enrollment for the school was 61, average attendance 59; Japanese 31, Part Hawaiian 19, Hawaiian 7 and Portuguese 4.

“The majority of the children here come from the homes of the small tillers of the soil in the Moloa‘a Valley and thereabouts, especially the rice fields of the Japanese and the kuleanas of the Hawaiians.” (Evening Bulletin, October 14, 1909)

Her rapid advancement in the space of seven years was an impressive achievement, although many black women had established teaching careers and a handful were school administrators by 1909, it was unusual for a black woman at the age of 28 to serve as principal of a multi-racial school.

This achievement was particularly striking in a society in which few black people lived and, therefore, had no political influence to request a job of this magnitude. Her pupils reflected a true cross section of Hawaii’s school-aged population, which grew rapidly between 1900 and 1940.

Conditions were neither difficult nor racially oppressive for a black professional woman, in Hawai‘i, there was no substantial black community before World War II, and Carlotta saw few black people either in classrooms or outside.

Most of her socializing took place in groups, relieving her of the pressure to find a companion with a comparable racial and social background.

She met and married her husband, Yun Tim Lai of Chinese ancestry at Anahola. He was sales manager of the Garden Island Motors, Ltd, an automobile dealership in Lihue, when the couple wed in 1916. (The 19-year marriage ended, however, in 1935, when Lai died suddenly in Hong Kong while visiting his parents.) (Broussard)

Carlotta Stewart Lai never remarried but remained in Hawai’i for the next 17 years, serving as principal and English teacher until her retirement in 1944.

By 1951 Lai’s health grew increasingly more fragile, and, unable to provide for herself without fear of bodily injury, she entered the Manoa Convalescent Home in 1952 and died there on July 6, 1952.

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by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Mea ‘Ono Pua‘a

Originally a Cantonese custom, dim sum (literally small snack – cuisine prepared as small bite-sized portions of food) is inextricably linked to the Chinese tradition of ‘yum cha’ or drinking tea. Teahouses sprung up to accommodate weary travelers journeying along the famous Silk Road.

Rural farmers, exhausted after long hours working in the fields, would also head to the local teahouse for an afternoon of tea and relaxing conversation. (Parkinson)

Starting in the 1850s, when the Hawaiian Legislature passed “An Act for the Governance of Masters and Servants,” a section of which provided the legal basis for contract-labor system, labor shortages were eased by bringing in contract workers from Asia, Europe and North America. The first to arrive in the Islands were the Chinese (1852.)

“When they (Chinese contract laborers) reached Honolulu, they were kept in the quarantine station for about two weeks. They were made to clean themselves in a tank and have their clothes fumigated. Planters looked them over and picked them for work in much the same way a horse was looked at before he was bought.” (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

“These Chinese were taken to the plantations. There they lived in grass houses or unpainted wooden buildings with dirt floors. Sometimes as many as forty men were put into one room. “

“They slept on wooden boards about two feet wide and about three feet from the floor. … (T)hey cut the sugarcane and hauled it on their backs to ox drawn carts which took the cane to the mill to be made into sugar” (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

The sugar industry grew, so did the Chinese population in Hawaiʻi. Between 1852 and 1884, the population of Chinese in Hawai’i increased from 364 to 18,254, to become almost a quarter of the population of the Kingdom (almost 30% of them were living in Honolulu.) (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

They brought their customs and cuisine with them – and it caught on in the Islands.

One such, dim sum, includes char (or cha) siu bao, a bun with a barbecued pork filling. It is either steamed to be fluffy and white or baked with a light sugar glaze to produce a smooth golden-brown crust.

Char siu refers to the pork filling; the word bao simply means ‘bun.’

In the islands this Chinese pork cake became known as mea ‘ono pua‘a (‘mea ‘ono’ (delicious thing) as in cake or pastry, and ‘pua‘a’ for pork.) Reportedly, the pidgin adaptation “mea ‘ono pua‘a” evolved to “manapua.”

These steamed or baked buns are sometimes are filled with coconut, black bean paste or chicken (and other meats and vegetables,) but char siu pork has been predominant.

Not only did the tasty snack receive a Hawaiian name, they were also Hawaiian-sized, turning the ‘small snack’ to accompany tea, into a meal. (Some suggest the name is a variant of “mauna pua‘a” (mountain of pork.)

After finishing contracted terms as sugar plantation laborers, many Chinese opened businesses and restaurants. Food peddlers would walk neighborhoods selling snacks, including manapua, from large aluminum cans hung with cord at the ends of poles hoisted on their shoulders. (Hawaii Magazine)

A Manapua Man (vendors carrying tin cans on either end of a pole over his shoulder) would walk the neighborhoods, yelling “manapua, pepeiao, manapua pepeiao!”

(Pepeiao (the Hawaiian word for ear) is what is now known as Half Moon (har gao (a shrimp dumpling) because its shape looks like an ear – or what you would imagine is a boxer’s cauliflower ear.)

The walking street vendors are gone, but manapua continues as a local staple. (The Ma‘iola Indigenous Health Program notes manapua in the foundation of the Hawaiian food pyramid.)

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Kaukahoku

“Kamehameha III, By the Grace of God, King of the Hawaiian Islands, by this Royal Patent, makes known, unto all men, that he has for himself and his successors in office, this day granted and given, absolutely, in Fee Simple unto John George Lewis, his faithful and loyally disposed subject for the consideration of Eight Hundred Dollars”.

Thus, in 1848, through Royal Patent No. 97, John George Lewis acquired 8.92-acres of land in the ili of Kaukahoku (the stars have arisen.) In the 1840s the land was separated from the city by nearly two miles of open land and tropical forest.

It was through this land that Kamehameha the Great marched during what would become the Battle of the Nu‘uanu in April 1795 (the last major battle before the unification of the Hawaiian Islands.)

(Coincidently, Kamehameha was aided by foreigners, including John Young and Isaac Davis, who provided the cannons and tactical know-how used in the battle.)

This land, a portion of a grant known as Kaukahoku was originally designated as Fort Land; that is, it was set apart for the use of the Fort, probably as agricultural land.

Sometime in the 1840s Kekūanāoʻa, Governor of the island of Oahu, leased this land to Henry A Peirce, an American merchant who had established a thriving business in the Hawaiian Islands. He named the property ‘Beleview.’ Peirce, however, soon left the Islands and the land was leased to Lewis. (Rivera)

In September 1843 Lewis notified the Hawaiian Government that at the end of the year he desired to buy the Government interest in the land for $500. The Government, however, set the price at $800 plus interest, which Lewis presumably paid. (HABS)

John Lewis, the son of Isaiah and Polly (Holmes) Lewis, was born in Hawaii and was a successful dry goods importing merchant in Honolulu. Lewis & Co later became Mitchell & Fales, Ship Chandlers, on Nuʻuanu street at Merchant street (Lewis left to become a Real Estate Broker and General Agent.) (Thrum)

Tradition claims that Lewis built the house at Kaukahoku in 1847. (HABS)

It was modeled in the Greek Revival style. It has a formal plan arrangement, wide central hall, high ceilings and floor-length hinged, in-swinging shuttered casement window.

It is one-story, over a basement, and measures about 73-feet by 51-feet. The roof is hipped over the main portion of the home and gabled over the rear lanai that was converted to a room.

Around 1850, Lewis went to Boston and engaged in business there. Before leaving, he sold the land to John Young II (Keoni Ana) for $6,000. (Young was son of John Young who assisted Kamehameha in his final battles for unification, including Nuʻuanu.)

Young gave the name Hānaiakamālama to the house (“foster child of the God Kamalama,” one of the ancestral gods his mother, a Hawaiian high Chiefess, Mary Kuamoʻo Kaoanahaeha, a niece of King Kamehameha I (Lit., the foster child of the light (or moon) – also the name given to the Southern Cross.))

John Young II was an uncle to Emma Rooke who became Queen of the Hawaiian Islands at the time of her marriage to King Kamehameha IV in 1856.

Young gave the young royal couple the use of the home in Nuuanu Valley and they found it a pleasant respite from court life at ʻIolani palace.

At his death in 1857, Young willed the property to his niece, Queen Emma, and thus Hanaiakamalama came into her possession.

She and her family continued to enjoy the home for another five years until the death of her young son, and then her husband.

Queen Emma continued to use the home as a summer house until her death in 1885. Hānaiakamālama became a center of social activity as well as a restful country retreat. (HABS)

When the Duke of Edinburgh visited the Hawaiian Islands as part of the itinerary of a round-the-world tour, Queen Emma “gave an impromptu entertainment to a large number of guests at her residence in Nuʻuanu Valley.”

“The guests enjoyed themselves at croquet and other outdoor sports on the lawn until evening when the fine room prepared for the entertainment of the Duke of Edinburgh was thrown open and dancing commenced and was kept up until about 9 o’clock”. (Hawaiian Gazette, March 2, 1870)

Queen Emma left her property after her death to Colonel Cresswell Rooke of Broomhill, Colchester, Essex, England, a nephew of her hānai father, Dr TCB Rooke, and to Queen’s Hospital.

Col. Rooke visited Hawai’i in 1903 to settle the estate. When the property was divided, the Colonel waived back rents due him, which had been given to Queen’s Hospital (in exchange for several keepsakes.) (Hackler)

In 1890, Alexander Cartwright, executor of the estate testified that Queen Emma’s old home was “in need of extensive repairs, is old and untenantable, has been unoccupied for past five years.” The land and house were put at auction and were bought by the Hawaiian Government on August 27, 1890.

When the government tried to sell the property in 1906, strong public objections to the sale were made, many suggesting that the land be set aside as a park. The government reconsidered. (HABS)

A later concurrent resolution from the legislature was adopted in 1911, “that ‘The Queen Emma Place’ in Nuʻuanu Valley, City and County of Honolulu … be set aside and reserved as a Park, to be known as ‘Nuʻuanu Park’ …”

“… and that the Governor or other proper authorities of the Territory of Hawaii are hereby requested to take, without delay, the necessary legal steps to put into force and effect the purposes of this Concurrent Resolution.”

Hānaiakamālama was later saved from demolition by the Daughters of Hawaiʻi. Today, the Daughters preserve and maintain this residence and the Huliheʻe Palace in Kailua-Kona as museums open to the public.

The restored and furnished home of Queen Emma and King Kamehameha IV offers a glimpse into the lifestyle of the Hawaiian monarchy.

The Daughters of Hawai‘i was founded in 1903 by seven women who were daughters of American Protestant missionaries. They were born in Hawai‘i, were citizens of the Hawaiian Kingdom before annexation and foresaw the inevitable loss of much of the Hawaiian culture.

They founded the organization “to perpetuate the memory and spirit of old Hawai‘i and of historic facts, and to preserve the nomenclature and correct pronunciation of the Hawaiian language.” (My mother was a Daughter.)

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by Peter T Young 6 Comments

Alsoberry Kaumualiʻi Hanchett

“The object of the Harvard Club of Hawaiʻi as stated in its constitution is ‘to extend the influence of Harvard University in Hawaiʻi and to foster closer relations between the Harvard men in Hawaiʻi and other Harvard Alumni.’”

“Toward carrying out the program involved, the question of assisting worthy young men financially in going to Harvard was brought up …”

“… and after a full discussion it was ‘Voted that it be the policy of the Club to help boys to go to Harvard; that one boy be helped each year by a loan of an amount not to exceed $200 per year’”.

“AK Hanchett, a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools, now a senior in Oʻahu College, was chosen as the first recipient.”  (Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, 1907)

Born in Lihuʻe, Kauai, November 16, 1885, Alsoberry Kaumualiʻi Hanchett was the son of Salem Panole Hanchett and Julia Malaea (Palaile) Hanchett.

His grandfather, Salem Hanchett of Massachusetts, went to sea as a teenager aboard a Pacific whaler, and settled on Kauai during the reign of King Kaumualiʻi; he married Aluhua Aka, a descendent of Kaumualiʻi.

In 1848, he was granted citizenship in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, and seven years afterward, he obtained a license to operate a Wailua River ferry at a time when no bridges spanned the river. (Soboleski)

AK Hanchett received his early education in Honolulu at the Kamehameha. Following his graduation from Kamehameha, he went on to excel at Oʻahu College. President Arthur F Griffiths noted:

“Hanchett is a part Hawaiian of the best type. He is a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools and of Oahu College. He is steady, reliable and conscientious. As a student, he has good ability which compares with the best”.

Hanchett applied for Harvard in the spring of 1907 with strong letters of support from President Arthur F Griffiths of Oʻahu College and President Perley Horne of the Kamehameha Schools. (Aki; OHA)

He received an AB degree at Harvard University in 1911, and, continuing his studies in the medical college of the same institution, earned his MD degree in 1914.

“This Hawaiian boy will graduate in this coming June, and will intern for two years at one of the Famous Hospitals of America to advance his abilities in the medical field, and at the completion of his stay at the Hospital, then he will select where he will practice his calling.”

“We hope that he will come back to Hawaiʻi nei to practice this greatest of occupations in which he trained, and be the first Hawaiian to practice medicine in here in Hawaiʻi.” (Ka Hoku o Hawaii, June 21, 1914)

“(I)n an examination of the medical students in Boston, in order to enter one of the Hospitals of the City, and from amongst a 100 students, the Hawaiian boy ranked 3rd …”

“… and because this Hawaiian Boy wanted to once again test his competence, his Medical abilities were tested once again at a big Hospital in Providence in the State of Rhode Island, and what was revealed in that examination was that amongst 50 students who took the test, to the Hawaii boy went ‘Number One.’” (Ka Hoku o Hawaii, June 21, 1914)

Dr Hanchett abbreviated his name to A Kaumu, discovering that Alsoberry Kaumualiʻi was altogether too long for a doctor’s shingle. (Episcopal Church)

During World War I, Major Hanchett served in the Medical Corps at Schofield Barracks and Fort Shafter, and later entered private practice with Dr Pekelo in an office on the corner of Beretania and Punchbowl.

Hanchett and Mary Hazel McGuire – a nurse at Queens Hospital – were married in Honolulu in 1917 and had eight children. (Soboleski)

Alsoberry Kaumualiʻi Hanchett, was the first person of Hawaiian ancestry to graduate from Harvard Medical College; the first doctor of Hawaiian descent to practice in the Islands; first City-County physician in Honolulu and first doctor at the Shingle Memorial Hospital, Molokai. (Episcopal Church)

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by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Evelaina

“We have received from Captain Hart of the Achilles an extract from the log of that ship signed by the captain, officers and cabin passengers of the vessel containing a full and interesting account of the loss of the Mastiff by fire as viewed from the Achilles.” (Hawaiian Gazette, November 18, 1910)

“By the arrival of the British ship Achilles, which anchored off this port yesterday afternoon, we have news of the burning of the clipper ship Mastiff, on the route from San Francisco to Hongkong, via Honolulu.”

“The ship Mastiff, under command of Wm O Johnson, Esq, sailed from San Francisco, Saturday, Sept. 10th, having on board, twenty-six men, officers and crew” (and 175 Chinese between decks.) The ship was bound to Hongkong”.

“On Tuesday, the 13th, we raised a ship right ahead, which afterward proved to be the British ship Achilles, and continued in company with her until Thursday, at 4 PM, wind being very light”.

“At this time, the Achilles, being on our lee quarter, and about 5 miles distant, the second mate, Mr. Johnson, descried smoke coming out of the ventilators, which were situated in the after part of the ship, and immediately communicated the fact to the Captain and passengers, who were on the quarter deck.”

“At six and half o’clock, the flames burst out at all points, and the ship was left to her fate, Capt Johnson being the last man to leave, and having the satisfaction of knowing that but one life was lost, that of a Chinaman who went below, to get the key of his iron chest which he had got on deck; he was smothered.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, September 28, 1859)

Wait … this story isn’t about the destruction of the Mastiff, this is about the dedication of a mastiff to his master.

Evelaina was the English mastiff of Kamehameha III.

She originally was a gift to the king. She understood commands in both Hawaiian and English. (Hawaiian History & Culture)

Kamehameha III died on December 15, 1854.

I’ll let the February 19, 1857 story in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser tell the rest of the story …

“Among the instances of strong attachment of dogs to their masters, many interesting tales have been recorded, but we do not recollect one where more endurance and constancy has been displayed than in an instance which many have witnessed here during the past two years.”

“When the remains of our late beloved King, Kamehameha III, were deposited in the sepulchre, many were the sad mourners who watched night and day, lamenting in heart-rending wailing the death of their King, friend and benefactor.”

“Weeks wore on, and human grief was moderated, if not assuaged; the mourners quietly departed and returned to their homes and occupations.”

“Not so the late King’s favorite mastiff.”

“When the body was deposited in its last resting place, ‘Evelaina’ took his station outside the door of the tomb, and there commenced his weary watch.”

“For many weeks he would not leave the spot.”

“After a time, food was not taken to him, and at last, driven by hunger and thirst, he was compelled to leave; but, having satisfied these wants, he returned to his post, and has thus kept watch for nearly two years.”

“Of late his keepers have tried to confine him, but he is frequently missing, and, if searched for, will be found guarding the mortal remains of him he loved so well.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 19, 1857)

The dutiful dog passed away some seven years after Kamehameha III and the then-Prince and Interior Minister Lot Kapuāiwa Kamehameha had the dog put in a coffin and buried in Waikiki.

When Prince Lot ascended the throne as Kamehameha V and began to transfer the bodies of the late sovereigns from Pohukaina to Mauna ʻAla in 1865.

He also ordered the body of Evelaina to be buried at Mauna ʻAla under a tree behind the main chapel so she could continue to guard her beloved master. (Hawaiian History & Culture) (The dog here is representative, not Evelaina.)

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