Peter T Young

February 25, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Paniolo

Horses arrived in the American continent in 1519 in Mexico with Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes, and cattle soon followed in 1521 with Gregorio de Villalobos. By the 1600s and 1700s Spanish-Mexican settlements and ranches were started in areas such as the lower Rio Grande.

As expeditions moved north transplanting the cattle and horses to the Southwest. After the Civil War, with the abundance of wild cattle in the Southwest and a market in the East, the era of the cattle drives to the railheads, large ranches and range cowboys began. (Texas State Historical Association)

The fiesta, originally a legacy from feudal Spain, quickly became an integral part of the Mexican culture. The fiesta de toros was introduced by the conquistadores on St John’s Day, June 24, 1526 to celebrate both the Saint and Coretz’ return.

The corridas became standard Sunday sports as well as Christmas fiestas throughout the country. A popular sport in 17^th century Mexico was riding wild bucking horses. Colear (grabbing a bull’s tail) became a traditional fiesta contest. Roping evolved from a utilitarian skill to a sport. (LeCompte)

Vaqueros (Mexican cowboys) drove cattle long before cowboys, back in the days when Texas belonged to Spain. One of their main paths took them back and forth between what we now call south Texas and Mexico City.

Even though it was tough work, to be a vaquero carried quite the mark of pride. Over a century before the cowboy arrived on the scene, vaqueros took the first steps to tame the Wild West. (Texas Parks and Wildlife)

“A good half century before the Western beef-cattle industry blossomed in Texas, a singular breed of professional horsemen calling themselves ‘vaqueros’ had already set the style, evolved the equipment and techniques, and even developed much of the vocabulary that would become the stamp of the American cowboy.” (Macaraeg)

Rodeo has long been thought of as a distinctly American sport, the horsemanship and ropemanship skills of the early Mexicans were likely the precursor to American rodeo. (LeCompte)

Having said that, some still state that the ‘Old Glory Blowout’ on July 4, 1882 in North Platte, Nebraska was the first organized rodeo in the world. Cash prizes were awarded to the winners of the bucking bronco, buffalo riding, steer roping and horse racing events. (Visit North Platte)

William F “Buffalo Bill” Cody (Pony Express rider, bison hunter for the Kansas Pacific Railroad and then scout for the US Army) put together the event. It was organized at a privately-owned racetrack in town, and in conjunction with the last of the big open-range roundups in Nebraska.

It is heralded as the beginning of rodeo. It was about a year later (May 19, 1883) that Cody opened his “Wild West Show” in Omaha Nebraska. (National Cowboy Museum)

In the Islands, the gift of a few cattle, given to Kamehameha I by Captain George Vancouver in 1793, spawned a rich tradition of cowboy and ranch culture that is still here, today.

With a kapu against killing the cattle, by 1830, wild bullocks posed a serious and dangerous threat to humans. Spurred also by the growing business of reprovisioning visiting ships with fresh meat and vegetables, Kamehameha III and Kaʻahumanu saw the wisdom of bringing in experienced cowboys.

“The formalization of ranching operations on Hawai‘i evolved in response to the growing threat of herds of wild cattle and goats to the Hawaiian environment, and the rise and fall of other business interests leading up to the middle 1800s.” (Maly)

Kamehameha III had vaqueros brought to the islands to teach the Hawaiians the skills of herding and handling cattle.

The vaqueros found the Hawaiians to be capable students, and by the 1870s, the Hawaiian cowboys came to be known as the “paniola” for the Espanola (Spanish) vaqueros who had been brought to the islands (though today, the Hawaiian cowboy is more commonly called “paniolo”). (Maly)

The Hawaiian cowboy, nicknamed “paniolo,” played an important role in the economic and cultural development of Hawaiʻi and helped to establish the islands as a major cattle exporter to California, the Americas and the Pacific Rim for over a century.

Some might not realize that Hawaiʻi’s working paniolo preceded the emergence of the American cowboy in the American West.

After winning the Revolutionary war (1781), American settlers started to pour into the “west;” by 1788, the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory was in Ohio.

In 1800, the western frontier extended to the Mississippi River, which bisects the continental United States north-to-south from just west of the Great Lakes to the delta near New Orleans.

Then, in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the nation.

The Battle of the Alamo was in 1836; later that year, Texas became independent, the Mexicans left, leaving their cattle behind. Texan farmers claimed the cattle and set up their own ranches.

It wasn’t until the 1840s that the wagon trains really started travelling to the far west. Then, with the US victory in the Mexican-American war and gold soon found in California, the rush to the West was on.

The cattle trade in the American West was at its peak from 1867 until the early-1880s. And, when in cattle country, you can expect rodeos. Headlines in Island and Wyoming newspapers in August of 1908 announced rodeo history.

Twelve thousand spectators, a huge number for those days, watched Ikua Purdy, Jack Low, and Archie Kaaua from Hawaiʻi carry off top awards at the world-famous Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo (the “granddaddy” of rodeo.).

Unlike today’s calf-roping, riders lassoed powerful, full-grown steers. The Cheyenne paper reported that the performances of the dashing Hawaiians, in their vaquero-style clothing and flower-covered, “took the breath of the American cowboys.”

Under drizzling skies, Purdy won the World’s Steer Roping Championship—roping, throwing and tying the steer in 56 seconds. Kaaua and Low took third and sixth place.

They each accomplished these feats on borrowed horses.

Purdy worked at Parker Ranch prior traveling to Cheyenne, Wyoming; his victory demonstrated the exceptional skills of the paniolo to mainland cowboys who long regarded rodeo and roping as their own domain.

On arriving home, the men were met at dockside by thousands of cheering fans and also honored by parades and other festivities on Maui and Hawai‘i.

Waimea-born Purdy moved to Ulupalakua, Maui and resumed his work as a paniolo until his death in 1945. He did not return to the mainland to defend his title, in fact he never left Hawaii’s shores again. But his victory and legend live on in Hawaiʻi and the annals of rodeo history.

In 1999, Ikua Purdy was voted into the National Cowboy Museum, Rodeo Hall of Fame. That same year he was the first inductee to the Paniolo Hall of Fame established by the Oʻahu Cattlemen’s Association.

In 2003, a large bronze statue of Purdy roping a steer was placed in Waimea town on the Big Island, erected by the Paniolo Preservation Society. In October 2007, Purdy was inducted into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Hall of Fame.

February 24, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Air Mail

In the mid-19th century the Wild West was largely unexplored. Discovery of gold in 1848 made California a destination for tens of thousands from the east; communication back east had it challenges.

One way, the Pony Express, used 400 horses and employed 183 men only for a brief 20 month period starting on April 3, 1860 in order to carry mail and news across nearly 2,000-miles between about 165 stations from St. Joseph, Missouri to San Francisco, California once or twice a week in 10-16 days.

Then, on October 24, 1861, wires were joined on the first transcontinental telegraph; the Pony Express mail delivery was discontinued by November 1861.

The driving of the ‘Last Spike’ at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869 brought the transcontinental railroad, into the scene. Coast-to-coast rail mail took about 10-11 days to deliver.

Then, on December 14, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright tossed a coin to decide who would fly first. At 10:35 am, December 17, 1903, Orville was at the controls and kept the plane aloft until it hit the sand about 120 feet from the rail – the first controlled and sustained power flight. (NPS)

To demonstrate the potential of transporting mail by air, the Post Office approved a special air mail flight as part of the festivities at an international air meet on September 23, 1911, on Long Island, New York.

With a full mail bag squeezed between his legs, pilot Earle Ovington took off and flew to Mineola, a few miles away. He banked his airplane and pushed the bag overboard. It fell to the ground and was retrieved by the local postmaster. (Smithsonian)

On February 22, 1921, four air mail flights set out to prove the mail could be flown coast to coast in record time by flying day and night. The going proved rough. One pilot died in a crash. Treacherous weather stopped others.

But the fourth flight got through, making it from San Francisco to New York in 33 hours and 20 minutes-a distance that took 4½ days by train and 3 days by air/rail (flown by day and shipped by train at night). (Smithsonian)

Early transcontinental airmail delivery was a hybrid system. In 1922, letters sent by airmail would have to leapfrog the country, traveling by air during the day and by train at night. Using this process, a letter moving at its absolute fastest might take about 83 hours to get from New York to San Francisco.

The few pilots who did try to travel at night during this time were taking their lives in their hands. Nearly 1-in-10 early airmail pilots died during the early days of the postal service’s airmail initiative, and emergency landings were common.

There had to be a safer way. Enter the highway of light — a system of airmail beacons that spanned the country. (Pope)

During the spring and summer of 1923, work on a lighted airway between Cheyenne, WY, and Chicago, IL, was being pushed forward with a view to carrying out certain experiments to determine whether cross-country night flying on a regular schedule was possible.

They wanted to see if transcontinental air mail service between New York and San Francisco could be regularly maintained. This was certainly a huge undertaking, as up to this time very little night flying had been done and there were no lighted airways in existence. (Air Mail Pioneers)

In the last half of 1923 and the first half of 1924, 289-flashing gas beacons were installed between Chicago and Cheyenne; 34-emergency landing fields between the same points were rented, equipped with rotating electric beacons, boundary markers, and telephones.

Five terminal landing fields were equipped with beacons, floodlights and boundary markers; 17 planes were equipped with luminous instruments, navigation lights, landing lights and parachute flares.

An 18-inch rotating beacon, mounted on top of a 50-foot windmill tower, was installed at each emergency field. This beacon was also set at a fraction of a degree above the horizon, revolving at the rate of six times a minute, and was visible to the pilots on clear nights from 60 to 70 miles.

A 36-inch-high intensity arc revolving searchlight of approximately 500,000 candlepower was installed on a 50-foot tower at the regular fields. It revolved at the rate of three times per minute and on clear nights could be seen by the pilots for a distance of 130 to 150 miles.

Concrete arrows, painted bright yellow, were at the foot of the 50-foot towers. The arrows were visible from a distance of ten miles, and each arrow pointed the way towards the next, some three miles distant.

In 1924 and 1925, the lighted airways were extended east from Chicago to Cleveland and New York and west from Cheyenne through Rock Springs, Wyoming, to Salt Lake City and then on to San Francisco. By the end of 1925, the US Air Mail truly had a day and night transcontinental airmail route covering a distance of slightly over 2,000-miles. (Air Mail Pioneers)

In 1926 management of the beacon system was turned over to the Department of Commerce, which continued expansion or the airmail beacon system until 1929. By 1933 the Airways Division of the Department of Commerce had completed 18,000 miles of lighted airways, installed 1,550 light beacons, and constructed over 250 airfields. (NPS)

Once the new lighted airway was in place, that same letter that used to take 83-hours took just 33-hours to get from New York to San Francisco.

But by the 1930s, navigation and radio technology had improved to allow flight without land-based visual guidance. And even though radio was all the rage — and fast becoming a coast-to-coast experience — sending a letter was still the most economical way to deliver any message among private citizens. (Pope)

In the Islands, on October 8, 1934, Inter-Island Airways made the first official US airmail flight in Hawai‘i from John Rodgers Airport. (hawaii-gov) Shortly after, on April 17, 1935, Pan American landed a survey flight crew to look at air mail service from California to Hawai‘i and on to Midway, Wake and Guam.

On November 22, 1935, Postmaster General James A Farley and Mr Juan Trippe ordered Pilot Musick, commanding Pan Am’s China Clipper, to take off on the first airmail flight, by way of Hawai‘i and the other islands, on to its Manila destination.

Twenty thousand spectators were on hand to watch festivities at Alameda, all eyes on the immense silver airplane. They saw an estimated 110,000 pieces of mail weighing nearly two tons being stowed on board. (hawaii-gov)

October 21, 1936 saw the first passenger flight. Pan Am provided weekly service along recently impossible routes. Although the first services stopped at Manila for political reasons, service continued to expand and eventually reached Hong Kong and Singapore. (Pacific Aviation Museum)

Pan American Clipper executive officer R. O. H. Sullivan hands over the first sacks of air mail delivered to Hawaii-PP-1-7-005-1935

First official consignment of U.S. mail flown to Hawaii by Pan American Clipper-PP-1-7-006–left-SFO-Nov_22,_1935

Postmaster Chillingworth (L) Gov Poindexter (M) Harold Dillingham (R) inaugural of inter-island air mail PP-1-4-003-Oct 8, 1934

Pan Am China Clipper, leaves San Francisco Bay for Manila carrying the first United States trans-Pacific air mail on Nov. 22, 1935

Mary Kearney of Honolulu recieved the largest postcard ever delivered by air mail in the U.S-PP-1-9-010-1936

Earle Ovington receives a bag of mail where he took off for the first official airmail flight in US

Earle Ovingtonand his plane

Early air mail was placed in heavy canvas bags and carried inside a special compartment in front of the pilot

Historic Ariway Beacons-tower and arrow are in Kansas, along the Amarillo – Kansas City route

Historic Ariway Beacons-Quail Creek, Washington, UT

Historic Ariway Beacons-Bloomington Overlook in St. George, Utah

Historic Ariway Beacons-Aviation Heritage Museum of the Grants-Milan Airport in NM has restored this airway beacon

Historic Ariway Beacons

Gov. Joseph B. Poindexter hands mail bag to Inter-Island Airways co-pilot James Hoff for neighbor island delivery-PP-1-4-008-Oct_8,_1934

First-official-Interisland air mail-Oct 8, 1934

East_and_West_Shaking_hands_at_the_laying_of_last_rail_Union_Pacific_Railroad-May 10, 1869

Arrow_Beacons-map

airmail-beacons02

airmail-beacon-concrete-arrow

1d_Airmail_Beacon-3

1d_Airmail_Beacon-2

Transcontinental Rail Mail-San Francisco-05-14-1869-to New York-05-25-1869

February 23, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Polar Bears and Reindeer

Within ten years after Captain Cook’s 1778 contact with Hawai‘i, the islands became a favorite port of call in the trade with China. The fur traders and merchant ships crossing the Pacific needed to replenish food supplies and water.

The maritime fur trade focused on acquiring furs of sea otters, seals and other animals from the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska. The furs were mostly sold in China in exchange for tea, silks, porcelain and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the United States.

Needing supplies in their journey, the traders soon realized they could economically barter for provisions in Hawai‘i; for instance any type of iron, a common nail, chisel or knife could fetch far more fresh fruit meat and water than a large sum of money would in other ports.

A triangular trade network emerged linking the Pacific Northwest coast, China and the Hawaiian Islands to Britain and the United States (especially New England).

Foreign vessels had long recognized the ability of the Hawaiian Islands to provision their ships with food (meat and vegetables,) water, salt and firewood.

Salt was Hawaiʻi’s first export, carried by some of the early ships in the fur trade back to the Pacific Northwest for curing furs. Another early market was provided by the Russian settlements in Alaska.

On January 21, 1821, the Thaddeus (the brig that carried the Pioneer Company from Boston to Hawai‘i) was sold to Liholiho (Kamehameha II). Liholiho put her into service in the Northwest trade. On July 12, 1821, William Sumner sailed the Thaddeus to Maui to gather a load of salt to trade for goods at Kamchatka. (Mills)

In Kamchatka, “Salt is at present issued, but not in sufficient quantities; were that article more liberally distributed, the people might in some years prepare fish to last them several successive ones.”

“From the quantity now supplied by the king of the Sandwich islands, it is to be hoped that the first productive season will be taken advantage of.” (Cochrane)

“The principal riches of Kamtchatka may be said to consist in the animals of the chase, of which there are so prodigious a number, that there are not sufficient inhabitants to take them. The most valuable are foxes of various colours, a few sea and more river otters, with an immense number of sables.”

“Bears, wolves rein-deer and mountain-sheep, and sometimes a few lynxes, are also to be found. The number of skins annually exported and consumed in the peninsula is about thirty thousand, of which sables and foxes form the principal part.” (Cochrane)

On behalf of the Hawaiian government Alexander Adams “brought home a couple of deer the last time with a view of their thriving in the islands, but they had not long been suffered to go at large in Hanarura valley …”

“… when Pitt [Kalanimōku] happening to be unwell, fancied that the flesh of the deer would do him good, and one of them was killed for him to taste. This he found so much to his liking that he ordered the other one to be killed, thus ending the life of poor Adams’ deer.” (Macrae)

“Deer were not the only kind of wild animals introduced into Honolulu during the reign of Liholiho. [T]hat monarch dispatched his American-built brig, the Sunbeam [likely the Thaddeus], commanded by an Englishman, Captain John Bowles, and manned by Sandwich Islanders …”

“… to St. Peter and St. Pauls (Petropaulovski), Kamtschatka, with a cargo of salt as a present to his imperial brother, the Czar of Russia.”

“In return for this gift on the part of the Sandwich Islands king, the governor of St. Peter and St. Paul’s, who was then Captain Ricord, an Englishman, gave such articles as seemed most desirable, including some animals, with a view of propagating the breed.” (Macrae, footnote)

“[T]he beautiful clipper entered the harbour of Peter and Paul in Kamchatka. She flew a flag which to the watchers on shore was absolutely unknown; blue, white, and brown.”

“She seemed to be full of men, and saluted the fort with seven guns. In those days Petropavlovsk was practically the only Russian port on the Pacific, for the Amur River belonged as yet to the Chinese, and Vladivostok was still a desert.”

“The arrival of any ship in that God-forsaken port was a rare and great event, much more that of a vessel so mysterious. The whole population – about three hundred souls – gathered on the foreshore.”

“All the authorities were there, with the Governor at their head. This was Captain Ricord, an English naval officer who, with numerous compatriots, was in the Russian service, and had received, after many adventures, the governorship of Kamchatka as a reward for his distinguished services. …”

“Captain John Bowles [was] commanding the clipper Sunbeam of His Majesty Kamehameha II, King of the Sandwich Islands. The Sunbeam’s cargo consisted of salt, intended by His Majesty as a present to the Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias …”

“… in return for which His Majesty hoped that his ‘dear brother’ would send him animals fit to be bred in His Majesty’s islands – and especially bears!” (Poliakoff)

They made the trade and “Amongst the animals were two Siberian bears, but what became of them when landed at Honolulu is now forgotten.” (Macrae, footnote) (This summary was inspired and informed by Peter Mill’s recent book ‘Connecting the Kingdom;’ it’s a good read on sailing vessels in the early Hawaiian monarchy.)

February 22, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Adams Family

Samuel Adams and John Adams were second cousins. Abigail Adams was John Adams’ third cousin. John Quincy Adams was the son of John and Abigail.

Samuel Adams

The elusiveness of the character of Samuel Adams has allowed for a wide interpretation of his place and influence in American Revolution. Prominent American Revolution histories rarely discuss Adams at length and there are few biographies about him.

Samuel Adams’ description in history goes from heroic “Father of the Revolution” to zealot and propagandist directing mobs to a complex man who greatly influenced the American Revolution. (Perkins)

Samuel Adams, (born September 27 [September 16, Old Style], 1722, Boston, Massachusetts – died October 2, 1803, Boston) was a politician of the American Revolution, leader of the Massachusetts “radicals,” a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–81) and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was later lieutenant governor (1789–93) and governor (1794–97) of Massachusetts.

Adams was a powerful figure in the opposition to British authority in the colonies. He denounced the Sugar Act, being one of the first of the colonials to cry out against taxation without representation.

He played an important part in instigating the Stamp Act riots in Boston that were directed against the new requirement to pay taxes on all legal and commercial documents, newspapers, and college diplomas.

His influence was soon second only to James Otis, the lawyer and politician who gained prominence by his resistance to the revenue acts.

Samuel Adams was one of the first American leaders to deny Parliament’s authority over the colonies, and he was also one of the first—certainly by 1774—to establish independence as the proper goal.

He was again a leading figure in the opposition of Massachusetts to the execution of the Intolerable (Coercive) Acts passed by the British Parliament in retaliation for the dumping of tea in Boston Harbor, and, as a member of the First Continental Congress, which spoke for the 13 colonies, he insisted that the delegates take a vigorous stand against Britain.

A member of the provincial congress of Massachusetts in 1774–75, he participated in making preparations for warfare should Britain resort to arms. When the British troops marched out of Boston to Concord, Adams and the president of the Continental Congress, John Hancock, were staying in a farmhouse near the line of march, and it has been said that the arrest of the two men was one of the purposes of the expedition.

As a member of the Continental Congress, in which he served until 1781, Adams was less conspicuous than he was in town meetings and the Massachusetts legislature, for the congress contained a number of men as able as he.

He and John Adams were among the first to call for a final separation from Britain, both signed the Declaration of Independence, and both exerted considerable influence in the congress.

Elizabeth Checkley Adams

Elizabeth Checkley Adams, the first wife of Samuel Adams, was the daughter of Rev. Samuel Checkley, pastor of the New South Church in Boston.

The elder Checkley and the father of Samuel Adams were life-long friends, and it is said that it was the influence of the elder Adams that secured the appointment of his friend to the pastorate.

Five children were born to Samuel and Elizabeth Adams, only two of whom came to maturity, Samuel, Jr., and Hannah. On July 25, 1757, at the age of thirty-two, Elizabeth died soon after giving birth to a stillborn son.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Wells Adams

“On December 6, 1764, forty-two-year-old Samuel Adams married Elizabeth Wells, the twenty-nine-year-old daughter of his good friend, Francis Wells, an English merchant who came to Boston with his family in 1723. They had no children, but Elizabeth helped raise Samuel and Hannah, the surviving children of the first Mrs. Adams.

Elizabeth Wells Adams was a pleasant and hard-working woman who, through the forty years of life that remained to Sam, supported him in every way. She turned out to be a good manager. While he nurtured the birth of Independence, he was quite careless about his home and the condition of his own children’s clothes and shoes. (History of American Women)

After the British evacuated Boston in March 1776, she and her family returned to the city to live. Sometimes they were “low in cash,” as she naively put it, but with her fine sewing and Hannah’s “exquisite embroidery,” they managed to live in comfort.

Samuel Adams died at the age of 81 on October 2, 1803, and was interred at the Granary Burying Ground in Boston. The city’s Republican newspaper, the Independent Chronicle, eulogized him as the Father of the American Revolution. Elizabeth Wells Adams died in 1808.

John Adams

Adams was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1735 (he was 13 years younger than Samuel Adams). He was the eldest of the three sons of Deacon John Adams and Susanna Boylston of Braintree, Massachusetts.

His father was a farmer and shoemaker; the Adams family could trace its lineage back to the first generation of Puritan settlers in New England. A local selectman and a leader in the community, Deacon Adams encouraged his eldest son to aspire toward a career in the ministry.

In keeping with that goal, Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1755. For the next three years, he taught grammar school in Worcester, Massachusetts, while contemplating his future. He eventually chose law rather than the ministry and in 1758 moved back to Braintree, then soon began practicing law in nearby Boston.

Then Adams’s legal career was on the rise, and he had become a visible member of the resistance movement that questioned Parliament’s right to tax the American colonies.

He early became identified with the patriot cause; a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, he led in the movement for independence.

Despite his hostility toward the British government, in 1770 Adams agreed to defend the British soldiers who had fired on a Boston crowd in what became known as the Boston Massacre.

His insistence on upholding the legal rights of the soldiers, who in fact had been provoked, made him temporarily unpopular but also marked him as one of the most principled radicals in the burgeoning movement for American independence. He had a penchant for doing the right thing.

He and his cousin, Samuel Adams, quickly became the leaders of the radical faction, which rejected the prospects for reconciliation with Britain.

During the Revolutionary War he served in France and Holland in diplomatic roles, and helped negotiate the treaty of peace. From 1785 to 1788 he was minister to the Court of St. James.

Soon after his return to the United States, Adams found himself on the ballot in the presidential election of 1789.

Washington was the unanimous selection of all electors, while Adams finished second, signaling that his standing as a leading member of the revolutionary generation was superseded only by that of Washington himself. Under the electoral rules established in the recent ratified Constitution, Adams was duly elected America’s first vice president.

When Adams became President, the war between the French and British was causing great difficulties for the United States on the high seas and intense partisanship among contending factions within the Nation.

Adams retired to his farm in Quincy. Here he wrote his elaborate letters to Thomas Jefferson. Here on July 4, 1826 (the 50^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence), he whispered his last words: “Thomas Jefferson survives.” But Jefferson had died at Monticello a few hours earlier. (White House)

Abigail Smith Adams

Like other women of the time, Abigail lacked formal education; but her curiosity spurred her keen intelligence, and she read avidly the books at hand. Reading created a bond between her and young John Adams, Harvard graduate launched on a career in law, and they were married in 1764. It was a marriage of the mind and of the heart, enduring for more than half a century, enriched by time.

The young couple lived on John’s small farm at Braintree or in Boston as his practice expanded. In ten years she bore three sons and two daughters; she looked after family and home when he went traveling as circuit judge. “Alas!” she wrote in December 1773, “How many snow banks divide thee and me….”

Long separations kept Abigail from her husband while he served the country they loved, as delegate to the Continental Congress, envoy abroad, elected officer under the Constitution. Her letters – pungent, witty, and vivid, spelled just as she spoke – detail her life in times of revolution. They tell the story of the woman who stayed at home to struggle with wartime shortages and inflation; to run the farm with a minimum of help; to teach four children when formal education was interrupted

Abigail Adams was the first woman to serve as Second Lady of United States and the second woman to serve as First Lady. She was also the mother of the sixth President, John Quincy Adams.

Abigail died in 1818, and is buried beside her husband in United First Parish Church. She left her country a most remarkable record as patriot and First Lady, wife of one President and mother of another. (White House)

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams (eldest son of President John and Abigail Adams) entered the world (July 11, 1767, Braintree [now Quincy], Massachusetts) at the same time that his maternal great-grandfather, John Quincy, for many years a prominent member of the Massachusetts legislature, was leaving it – hence his name.

He grew up as a child of the American Revolution – he watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from Penn’s Hill and heard the cannons roar across the Back Bay in Boston.

In 1778 and again in 1780 the boy accompanied his father to Europe. He studied at a private school in Paris in 1778–79 and at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, in 1780. Thus, at an early age he acquired an excellent knowledge of the French language and a smattering of Dutch.

In 1790 he was admitted to the bar association in Boston. While struggling to establish a practice, he wrote a series of articles for the newspapers in which he controverted some of the doctrines in Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791).

All through his life, ever aspiring to higher public service, he considered himself a “man of my whole country.”

The Monroe Doctrine rightly bears the name of the president who in 1823 assumed the responsibility for its promulgation, but its formulation was the work of John Quincy Adams more than of any other single man.

As President Monroe’s second term drew to a close in 1824, three in his cabinet – Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, and Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford -aspired to succeed him. Adams was elected.

Perhaps the most dramatic event in Adams’s life was its end.

On February 21, 1848, in the act of protesting an honorary grant of swords by Congress to the generals who had won what Adams considered a “most unrighteous war” with Mexico, he suffered a cerebral stroke, fell unconscious to the floor of the House, and died two days later in the Capitol building.

Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams

John Quincy Adams was married in London in 1797, to Louisa Catherine Johnson (Louisa Adams), daughter of the United States consul Joshua Johnson, a Marylander by birth, and his wife, Katherine Nuth, an Englishwoman.

Adams had first met her when he was 12 years old and his father was minister to France. Fragile in health, she suffered from migraine headaches and fainting spells. Yet she proved to be a gracious hostess who played the harp and was learned in Greek, French, and English literature. Accompanying her husband on his various missions in Europe, she came to be regarded as one of the most-traveled women of her time.

Adams was cold and often depressed, and he admitted that his political adversaries regarded him as a “gloomy misanthropist” and “unsocial savage.” His wife is said to have regretted her marriage into the Adams family.

Click the following link to a general summary about the Adams Family:

Click to access Adams-Family.pdf

February 21, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Great Crack

The Great Crack is one of the most conspicuous features of the Southwest Rift Zone of Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano. (Halliday) It is an extensive network of cracks, fissures and cones. It spans 8 miles in length, measures 50 feet in width and plunges down to a depth of 66 feet.

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory geologists believe that the crack formed as magma intruded into the rift zone causing the surface to spread, not from the island falling apart. While the exact time of its formation remains uncertain, research indicates that it might have occurred gradually over time. (NPS)

In 1823, an eruption caused lava to surge out from the lower section of the Great Crack and flow for about 6 miles into the ocean, destroying one small coastal village at Mahuka Bay.

English missionary William Ellis witnessed the aftermath of the eruption. “Messrs (William) Ellis, (Asa) Thurston, (Artemas) Bishop and (Joseph) Goodrich made a tour round the island of Hawai‘i, examining its various districts, conversing with the natives, and preaching the gospel 130 different times.” (History of ABCFM) They were looking for suitable sites for mission stations.

Of this, Ellis wrote, “The people of Kearakomo also told us, that, no longer than five moons ago, Pele had issued from a subterranean cavern, and overflowed the low land of Kearaara, and the southern part of Kapapala.”

“The inundation was sudden and violent, burnt one canoe, and carried four more into the sea. At Mahuka, the deep torrent of lava bore into the sea a large rock, according to their account, near a hundred feet high, which, a short period before, had been separated by an earth quake from the main pile in the neighbourhood ….”

“We exceedingly regretted our ignorance of this inundation at the time we passed through the inland parts of the above-mentioned districts, for, had we known of it then, we should certainly have descended to the shore, and examined its extent and appearance.”

“We now felt convinced that the chasms we had visited at Ponahohoa, and the smoking fissures we afterwards saw nearer Kirauea, marked the course of a stream of lava, and thought it probable, that though the lava had burst out five months ago, it was still flowing in a smaller and less rapid stream.” (Ellis)

A hundred years later, geologist Harold Stearns officially named it the ‘Keaiwa Flow,’ which was a name the residents of Ka‘ū had been using informally back then. (NPS)

“The Keaiwa flow of 1823 from Kilauea welled up in the Great Crack and spread out seaward as a thin flow, in places only a few inches thick. The absence of cinders or driblet cones in or along the crack indicates that the usual fire fountains of Hawaii did not play during this eruption.”

“Lining the Great Crack in many places are lava balls that appear to be bombs, but that do not owe their form to projection.” (Stearns)

Beginning at roughly 2,300 feet in elevation, the lower extent of the Southwest Rift Zone is quite unlike any other on the island. Faulting activity here has consolidated into a feature named The Great Crack. It is just that, a single large crack that runs unbroken for more than 10 miles before finally reaching the coastline. (Coons)

“The Great Crack is one of a number of open cracks that fissure the southwest rift zone, a belt 1-2 miles wide extending southwestward from Kilauea to the sea.”

“Throughout most of its length the Great Crack has the general appearance of a steep-sided trench 20 to 30 feet wide. A few yards north of the head of the Keaiwa flow the crack breaks up into many smaller ones.”

“There are also graben areas [an elongated block of the earth’s crust lying between two faults and displaced downward] which seem to have been produced by the separation of the fissure into two cracks for a short distance and the later collapse of the narrow slices thus formed, with the subsidence of the magma.”

“In other places the graben is due to the collapse along the walls bordering the fissure when the region settled down after the extrusion of the lava. In a few places, especially near the sea, the Great Crack decreases in width to about 2 feet, and it finally dies out in echelon fashion at the coast. The cracks beyond the area of extravasation are only a few inches wide.”

“The Great Crack … differs from the others only in its continuity; it can be traced continuously for about 8 miles, and before it was buried by the flow of 1920 it must have been traceable still farther toward Halemaumau.”

“However, the mere fact that the Great Crack is continuous does not necessarily indicate that it was all opened at one time. There is ample evidence to show that it belongs to a system of fissures from which lava has poured out again and again.” (Stearns)

The Great Crack “is the result of crustal dilation from magmatic intrusions into the rift zone and not from the seaward movement of the south flank. There is no evidence that the Great Crack is getting bigger at this time or that the island is tearing apart along this seam.”

“Where the crack is narrow enough that opposing walls can be compared, matching features fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This suggests that a simple widening caused the crack. Opposite walls also have no vertical offset, so south flank subsidence did not influence the formation of the crack.”

“The total breakaway of the south flank block of Kīlauea … is not taking place at this time.” (USGS)

Notable features in the Great Crack are caves. Most of the floor of the open crack is littered with breakdown, but there are occasional gaps where cave entrances and pit craters lead to greater depths within the Great Crack System. It is believed there are more than 20 of these.

“The National Park Service has acquired a nearly 2,000-acre Big Island property containing a chasm known as ‘The Great Crack.’ The oceanfront property adjacent to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was purchased for $1.95 million in a recent foreclosure sale”.

“The park has been interested in the property northeast of Pahala for more than five decades, said Ben Hayes, the park’s director of interpretation.” (Associated Press, 2018)

The National Park is working to create a long-term plan for managing the Great Crack area. The park is exploring future public use options for these areas, with a community meeting in Fall 2023 to learn from local residents about the site’s resources and past uses. (NPS)