Peter T Young

August 25, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Alexander Young Hotel

Alexander Young was born in Blackburn, Scotland, December 14, 1833, the son of Robert and Agnes Young. His father was a contractor. When young, he apprenticed in a mechanical engineering and machinist department.

One of his first jobs included sailing around the Horn in 1860 to Vancouver Island with a shipload of machinery and a contract to build and operate a large sawmill at Alberni.

He left Vancouver Island for the distant “Sandwich Islands,” arriving in Honolulu February 5, 1865; he then formed a partnership with William Lidgate to operate a foundry and machine shop at Hilo, Hawaiʻi, continuing in this business for four years.

Moving to Honolulu, Young bought the interest of Thomas Hughes in the Honolulu Iron Works and continued in this business for 32 years. On his retirement from the iron works he invested in sugar plantation enterprises. He became president of the Waiakea Mill Co.

During the monarchy he served in the House of Nobles, 1889, was a member of the advisory council under the provisional Government and was a Minister of the Interior in President Dole’s cabinet.

With the new century he started a new career, when in 1900 he started construction of the Alexander Young Hotel, fronting Bishop Street and extending the full block between King and Hotel streets in downtown Honolulu. The 192-room building was completed in 1903.

In 1905, Young acquired the Moana Hotel and later the Royal Hawaiian Hotel (the ‘old’ Royal Hawaiian in downtown Honolulu that was later (1917) purchased for the Army and Navy YMCA.)

The Honolulu businessman whose downtown hotel that bore his name helped him became known as the father of the hotel industry in Hawaiʻi.

“Mr. Young has sought the best money could buy, with the single purpose of attaining the beauty, comfort and convenience which modern architecture can supply, modern thought suggest and modern man can require.” (Evening Bulletin, August 3, 1900)

Extending a block in length and rising six stories in height, the Alexander Young Building was the largest edifice in Honolulu. It dominated the city-scape and was a major landmark in the downtown area.

At the time of its construction it was the foremost hotel in the Pacific and one of the major hotels in America.

The Advertiser noted, “San Francisco with its 400,000 people, has only one caravansary as good and is priding itself on the prospect of one more. Across the bay Oakland, with 100,000 people, has nothing to compare with it; and going East through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas and so on to the western limits of Chicago, no hotel of equal cost and splendor can be found.”

“Between Chicago and Honolulu is a distance of 4,000 miles and a population of over thirty million people, yet but one hotel can be found in all that region which equals in size, modern fittings, and general attractiveness the hotel which bears the name Alexander Young.” (Honolulu Advertiser 1903)

It was four stories in height, six at the two ends, and built of grey granite; there was a roof garden tent where refreshments were served and concerts given. At either end of this roof garden is a dance pavilion. (The only major addition to the building was the fifth story placed on the roof garden in 1955.)

The Young Hotel was used by the military in both World Wars. During WW I, the US Army used the second floor. During WW II, the military occupied most of the hotel. Other notable occupants of the hotel include the 1929 legislature, which maintained its offices there while ʻIolani Palace was refurbished.

In 1964, the hotel was converted to stores and offices. The landmark (on the National Register of Historic Places) Alexander Young Building was demolished in 1981.

At about the same time, Young formed the von Hamm-Young Company with his son-in-law, Conrad Carl von Hamm and others (an automobile sales, textiles, wholesale sales, machinery and a host of other businesses, and forerunner of The Hawaiʻi Corporation.) He also started Young Laundry.

Alexander Young died July 2, 1910. (I have no known genealogical relation to him.)

August 23, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

First Sugar Production

He keiki aloha nā mea kanu

Beloved children are the plants

(ʻŌlelo Noʻeau 684)

In the past two decades, significant advances in radiocarbon dating and the targeted re-dating of key Eastern Polynesian and Hawaiian sites has strongly supported a “short chronology” model of Eastern Polynesian settlement.

It is suggested that initial Polynesian discovery and colonization of the Hawaiian Islands occurred between approximately AD 1000 and 1200. (Kirch)

Sugar was a canoe crop; the early Polynesian settlers to Hawaiʻi brought sugar cane with them and demonstrated that it could be grown successfully in the islands.

In pre-contact times, sugarcane was not processed as we know sugar today, but was used by chewing the juicy stalks. Its leaves were used for inside house thatching, or for outside (if pili grass wasn’t available.) The flower stalks of sugar cane were used to make a dart, sometimes used during the Makahiki games. (Canoe Crops)

The first written record of sugarcane in Hawaiʻi came from Captain James Cook, at the time he made initial contact with the Islands. On January 19, 1778, off Kauai, he notes, “We saw no wood, but what was up in the interior part of the island, except a few trees about the villages; near which, also, we could observe several plantations of plantains and sugar-canes.” (Cook)

Cook notes that sugar was cultivated, “The potatoe fields, and spots of sugar-canes, or plantains, in the higher grounds, are planted with the same regularity; and always in some determinate figure; generally as a square or oblong”. (Cook)

It appears Cook was the first outsider to put sugarcane to use. One of his tools in his fight against scurvy (severe lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in your diet) was beer.

On December 7, 1778 he notes, “Having procured a quantity of sugar cane; and having, upon a trial, made but a few days before, found that a strong decoction of it produced a very palatable beer, I ordered some more to be brewed, for our general use.”

“A few hops, of which we had some on board, improved it much. It has the taste of new malt beer; and I believe no one will doubt of its being very wholesome. And yet my inconsiderate crew alleged that it was injurious to their health.” (Cook)

While the crew “would (not) even so much as taste it”, he “gave orders that no grog should be served … (he) and the officers, continued to make use of this sugarcane beer, whenever (they) could get materials for brewing it.” (Cook) Others later made rum from the sugarcane.

But beer and rum were not a typical sugar use; “in 1802 sugar was first made at these islands, by a native of China, on the island of Lanai.”

“He came here in one of the vessels trading for sandal wood, and brought a stone mill, and boilers, and after grinding off one small crop and making it into sugar, went back the next year with his fixtures, to China.” (Torbert; Polynesian, January 31, 1852)

While HSPA – HARC states, “The first successful sugarcane plantation was started at Kōloa, Kauai in 1835. Its first harvest in 1837 produced 2 tons of raw sugar, which sold for $200”, others suggest the first commercial production actually started on Maui. (Hawaii Agriculture Research Center (HARC) (successor entity to Hawaii Sugar Planters Association (HSPA))

A couple guys named Ah Hung and Ah Tai, who combined their names in order to identify their company – a 1939 news ‘Short’ says Hungtai “is said to have been one of the earliest manufacturers of sugar in the islands, at Wailuku, Maui in 1823.” (Star Bulletin, April 6, 1939) Others say Hungtai started commercial sales in 1828; still, seven years before Koloa.

Hungtai had a plantation and a water-powered mill in Wailuku, and sold the sugar in their store at Merchant and Fort Streets in Honolulu. They were still selling that sugar as late as 1841, when they were advertising in local newspapers. (TenBruggencate)

Early plantations were small and didn’t fare too well. Soon, most would come to realize that “sugar farming and sugar milling were essentially great-scale operations.” (Garvin)

Then, King Kamehameha III sought to expand sugar cultivation and production, as well as expand other agricultural ventures to support commercial agriculture in the Islands. In a speech to the Legislature in 1847, the King notes:

“I recommend to your most serious consideration, to devise means to promote the agriculture of the islands, and profitable industry among all classes of their inhabitants. It is my wish that my subjects should possess lands upon a secure title; enabling them to live in abundance and comfort, and to bring up their children free from the vices that prevail in the seaports.”

“What my native subjects are greatly in want of, to become farmers, is capital with which to buy cattle, fence in the land and cultivate it properly. I recommend you to consider the best means of inducing foreigners to furnish capital for carrying on agricultural operations, that thus the exports of the country may be increased …” (King Kamehameha III Speech to the Legislature, April 28, 1847; Archives)

Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880. These twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system. Basic features of rural factory life were established.

This was a period of rapid growth for the sugar industry, building upon the momentum triggered by the Māhele of 1848, the Kuleana Act of 1850, and the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875. Likewise, the Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai‘i to compete with elevated prices for sugar.

A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the landscape. Sugar‐cane farming proved to be the only available crop that could be grown. However, a shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge. The only answer was imported labor.

There were three big waves of workforce immigration: Chinese 1852; Japanese 1885 and Filipinos 1905. Several smaller, but substantial, migrations also occurred: Portuguese 1877; Norwegians 1880; Germans 1881; Puerto Ricans 1900; Koreans 1902 and Spanish 1907.

It is not likely anyone then foresaw the impact this would have on the cultural and social structure of the islands; the sugar industry is at the center of Hawaiʻi’s modern diversity of races and ethnic cultures.

At the industry’s peak in the 1930s, Hawaii’s sugar plantations employed more than 50,000 workers and produced more than 1-million tons of sugar a year; over 254,500-acres were planted in sugar. That plummeted to 492,000 tons in 1995.

With statehood in 1959 and the almost simultaneous introduction of passenger jet airplanes, the tourist industry began to grow rapidly.

A majority of the plantations closed in the 1990s.

As sugar declined, tourism took its place – and far surpassed it. Like many other societies, Hawaii underwent a profound transformation from an agrarian to a service economy.

August 22, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kalonakikeke

“There has never been any agreement, as to the origin of this isolated island people, or the reasons why this type is only found scattered over all the solitary islands in the eastern part of the Pacific.” (Thor Heyerdahl)

Solomon Lehuanui Kalaniomaiheuila Peleioholani (also called Peleioholani the 4th or Lehuanui, or simply, Peleioholani) (1843-1916) was the son of Peleioholani (uncle to the Kings Kamehameha IV and Kamehameha V) and Piikeakaluaonalani (mother.)

His great grandfather was the high chief Keʻeaumoku (father of Kaʻahumanu,) one of the ablest supporters of Kamehameha I.

As a boy, Peleioholani was the protégé of Kamehameha IV and his Queen Emma and the companion of their son Prince Albert (“Ka Haku O Hawaiʻi, “The Lord of Hawaiʻi.”)

During the short life of the little Prince, Peleioholani was his playmate, and both were treated with utmost respect by all they met. During this time, Peleioholani lived at the residence of Kekūanāo’a (hānai father of Bernice Pauahi Bishop.) (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, January 22, 1902)

In 1874, he returned to Hawaiʻi and was a well-respected genealogist. For many, Peleioholani was considered an important Hawaiian antiquarian and the final word in Hawaiian genealogy, especially of the chiefs and royal families.

Peleioholani was a High Chief, and in many ways both the pinnacle and terminus of the old royal blood lines from Maui, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi and Kauai.

His grandparents were among those who sided with Kamehameha I to achieve unity of the islands. His father was an uncle to the Kings Kamehameha IV and Kamehameha V and he was himself one of the highest ranking chiefs in the Hawaiian Islands. (kekoolani-org)

He also wrote of the Hawaiian history. One work, ‘The Ancient History of Hookumu-ka-lani Hookumu-ka-honua,’ was a commentary of the ancient Hawaiian cosmogonies (creation theories.)

One of Peleioholani’s theories in that book notes, “The ancestors of the Hawaiian race came not from the islands the South Pacific – for the immigrants from that direction were late arrivals there – but from the northern direction (welau lani,) that is, from the land of Kalonakikeke, now known as Alaska.”

“According to this tradition, a great flood that occurred during the reign of Kahiko-Luamea on the continent of Ka-Houpo-o-Kane, (“The Bosom of Kane”) and carried away a floating log of wood named Konikonihia.”

“On this log was a precious human cargo and it came to rest on the land of Kalonakikeke (“Alaska”).”

“On this log were the first man and woman who came to Kalonakikeke from the continent of Ka-Houpo-o-Kane, they were Kalonakiko-ke (“Mr Alaska”) and his wife Hoomoe-a-pule (“Woman of my dreams”).”

“They were said to both be high chiefs of the countries of Kanaka-Hikina (“Person of the east”) and Kanaka-Komohana (“Person of the west”) and were descended from the great great ancestor Huka-ohialaka.”

“Many generations later, Chief Nuu, travelled with his wife, Lilinoe, their three sons and their three wives in a canoe called Ka-Waa-Halau-Alii-O-Ka-Moku (“The royal canoe of the continent”), and it rested upon Mauna Kea (“White Mountain”), on the island of Hawaii. They were the first Hawaiians.”

“According to Hawaiian genealogies, Chief Nuu lived around 200 BCE. (This agrees closely with the genetic evidence showing the time of arrival of Polynesians in the Pacific)” (Peleioholani; Poepoe translation; UC Riverside)

August 21, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Salem Poor

“The Subscribers begg leave to Report to your Honble. House, (which wee do in Justice to the Character of So Brave a Man) that under Our Own observation, Wee declare …”

“… that A Negro Man Called Salem Poor of Col. Fryes Regiment Capt. Ames. Company in the late Battle at Charlestown behaved like an Experienced officer, as Well as an Excellent Soldier, to Set forth Particulars of his Conduct Would be Tedious, Wee Would Only begg leave to Say in the Person of this Sd. Negro Centers a Brave & gallant Soldier.”

“The Reward due to so great and Distinguisht a Caracter, Wee Submit to the Congress” (Petition, signed by thirteen Continental Army officers and a brigade surgeon, to the Massachusetts General Court, December 5, 1775)

Let’s look back …

To prevent British soldiers from conducting further attacks on the countryside after the march to Lexington and Concord, 20,000 provincial militiamen encircled Boston in the spring of 1775. The Charlestown peninsula and Dorchester Heights, commanding both the city of Boston and Boston harbor, lie abandoned. This has been referred to as the Siege of Boston.

Hoping to make the British “masters of these heights,” General Gage, in conference with Major Generals William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne, planned to seize the neglected positions before the colonists do so.

News of Gage’s intent filtered across from Boston and down from New Hampshire on June 15. Acting quickly on this intelligence, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety ordered General Artemas Ward, commander of the colonial militia surrounding Boston, to race the British to the Charlestown peninsula, capture Bunker Hill, and then seize the Dorchester hills.

Construction began sometime around midnight as hundreds of colonial men with pickaxes and shovels constructed a fort atop the lower hill overlooking the settlement of Charlestown and the beaches along the Harbor. (NPS)

Astonished British generals woke on the morning of June 17 to discover the newly erected defenses. As the day continued, British ships bombarded the untrained militia as they worked, and Colonel Prescott walked the fortifications to raise morale. Thirsty and tired, the soldiers received “no refreshment.”

At three o’clock in the afternoon, over 2,000 British soldiers, commanded by General Howe, landed on the Charlestown shore. Continental snipers fired at the British as they marched, and General Howe ordered a combustible shell launched on Charlestown. Amid smoke and flames, local inhabitants fled their homes in order to escape “Charlestown’s dismal fate.”

Then, British troops headed uphill, where they were frustrated by fences, pits, and tall grass. In dust and heat, the continental militia waited behind their walls. They hold fire until the British are in within 150 feet of the fortifications.

(Contrary to urban legend, there’s no evidence anyone ordered the men to hold their fire until they saw “the whites” of the enemies’ eyes. The writer Parson Weems seems to have invented this decades later.)

The Americans opened fired at about 50 yards, much too distant to see anyone’s eyes. However, one commander did tell his men to wait until they could see the splash guards – called half-gaiters – that British soldiers wore around their calves.) (Smithsonian)

The British charged three times. Prescott’s men again waited until the last minute to fire. On the final charge the Americans were running out of ammunition and were soon overrun by the British; then they fought with rocks and the butts of their muskets.

No longer able to withstand the British attack, Prescott’s men retreated north over the road to Cambridge, as General Stark’s New Hampshire troops covered them in the rear.

In total, 140 colonists were dead and 271 wounded. Before dark, the British again command the Charleston peninsula, though 226 British lie dead and 828 are wounded. Popularly known as ‘The Battle of Bunker Hill,’ as noted, the battle actually occurred on Breed’s Hill.

Despite renewed British control of the peninsula, colonial forces still trapped the British in Boston. As supply issues and shortages plague them, the British prepared for further military commitment to defeat the “poor and ignorant” colonists. Meanwhile, the colonies scrambled to assemble more soldiers.

About Salem Poor

Born enslaved in Andover, Massachusetts, Salem Poor (~1747-~1802) worked on the farm of John and Rebecca Poor. In 1769, at 22 years old, he bought his freedom for 27 pounds, which equaled a working man’s annual earnings.

In May of 1775, Poor enlisted in the interim Massachusetts Army. This last-minute army consisted of colonial forces primarily from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. Thus, the troops that fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 were under the command of Massachusetts and New Hampshire officers.

During the battle, Salem Poor served in an Andover unit commanded by Capt. Thomas Drury, whose company included several other African American minute men. Poor’s unit arrived as a secondary force, in order to “assist in the building of fortifications.”

Instead, due to the dire circumstances, they covered the retreating units that had constructed the barriers on Breed’s Hill and had run out of ammunition. His unit received heavy fire; the British Regular Army killed five Andover men near him on the spot and left another six seriously wounded.

As he helped the wounded, Poor slowly retreated and fired one last shot that killed British Army Lt. Col. James Abercrombie. The British Regular army successfully drove the New England forces off the Charlestown Peninsula, but not without paying a heavy price in losses themselves. (NPS)

Salem Poor fought on with the Continental Army to the end of the American Revolution. He re-enlisted for a three-year term with Colonel Edward Wigglesworth’s 13th Massachusetts Regiment, starting in mid-1777.

This brought him to Monmouth, New Jersey and Saratoga, New York. He also served at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and White Plains, New York. He returned home in 1780, free and with veteran status.

On the home front in Andover, he married four times: in 1771 to freed woman Nancy Parker, with whom he had a son in 1774; in 1780 to Mary Twing, no longer enslaved; 1787 to Sarah Stevens, White and therefore free; 1801 to Hannah Ayliffe, a Black woman of unknown status.

In 1802, at age fifty-five, Salem Poor died and was buried anonymously at Boston’s Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. What he went through after his years of enlistment and battles, we can only imagine.

Here are some solid facts: he was a hero of Bunker Hill, recognized by all regimental leaders, and was one of at least 5,000 African Americans who served on the side of the Colonists throughout the Revolutionary War. (NPS)

Click the clinks below for a general summary that helps explain it – the file ending with ‘SAR–RT’ is a formatting used by the Sons of the American Revolution for presentations by its members under its Revolutionary Times program:

Click to access Salem-Poor.pdf

Click to access Salem-Poor-a-brave-and-gallant-soldier-SAR-RT.pdf

August 20, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hale Pili

Traditional dwellings (hale pili) were constructed of native woods lashed together with cordage most often made from olonā. Pili grass was a preferred thatching that added a pleasant odor to a new hale. Lauhala (pandanus leaves) or ti leaf bundles called pe‘a, were other covering materials used.

There were many loina (rules) associated with the construction of hale. The kahuna ku‘iku‘i puʻuone, priest who chose the location for a hale, had the final word on the important decision of site selection. The building of a new house was marked with ritual and a feast of dedication. (Bishop Museum)

The “birthing” ceremony of a new dwelling centered around the doorway of the house with the cutting of the piko (center, symbolizing the umbilical cord) of the house and offerings of fish. The kahuna o Lono recited a Pule Ho‘ola‘a Hale (House Dedication Prayer). (Bishop Museum)

During a tour of the Island of Hawaiʻi in 1823, missionary William Ellis noted the following, “The houses of the natives whom he had visited today, like most in this part of the island [Hilo district], where the pandanus is abundant, were covered with the leaves of this plant, which, though it requires more labour in thatching, makes the most durable dwellings.”

There is also less variety in the form of the Sandwich Island dwellings, which are chiefly of two kinds, viz., the kale noho (dwelling house), or halau (a long building) nearly open at one end, and, though thatched with different materials, they are all framed in nearly the same way.” (Ellis)

“The size and quality of a dwelling varies according to the rank and means of its possessor, those of the poor people being mere huts, eight or ten feet square, others twenty feet long, and ten or twelve feet wide, while the houses of the chiefs are from forty to seventy feet long. (Ellis)

Unlike our housing today, the single ‘hale’ was not necessarily the ‘home.’ The traditional Hawaiian home was the kauhale (Lit., plural house;) this was a group of houses forming the homestead – spatially separated – each serving a specific purpose, but paired male and female activity areas.

“Their houses are generally separate from each other: even in their most populous villages, however near the houses may be, they are always distinct buildings.” (Ellis)

A kauhale could consist of a cluster of dwellings in the mid-elevations for cultivating food, another cluster of dwellings on the shoreline for fishing, and perhaps even more higher up on the volcanic slopes for hunting and harvesting wood products.

For the fairly well-to-do family, these consisted of hale noa (house free from kapu) where all slept together, hale mua (men’s meeting/eating house, hale aina (women’s eating house,) hale pe‘a (menstruation house) and other needed dwellings (those for canoe makers and others used to house fishing gear.)

The two basic functional units were the common house or hale noa and the mua. Apparently, only a few households ever exhibited the full complement of structures, although sleeping and cook houses were present within most household complexes. (Handy & Pukui)

The main structure within the kauhale household complex was the common house, or hale noa, in which all the family members slept at night. It was the largest building within a family compound and the most weatherproof. (Loubser)

The house in which the men ate was called the mua; the sanctuary where they worshipped was called heiau, and it was a very tabu place. The house in which the women ate was called the hale aina.

These houses were the ones to which the restrictions and tabu applied, but in the common dwelling house, hale noa, the man and his wife met freely together. (Malo)

In most cases, the hale noa was mauka of the hale mua. Where this is not the case, the hale noa is nonetheless still on higher ground than the hale mua. This mauka-makai or high ground-low ground opposition might be significant in terms of the traditional Hawaiian divisions of space along gender lines. (Loubser)

This arrangement, under the kapu system, was very burdensome on the husband and wife. For instance, the husband was burdened and wearied with the preparation of two ovens of food, one for himself and a separate one for his wife. (Malo)

He would first prepare an oven of food for his wife, and, when that was done, he went to the house mua and started an oven of food for himself. He’s return to the wife’s oven peel the taro, pound it into poi, knead it and put it into the calabash for his wife. Then he’d return to do the same for himself. (Malo)

A huge change that came with the end of the kapu system (in 1819) was the mixing of the previously separate places for eating and sleeping. The book Native Planters describes:

“The simplicity and orderliness of the hale noa, and with them the sound, normal living of families, were destroyed when the kapu requiring men and women to eat separately was abolished. This meant that food was brought into the living quarters.”

“What had been a clean and neat sanctum for man and wife and their offspring became a free-for-all gathering place for all ages of both sexes.” (Handy & Pukui)

“The house was esteemed a possession of great value. It was the place where husband and wife slept, where their children and friends met, where the household goods of all sorts were stored.” (Malo)

“To act justly without trespassing or deceiving, not frequenting another’s house, not gazing wistfully upon your neighbor’s goods nor begging for anything that belongs to him – that is the prudent course.” (Malo)