Peter T Young

March 11, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Rock Walls

Uhau humu pōhaku, or dry stacking, is masonry without mortar or metal joinery. “Each layer is locked into place by the one below.” (Gino Bergman; Simon)

Other gravity-resistant touches include inwardly tilting facades and adjacent stones that clench together like upper and lower jaws of teeth. (Simon)

“[S]tone structures of the old Hawaiians … were of rough stone, dry laid, and consist of pyramidal and enclosed temples which will properly be considered with the Ancient Worship, and extensive walls enclosing fish preserves on the fringing coral reefs, which belong again to the Fisheries.”

“In both these stone works it was the great labor expended in collecting, transporting and placing the stones rather than any architectural skill that made them noteworthy. … Cut stones for building purposes were rare, and in all cases they were shaped from slabs of lava by patient hammering.”

“The stone walls of the heiau often tumbled down on Hawaii in the frequent earthquakes, but I do not know that they were ever made the objects of the victor’s destroying wrath in the interminable petty wars, while the walls of the fish ponds were usually broken down to let out the fish and so materially injure the conquered owners.” (Brigham)

The Great Wall, or Pā Puʻuhonua, is a massive L-shaped structure that bounds the puʻuhonua on its eastern and southern sides. The wall stands nearly 12 feet tall, 18 feet in width, and stretches 965 feet in length. Constructed over 400 years ago, the Great Wall continues to protect the puʻuhonua, the people, and ceremonial sites contained within from the outside world.

The Great Wall was built using traditional, dry masonry techniques in which unmodified cobbles and boulders were fitted together without the use of mortar. The structure was originally constructed with two outer walls faced with ‘alā (volcanic stones, often water worn and with smooth faces).

Archaeological investigations conducted in the 1919 and 1963 revealed two distinct techniques of masonry design within the interior of the structure.

The first style, known as pa’o (caverned), is an open work construction technique accomplished by laying lava slabs on top of upright columns. This architectural style is unique to the Pu‘uhonua o Honaunau park lands and, thus far, has been documented nowhere else on the Hawaiian Archipelago.

The other type of interior construction noted within the Great Wall is haka haka or vacant spaces. Commonly used throughout Hawaiʻi Island, haka haka uses broken, angular stone rubble to fill the interior cavity of the outer walls. (NPS)

However, not all of the rock walls you see were built by Hawaiians. “Although the role of Japanese immigrants in shaping Hawaiian plantation culture is frequently acknowledged, their contributions to paniolo culture have been underemphasized.”

“The first Japanese contract laborers arrived in Hawai‘i in 1885, primarily to harvest sugarcane and pineapple. The Humu’ula Sheep Company made use of the same labor pool, particularly in the summer when most sheep shearing took place.”

“H. Hackfeld & Company also owned a number of sugar plantations and moved Japanese contract laborers seasonally depending on where they were needed.” (Peter Mills)

Maly notes that the primary tasks for the Japanese employees at the sheep station included, “construction of stone walls, fences, and carpentry; sheering and herding sheep; baling wool; trail and road work; garden work; setting of phone poles and lines; weeding thistle and gorse; and general facility maintenance.” (Kumu Pono)

By 1885, the Humu‘ula lease was held by the Humu‘ula Sheep Company, which in that year obtained the lease for the east side of Ka‘ohe, while Parker Ranch continued to lease the west side. The company hired immigrant stonemasons to build stone walls around their grazing lands in the 1890s; portions of these are still standing. (CARA)

“Through 1890 and the summer of 1892, the names of 29 Japanese laborers and 12 Chinese laborers appear in August Haneberg’s journal. They worked on various tasks, including shearing sheep, building walls, weeding, working on a cart road between stations, and constructing a telephone line between Kalai’ehā and Hopuwai.” (Peter Mills)

“Between 1893 and 1895, many miles of stone walls were built by several Japanese laborers who camped at the Humu‘ula headquarters. The fence along the south boundary, the kīpuka [oasis within a lava bed] of ‘Āina hou near Pu‘u Huluhulu, is still intact in portions along the Saddle Road.”

“Parts of the wall were buried in the 1935 lava flow. The north wall can still be seen meandering steeply up the Mauna Kea slope from the Humu‘ula-Mānā Road near Pu‘u‘ō‘ō.” (Billy Bergin)

“Billy Paris was saying that [with the] 1928 or ’29 earthquake, he was thinking too, that out at Pu‘u Wa‘awa‘a when the earthquake happened, they brought in a lot of Japanese stone wall masons and they went into the mountain … to go rebuild the walls that were required.” (Kepa Maly)

March 10, 2024 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Spring Forward

Shortly after contact, there wasn’t always agreement about what time or date it actually was … time-keeping practices varied in the 18th century, depending on circumstances.

In the 1880s, changes were being made in timekeeping practices. Several large nations still recognized prime meridians other than the one through Greenwich, and some continued to differ on the definition of a “day.”

In 1883, the US railroad industry divided the continental US into five (later four) time zones, establishing official time zones with a set standard time within each zone. (National Geographic)

The civil population nevertheless adopted ‘Railroad Time’ almost spontaneously; 85% of US towns of over ten-thousand inhabitants had done so by October 1884.

Hawaiʻi did not adopt standard time until 1896, with various notices published in the papers: “Hawaiian standard time will be ten and one-half hours slow of Greenwich.”

“The half hour is chosen for the reason that the Hawaiian group, while limited in area, is almost centrally on the line between the ten-hour and eleven-hour belt, and the inconvenience of a wide difference between standard and local time is thus avoided.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, January 9, 1896)

“The meridian adopted, 157 deg 30 min, is not far from central to the group. The Kauai people will be expected to set their local time ahead 8-minutes and Niihau 10-minutes; the Maui people will set back local time on an average four minutes.”

“The Hilo people, if they fall into line, will set back ten minutes, and Kona from 7 to 8 minutes.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, January 9, 1896)

It was not until 1918 that an Act of Congress set standard time all over the US, as well as daylight savings time. (Howse)

The 1918 act of Congress, ‘To save daylight and to provide standard time, for the United States’ provided for nationwide daylight saving time from March through October.

Congress also determined “That, for the purpose of establishing the standard time of the United States, the territory of continental United States shall be divided into five zones in the manner hereinafter provided. …”

“That the standard time of the first zone shall be known and designated as United States Standard Eastern Time; that of the second zone shall be known and designated as United States Standard Central Time …”

“…that of the third zone shall be known and designated as United States Standard Mountain Time; that of the fourth zone shall be known and designated as United States Standard Pacific Time; and that of the fifth zone shall be known and designated as United States Standard Alaska Time.” (Public No 106, approved by Congress March 19, 1918)

“Daylight saving plan was again agitated for these islands the early part of this year, and, in April, on official orders from Washington, the navy department here set their clocks forward an hour, but it did not last long. Cutting a foot off the end of Pat’s blanket to add to its head was found to give no greater length or warmth.” (Thrum)

The daylight saving provision was repealed in 1919, leaving intact the standard time system. (Schmitt & Cox)

Notwithstanding this official acceptance of standard time, many plantations persisted in the use of local time, or their own variations on it. The individual plantations had elected to adopt time systems that varied somewhat from the local times pertinent to the meridians at their centers.

The primary determinant of the difference between one of these plantation times and the pertinent local time was the local time of sunrise. Hence the plantation time systems were essentially daylight saving time systems.

There was no requirement that the difference between a plantation time and either the normal local time of the plantation headquarters or standard time, when that was adopted, be an even half-hour or hour, or that there be but one advance and one retardation of time in a year.

The time on a plantation was, indeed, more likely to be something like 11 minutes ahead or 14 minutes behind standard time, and changes of a few minutes might be made at intervals of only a few weeks.

Standard time was kept in Honolulu, in non-plantation towns, and at ports serving more than one plantation; and social events involving people from more than one plantation were scheduled by what was known as “Honolulu time,” “Hilo time,” etc. (Schmitt & Cox)

In 1933, the Hawaiʻi Legislature decreed daylight saving for the period between the last Sunday of each April and last Sunday of each September, but less than a month later repealed the act.

WWII brought daylight saving back to the Islands.

“(T)he standard time of each zone established pursuant to the Act entitled ‘An Act to save daylight and to provide standard time for the United States’, approved March 19, 1918, as amended, shall be advanced one hour.” (Public Law 403, approved January 20, 1942)

Year-round daylight saving time, one hour ahead of Hawaiian Standard Time, was established in the Territory during World War II by General Order No. 66 of the military governor, taking effect on February 9, 1942. The new time quickly became known as “Hawaiian War Time.” (Schmitt & Cox)

“Daylight saving has given us another hour before the nightly blackout, which begins at 7:30 pm and lasts until 7:00 am. The curfew for pedestrians has been changed from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm, but cars are still not allowed on the streets after 7:30 pm. This means no late afternoon or evening meetings of any kind.” (Journal of Nursing, 1942)

With the end of the war and the expiration of War Time on September 30, 1945, Hawai’i reverted (notwithstanding a good deal of debate) to the pre-war standard time; and it was not until 1947 that the change was made to the present system of standard time.

In 1947, the Territorial Legislature permanently returned to the pre-war standard time – however, they also advanced Hawaiian Standard Time by 30 minutes, making it 10 (instead of 10-1/2) hours slower than Greenwich Mean Time, and thus two hours (not 2½) behind Pacific Standard Time. This change became effective the second Sunday of June, 1947. (Schmitt & Cox)

The issue resurfaced in 1966, when the Uniform Time Act of that year mandated daylight saving time during the spring and summer months nationwide unless State legislative bodies specifically exempted their jurisdictions.

Reasoning that Hawai‘i already had year-round partial DST – since 1947, Hawaiian Standard Time had been 31 minutes ahead of sun time in Honolulu – the 1967 Legislature voted to exempt the Islands. (Schmitt & Cox)

In 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, effective starting in 2007, that declared daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March (‘spring forward’) and ends on the first Sunday in November (‘fall back’,) with the time changes taking place at 2 am local time.

Today, most on the continent advance their clocks and watches an hour forward, as daylight savings time kicks in.

Dali-The Persistence of Memory-1931

March 9, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Honoli‘i and Douglas

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) from the northeast United States, set sail on the Thaddeus for the Hawaiian Islands. Four young Hawaiians joined the Pioneer Company.

They were, Hopu (Thomas Hopu) ‘ Hopoo’; Kanui (William Kanui) ‘Tennooe’; Humehume (George Prince) ‘Tamoree’ and Honoli‘i (John Honoli‘i) ‘Honoree’.

“The Hawaiian boys who came back with the missionaries … were able to reassure the Hawaiian people as to the friendliness of the relations between America and Hawaii and to serve as guides to the missionaries upon their arrival.” (Kamakau, Ka Nupepa Ku‘oko‘a, Jan 4, 1868; Ruling Chiefs)

Honoli‘i had arrived in Boston in the fall of 1815. He came over in a ship belonging to Messrs. Ropes & Co merchants of Boston. He was taken on board the ship by the consent of his friends, and replaced a sailor, who died before the ship arrived at Hawai‘i. He was curious and wanted to see the world.

“A place was soon found for him at the Rev. Mr. Vaill’s of Guilford, where he began to learn the first rudiments of the English language. Messrs. Ropes & Co., in whose ship he came to this country, not only cheerfully released him for the purpose of being educated, but very generously gave one hundred dollars towards the expense of his education.”

“He was ignorant of our language. And of every species of learning or religion, when he began to study. In about six months he began to read in a broken manner in the Bible. In the mean time, he also learned to write, which cost him but little time or labour. … He is industrious, faithful, and persevering, not only in his studies, but in whatever business he undertakes.” (ABCFM)

Honoli‘I enrolled in the Cornwall school in 1817. His teachers considered him to be mild-mannered and industrious. He was also thought to be “tactful, persevering, and faithful.” (Morris & Benedetto)

Honoli‘i became a valuable Hawaiian language instructor because, having come at a later age (about 19), he still had good command of his native tongue. He also won praise for his considerable vigor and intellect and his discreet and stately deportment. (Kelley)

Back in the Islands, “The king Kaumualii appears exceedingly interested in what he now learns from the bible through the interpretation of Honolii.” (Sybil Bingham)

Then, David Douglas visited the Hawaiian Islands. Douglas first visited in 1830, on his way from England to the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. On this brief visit, he climbed several peaks on O’ahu and was “splendidly” entertained by “Madame Boki”, the wife of the governor.

Douglas left the Columbia region in December of 1830 and traveled to California. He visited Hawai‘i a second time in September of 1832 enroute from Monterey in California to the Columbia River. He was in the Islands for just a few short weeks; he returned to Honolulu in December of 1833.

“I arrived here on the 23rd of December, and after spending Christmas Day with two English ladies, the wife of our Consul, Mr. Charlton, and her sister, I started on the 27th for the island of Hawaii, which I reached on the 2nd of January, 1834.”

“You know I have long had this tour in contemplation, and having spent three winter months in botanizing here, I proceed to give you a short notice of my proceedings.” (Douglas; Greenwell)

When Douglas was exploring Hawai‘i in 1833 and 1834, he knew Honoli‘i and deemed him a friend as well as a guide. Honoli‘i accompanied Douglas on several ascents of Mauna Kea. It is clear the Honoli‘i was still practicing his faith: on one of their trips the Douglas party stopped at Kapapala where Honoli‘i preached at the Sunday service. (Morris & Benedetto)

“Honoli‘i had probably been chosen as a guide because of his command of the English language. He had spent a number of years in America and had returned to Hawai‘i … in 1820. Douglas referred to Honoli‘i as ‘my guide, friend, and interpreter, Honori, an intelligent and well-disposed fellow’”. (Greenwell)

They first made their way up Mauna Kea; Douglas next visited Kilauea crater and ascended Mauna Loa, again traveling with Honoli’i and a large retinue of Hawaiians.

Douglas’s little terrier, Billy, accompanied him on these trips and in all his travels. The botanist once wrote in his journal: “my old terrier, a most faithful and now to judge from his long grey beard, venerable friend, who has guarded me throughout all my journies, and whom, should I live to return”. (Memoir of David Douglas-in Companion to the Botanical Magazine Vol II-1836)

Honoli‘i was not with Douglas when he died on Mauna Kea, in a bullock pit. 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)

“It was a native custom to trap the wild long-horned Spanish cattle by digging pits and covering them with brush. … When some natives came by later in the morning, they first saw the feet of a man sticking out of a mass of rubbish and stones.”

“A bull was already entrapped in the pit and the angry beast was standing on the chest of the young plant-hunter. … Thus ended 9 years of botanical adventure along the Pacific for David Douglas. His death at 35 is one of the tragedies of botanical history. But in his short span of life, as one scientist wrote …”

“‘No other explorer personally made more discoveries, or described more genera or species. No other collector of rare plants ever reaped such a harvest or associated his name with so many economically useful and beautiful plants as David Douglas.’” (Gould; Vassar)

Honoli‘i died in February 1838. David Douglas was buried in the native churchyard of Kawaiaha‘o Church in Honolulu; Honoli‘i was buried in the cemetery of Ka‘ahumanu Church at Wailuku, Maui.

March 8, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Twain and Maui

Mark Twain wrote books about some of his travels (that included a visit to Hawai‘i) … one such, Roughing It. Here are some of his comments about Maui.

We “thence sailed to the island of Maui, and spent several weeks there very pleasantly.”

“I still remember, with a sense of indolent luxury, a picnicing excursion up a romantic gorge there, called the Iao Valley. The trail lay along the edge of a brawling stream in the bottom of the gorge–a shady route, for it was well roofed with the verdant domes of forest trees.”

“Through openings in the foliage we glimpsed picturesque scenery that revealed ceaseless changes and new charms with every step of our progress.”

“Perpendicular walls from one to three thousand feet high guarded the way, and were sumptuously plumed with varied foliage, in places, and in places swathed in waving ferns.”

“Passing shreds of cloud trailed their shadows across these shining fronts, mottling them with blots; billowy masses of white vapor hid the turreted summits, and far above the vapor swelled a background of gleaming green crags and cones that came and went, through the veiling mists, like islands drifting in a fog …”

“… sometimes the cloudy curtain descended till half the canon wall was hidden, then shredded gradually away till only airy glimpses of the ferny front appeared through it—then swept aloft and left it glorified in the sun again.”

“Now and then, as our position changed, rocky bastions swung out from the wall, a mimic ruin of castellated ramparts and crumbling towers clothed with mosses and hung with garlands of swaying vines, and as we moved on they swung back again and hid themselves once more in the foliage.”

“Presently a verdure-clad needle of stone, a thousand feet high, stepped out from behind a corner, and mounted guard over the mysteries of the valley.”

“It seemed to me that if Captain Cook needed a monument, here was one ready made – therefore, why not put up his sign here, and sell out the venerable cocoanut stump?”

“But the chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Haleakala – which means, translated, ‘the house of the sun.’”

“We climbed a thousand feet up the side of this isolated colossus one afternoon; then camped, and next day climbed the remaining nine thousand feet, and anchored on the summit, where we built a fire and froze and roasted by turns, all night.”

“With the first pallor of dawn we got up and saw things that were new to us. Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched Nature work her silent wonders.”

“The sea was spread abroad on every hand, its tumbled surface seeming only wrinkled and dimpled in the distance. A broad valley below appeared like an ample checker-board, its velvety green sugar plantations alternating with dun squares of barrenness and groves of trees diminished to mossy tufts.”

“Beyond the valley were mountains picturesquely grouped together; but bear in mind, we fancied that we were looking up at these things – not down.”

“We seemed to sit in the bottom of a symmetrical bowl ten thousand feet deep, with the valley and the skirting sea lifted away into the sky above us!”

“It was curious; and not only curious, but aggravating; for it was having our trouble all for nothing, to climb ten thousand feet toward heaven and then have to look up at our scenery.”

“However, we had to be content with it and make the best of it; for, all we could do we could not coax our landscape down out of the clouds.”

“Formerly, when I had read an article in which Poe treated of this singular fraud perpetrated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes, I had looked upon the matter as an invention of his own fancy.”

“I have spoken of the outside view–but we had an inside one, too. That was the yawning dead crater, into which we now and then tumbled rocks, half as large as a barrel, from our perch, and saw them go careering down the almost perpendicular sides, bounding three hundred feet at a jump …”

“…kicking up cast-clouds wherever they struck; diminishing to our view as they sped farther into distance; growing invisible, finally, and only betraying their course by faint little puffs of dust; and coming to a halt at last in the bottom of the abyss, two thousand five hundred feet down from where they started!”

“It was magnificent sport. We wore ourselves out at it.”

“The crater of Vesuvius, … is a modest pit about a thousand feet deep and three thousand in circumference; that of Kilauea is somewhat deeper, and ten miles in circumference.”

“But what are either of them compared to the vacant stomach of Haleakala?”

“I will not offer any figures of my own, but give official ones–those of Commander Wilkes, U.S.N., who surveyed it and testifies that it is twenty-seven miles in circumference!”

“If it had a level bottom it would make a fine site for a city like London.”

“It must have afforded a spectacle worth contemplating in the old days when its furnaces gave full rein to their anger.”

“Presently vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea and the valley; then they came in couples and groups; then in imposing squadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves solidly together, a thousand feet under us, and totally shut out land and ocean …”

“…-not a vestige of anything was left in view but just a little of the rim of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon we sat (for a ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts without had drifted through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round and round, and gathered and sunk and blended together till the abyss was stored to the brim with a fleecy fog).”

“Thus banked, motion ceased, and silence reigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy floor stretched without a break–not level, but in rounded folds, with shallow creases between …”

“… and with here and there stately piles of vapory architecture lifting themselves aloft out of the common plain–some near at hand, some in the middle distances, and others relieving the monotony of the remote solitudes.”

“There was little conversation, for the impressive scene overawed speech.”

“I felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment, and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world.”

“While the hush yet brooded, the messengers of the coming resurrection appeared in the East. A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste …”

“… flinging bars of ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy vapor-palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings and combinations of rich coloring.”

“It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory of it will remain with me always.”

March 7, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Spirit of ’76

Before Americans were American, they were British. Before Americans governed themselves, they were governed by a distant British king and a British Parliament in which they had no vote.

Before America was an independent state, it was a dependent colony. Before Americans expressed support for equality, their government and society were aristocratic and highly hierarchical.

These transformations were complex, but the changes owe a great deal to the Declaration of Independence of 1776, what has been properly termed “America’s mission statement.” (Monticello)

“The year 1776 is over. I am heartily glad of it, and hope you nor America will ever be plagued with such another.: (Letter to George Washington from George Morriss, Philadelphia, 1 January, 1777)

Washington shared that feeling. We celebrate 1776 as the most glorious year in American history; they remembered it as an agony, especially the “dark days” of autumn.

1776 was pivotal moments of American history, from the decision for independence to the military disasters that followed. In early December, British commanders believed they were very close to ending the rebellion, and American leaders feared that they might be right.

Yet three months later the mood had changed on both sides. By the spring of 1777 many British officers had concluded that they could never win the war. At the same time, Americans had recovered from their despair and were confident that they would not be defeated. (American Heritage)

Besides representative government, participatory politics, and popular sovereignty, Americans believed that public virtue (the subordination of self-interest to the common good) was absolutely essential in a democratic republic. Moreover, they felt that there could be no virtue in public life without corresponding virtue in private life. (NJ State Library)

Drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776 became the defining event in Thomas Jefferson’s life. Despite Jefferson’s desire to return to Virginia to help write that state’s constitution, the Continental Congress appointed him to the five-person committee for drafting a declaration of independence.

That committee subsequently assigned him the task of producing a draft document for its consideration. Drawing on documents, such as the Virginia Declaration of Rights, state and local calls for independence, and his own draft of a Virginia constitution, Jefferson wrote a stunning statement of the colonists’ right to rebel against the British government and establish their own based on the premise that all men are created equal and have the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Through the many revisions made by Jefferson, the committee, and then by Congress, Jefferson retained his prominent role in writing the defining document of the American Revolution and, indeed, of the United States.

Jefferson was justly proud of his role in writing the Declaration of Independence and skillfully defended his authorship of this hallowed document. (LOC) The Spirit of ‘76 is a patriotic sentiment referring to freedom begun by the Declaration of Independence.

To those who risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in behalf of American independence, Thomas Jefferson and his congressional colleagues promised the creation of a governmental system that would be “most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness” …

“… and derive its “just powers from the consent of the governed” as well as a social order in which all men would be “created equal” and enjoy the “unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The most important challenge to members of the revolutionary generation – indeed to subsequent generations of Americans – was translating Jefferson’s idealistic rhetoric into everyday reality.

And while the winning of independence took precedence at first over the creation of a republican society, the public record of the war years provides abundant information about the new order thoughtful Jerseymen were striving eventually to establish. (NJ State Library)

The principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence promised to lead America – and other nations on the globe – into a new era of freedom. The revolution begun by Americans on July 4, 1776, would never end.

It would inspire all peoples living under the burden of oppression and ignorance to open their eyes to the rights of mankind, to overturn the power of tyrants, and to declare the triumph of equality over inequality. (Monticello)

Thomas Jefferson recognized as much, preparing a letter for the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration less than two weeks before his death, he expressed his belief that the Declaration

“be to the world what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all.) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which Monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves,”

“and to assume the blessings & security of self government. the form which we have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. all eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man.”

“the general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born, with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.”

“these are grounds of hope for others. for ourselves let the annual return of this day, for ever refresh our recollections of these rights and an undiminished devotion to them.” (Thomas Jefferson to Roger Chew Weightman, June 24, 1826. (Monticello))

One of the first instances of writing the phrase “Spirit of ‘76” was in a court case, Commonwealth V. Pullis (Philadelphia Mayor’s Court (1806)).

Spirit of ’76 Painting

One of America’s most iconic paintings – Spirit of ’76 – can be seen in the Selectmen’s Room at Abbot Hall at Marblehead, Massachusetts. Although a number of copies of the painting were subsequently created, this is the original. (Marblehead)

The Spirit of 76 is a painting that first went on display in 1876 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the United States declaring independence from Great Britain in 1776. It also celebrated the American Revolution and the people’s spirit of independence and love of their country.

The painting depicts a flag bearer, drummer boy and fifer marching across a battlefield during the American Revolution. The 8′ x 10′ oil painting was created by Archibald Willard at the suggestion of Cleveland photographer Jas. F. Ryder, who felt that a patriotic painting would be appropriate for showing at the 1876 US centennial exhibition in Philadelphia.

Originally entitled Yankee Doodle. Hugh Moser, a Civil War veteran and friend of Willard’s, posed as the fifer; Henry K. Devereux, son of Gen. John H. Devereux, another neighbor, served as the model for the drummer; and Willard’s father, Rev. Samuel Willard.

Click the following link to a general summary about the Spirit of 76:

Click to access Spirit-of-76.pdf