Peter T Young

May 17, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Truman Taylor

Explosive eruptions do not generally come to mind when people think of Hawai‘i’s volcanoes. Their eruptions are typically characterized by the relatively quiet outflow of very fluid lava and by sometimes spectacular lava fountains.

Hawai‘i’s volcanoes have therefore become the textbook example of nonexplosive volcanism, and the term “Hawaiian type” is used to refer to such eruptions. Eruptions at Kilauea can often be observed safely at close range. (USGS)

The late 1780s were years of great strife on the Island of Hawai’i. Kamehameha, who later became the first king of the Hawaiian Islands, was at war with his rival Keōua. After one of several indecisive battles, probably in 1790, the balance was suddenly tipped in favor of Kamehameha when a natural disaster struck.

As a large group of Keōua’s warriors traveling with their families passed the crater of Kilauea Volcano, there was a sudden explosive eruption of searingly hot ash and gas. At least 80 and perhaps hundreds of people were killed in the deadliest historical eruption to occur in what is now the United States. (USGS)

During 18 days in May 1924, hundreds of steam explosions from Kilauea hurled mud, debris, and hot rocks weighing as much as 8 tons as far as two-thirds of a mile from the center of Halema‘uma‘u the current crater within the larger volcanic depression (caldera) at Kilauea’s summit.

Columns of volcanic ash and dust rose more than 2 miles into the air, at times turning day into night at the town of Pahala, nearly 20 miles downwind.

Only one person was killed during this eruption, a photographer who ventured too close and was struck by falling rocks and hot mud. (USGS)

The largest explosive event in 1924, on May 18, ejected blocks toward the southeast, including the eight-ton block, and killed Truman Taylor. (Pacific Parks)

Taylor Stearns notes in his autobiography, “[WO] Clark told me how he had brought Taylor, a clerk about twenty-seven years old from Pahala [he worked on the C. Brewer plantation], up to the volcano. Miss Bradfield, the local nurse, and her companion [Miss Peck] had been with them.”

“Taylor had borrowed Clark’s camera and tripod to take a close-up shot. [When the explosion began, Ted] Dranga and the two nurses ran to the Essex car nearby, which they had left running so as to make escape easy [those were the days of hand cranks].”

“When they reached the car the [others] wanted to start right away but Miss Bradfield said she didn’t want to leave with Taylor out there. She made them wait a minute, and then as the stones began to fall around them she decided it would be better to leave Taylor than for all to be killed.”

Per, “Ruy Finch, in the HVO journal: 10:36 a.m. With L.A. Thurston and W.O. Clark of Pahala. Large puffs of steam; rumbling, earthquake. Went to sand spit above Algae [an area of algae growing on the south-facing cliff, then known as the Italian cliff, that forms the south side of what is now known as Sand Spit] and sat down on a boulder which had been ejected at 12:30 p.m.”

“May 17. Numerous quakes and rumbling. Sent T. Dranga Jr., to get Thurston who was with Carlsmiths. A wave of increased air pressure that decidedly hurt my head, was felt at 11:09 a.m. Jumped and exclaimed, ‘Here comes a terrible one.’”

“The air pressure was felt several seconds before rocks appeared and two or three seconds before the explosion cloud cleared the rim. Started to take picture but saw rocks of great dimensions high in the air headed toward our locality.”

“Ran to cliff and slid down a wash. A rock, judging from its air appearance to have weighed over 300 lbs [135 kg] cleared the cliff and landed on 1921 lava. Left Thurston, Clark and ladies of Carlsmith party on cliff.”

“O Emerson in the afternoon reported a 10-ton rock on airplane landing-field [on Sand Spit], found while searching for possible killed or wounded soldiers. Two men were seen on rim of pit a short time before 11:09 a.m. explosion.”

“TA Dranga Sr. came across crater floor but said that Mr. Truman Taylor of Pahala, who was with him on the way up to crater, had left him 10 minutes before the explosion”

“Went back to find missing man with Clark, Dranga Jr. and Dranga Sr. Taylor was discovered with legs crushed by fallen bowlders about 125 feet from old parking place.”

“Dranga Sr. started to get car seat, to use as stretcher, when another explosion came. Dranga Jr. and I carried Taylor to road where he was put into car.” (USGS)

“Truman A Taylor, bookkeeper at Pahala, died at 11:30 o’clock last night [May 18, 1924] at Hilo Hospital from hemorrhage and shock. One leg had been amputated at the ankle after it had been crushed by a shower of rocks from the volcano.”

“Taylor was found shortly before noon yesterday by an unidentified man who heard screams. He was covered by burning ash, and both legs were crushed.”

“First aid was given by Capt PK McKenzie, surgeon at Kilauea Military Camp and the injured man was rushed in Army ambulance, accompanied by Miss Molly Thomas, Hilo nurse, to Hilo Hospital.”

“Taylor was from Chicago, and had been in Pahala about two months, after a stay of three weeks in Honolulu. He wore a tag bearing the legend, ‘USA 3422044.’” (SB, May 19, 1924)

May 16, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sugar, Growth Years

“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. Other pioneers, predominantly from the United States, soon began growing sugarcane on the islands of Hawaii, Maui, and Oahu.” (HARC)

Shortly thereafter, King Kamehameha III, seeking to encourage commercial cultivation of sugar by native Hawaiians offered the “acre system,” giving “out small lots of land, from one to two acres, to individuals for the cultivation of cane.”

“When the cane is ripe, the King finds all the apparatus for manufacturing & when manufactured takes the half. Of his half one fifth is regarded as the tax due to the aupuni (government) & the remaining four fifths is his compensation for the manufacture. These cane cultivators are released from all other demands of every description on the part of chiefs.” (Armstrong (1839;) MacLennan)

About this time, the initial signs of commercial sugar are found on Maui, in Wailuku. In 1840, the King ordered an iron mill from the US, and it was erected by August. Hung & Co in 1841 advertised the sale of sugar and sugar syrup from its 150-acre plantation in Wailuku. More than likely, this was sugar from the King’s Mill. (MacLennan)

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.

From January 27, 1848 through March 7, 1848 King Kamehameha III participated in what we refer to as the “Great Māhele” that was a reformation of the land system in Hawaiʻi and allowed private ownership; this fundamentally changed the land tenure system to a westernized paper title system through the Māhele.

The lands were formally divided among the king and the chiefs, and the fee titles were recorded in the Māhele book. Deeds conveying land contained the phrase “ua koe ke kuleana o na kānaka,” or “reserving the rights of all native tenants,” in continuation of the reserved tenancies which characterized the traditional Hawaiian land tenure system. (Garavoy)

The 1850 Kuleana Act allowed “native tenants” to claim fee simple title to the lands they worked. Those who claimed their parcel(s) successfully acquired what is known as a kuleana.

The Kuleana Act did not allow the maka‘āinana to exercise other traditional rights, such as the right to grow crops and pasture animals on unoccupied portions of the ahupua’a. The court’s interpretation of the act prevented tenants from making traditional use of commonly cultivated land. (MacKenzie)

The growth in the size and number of sugar plantations was further fueled by the Treaty of Reciprocity – 1875 between the United States and the Kingdom of Hawai‘i that eliminated the major trade barrier to Hawai‘i’s closest and major market.

A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the landscape. Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system.

During the Civil War boom period, the typical 1860s plantation was two hundred to three hundred acres in size, with about one hundred acres in cane, employing around one hundred workers year-round.

Hawai‘i’s government committed extensive resources to the success of sugar export. Honolulu’s merchants and financiers came to dominate sugar production. The Islands turned a corner during these decades – Hawai‘i’s dependence upon sugar began.

The fastest growth occurred on Maui, which in 1866 had twelve plantations, compared to Hawai‘i’s eight, O‘ahu’s six, and Kauai’s four. Production on Hawai‘i Island, was just under a third of the total.

The island of Hawai’i had become the major sugar producer. Plantation statistics for the Hawaiian government in 1879 shows Hawai‘i with twenty-four plantations, Maui with thirteen, Kauai with seven, O‘ahu with seven, and Molokai with three – a total of fifty-four operations.

At the heart of this transformation was the plantation center. Unlike the commercial sugar mill, which drew on existing communities of Hawaiian workers, the plantation center represented a new clustering of population and technology.

Specifically, it was characterized by a sizable increase of foreign population, government recognition of the area as a vital economic region with distinct political needs, and by public and private investment in a shared physical infrastructure (e.g., stores, wharves, harbors) established specifically to trade with the West.

An important development in Hawai‘i’s history, the plantation center created new social institutions of dependency. The Hawaiian government also had a significant hand in the rise of plantation centers.

The decline of whaling, collapse of the native vegetable trade, and a rapidly decreasing native population left the government with huge expenditures and little source of income.

In response, it applied public funds and assets toward the sugar trade in hopes of increasing Hawai‘i’s wealth. The Board of Immigration was established in 1866 to recruit workers for plantations. (MacLennan)

Five plantation centers changed the surrounding landscape and altered nearby Hawaiian communities. Plantations in Līhu‘e, Wailuku, Makawao, Hilo and Kohala brought an invasion of agricultural practices, technologies and repeopled the land with foreigners (from China, Portugal and Japan) and Hawaiians from other islands.

Characteristics of the five developing plantation centers separate them from the smaller sugar ventures of the period. Plantation centers comprised several separate sugar mills and fields of different owners. Schools, stores, and worker villages sprang

up around these centers, serving the plantations.

By 1880 there were several other very new centers in Ka‘ū and Honoka’a on Hawai‘i, Lahaina on Maui, Princeville on Kauai, and several scattered plantations on O‘ahu. (MacLennan)

May 15, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Manuia Lanai

Henry French Poor was the eldest son of Henry Francis Poor and Caroline Paakaiulaula Bush; he was born in the Islands, June 8, [1857].

“Henry F Poor was one of the most brilliant Hawaiians whose cradle ever rocked in these beautiful Islands. … He possessed the generous spirit of his race and the keen intelligence of his New England’s forebears.”

“As secretary to Colonel Iaukea on the Kalakaua embassy to the rulers of the world he covered himself with honors and his bright letters were published in the local papers.” (The Independent, Nov 29, 1899)

Poor hosted Robert Louis Stevenson on his visit to the Islands. On January 24, 1889, Stevenson arrived in Honolulu and spent the first six months of that year in the Hawaiian Islands (he later settled and lived in Samoa.)

On January 24, 1889, Stevenson arrived in Honolulu and spent the first six months of that year in the Hawaiian Islands (he later settled and lived in Samoa.)

“For the first few days the Stevenson party stayed with Henry Poor and his mother Mrs Caroline Bush, at 40 Queen Emma Street, Honolulu (24-27 January).”

“Then on 27 January 1889 they moved to Poor’s bungalow, Manuia Lanai [“a pavilion of the native pattern” (Brown)], at Waikiki, three miles east of Honolulu. In early February Stevenson decided to send the Casco back to San Francisco and stay on to work in Hawaii.”

“As a result he rented the house next to Henry Poor’s. This too was a one-storey ‘rambling house or set of houses’ in a garden, centred on a lanai, ‘an open room or summer parlour, partly surrounded with venetian shutters, in part quite open, which is the living room’”. (RLS Website)

“Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson has retired to ‘Manuia Lanai’ Mr. H. F. Poor’s sea-side place at Kapiolani Park, where he will probably

remain some time in quiet in order to complete some of the literary work he has undertaken. We are informed privately however, that it is the intention of Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson after this week to be ‘at home’ on Wednesday afternoons from 2 to 5 pm.” (Daily Bulletin, January 28, 1889)

On Oʻahu, Stevenson was introduced to the King Kalākaua and others in the royal family by fellow Scotsman, Archibald Cleghorn. Stevenson established a fast friendship with the royal family and spent a lot of time with his good friend King Kalākaua.

On February 3, 1889, there was a luau party at Manuia Lanai, where both Kalakaua and Liliuokalani were invited as special guests. At the height of the party, Mrs Stevenson presented Kalākaua with a golden pearl from the Tuamotus. (Ejiri) In giving the gift, Stevenson recited the following line of his sonnet (Daily Bulletin. Feb 4. 1889):

The Silver Ship, my king, – that was her name

In the bright islands whence your fathers came –

The Silver Ship, at rest from wind and tides,

Below your palace, in your harbour rides;

And the sea-farers sitting safe on the shore,

Like eager merchant, count their treasures o’er.

One gift they find, one strange and lovely thing,

Now doubly precious, since it pleased a king.

The right, my liege, is ancient as the Lyre,

For bards to give to kings what kings admire.

‘Tis mine to offer, for Appollo’s sake;

And since the gilt is fitting, yours to take.

To golden hands the golden pearl I bring:

The Ocean jewel to the Island King.

“The feast was purely Hawaiian there being no foreign dish upon the table. Aside from pig, fish, and fowls, roasted underground, were many strange edibles: pu-pu, opihi, two kinds of opae, koelepalau, and kulolo, taro and sweet potato poi, besides others, all beautifully arranged upon a bed of fern leaves.” (Daily Bulletin, Feb 4, 1889)

In the Islands, the renowned author found time for writing, completing The Master of Ballantrae and The Wrong Box and starting others during his short stay.

Stevenson visited Kalaupapa (shortly after Damien’s death) and later wrote of the good work of Father Damien (now Saint Damien.) He also travelled to Kona on the Big Island (the setting for most of his short story “The Bottle Imp.”)

Henry French Poor died in Honolulu on November 28, 1899 and is buried at O‘ahu Cemetery.

May 14, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

We can first thank our mothers on this Mother’s Day.

Then we can thank Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis for their efforts in making it a holiday.

It dates back to 1870, when Howe wrote a Mother’s Day Proclamation of Peace.

After witnessing the carnage of the American Civil War and the start of the Franco-Prussian War, Julia Ward Howe, a prominent American abolitionist, feminist and poet wrote the original Mother’s Day Proclamation calling upon the women of the world to unite for peace.

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts,

Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.

Howe was influenced by another peace activist, Anna Reeves Jarvis, a West Virginia woman who organized Mother’s Day Work Clubs before the Civil War.

Women in the clubs raised money for medicine and inspected bottled milk and food. They also hired helpers for families in which the mothers had tuberculosis.

During the Civil War, the Mother’s Day Work Clubs declared their neutrality, cared for the wounded and fed and clothed soldiers on both sides of the conflict.

After the Civil War, Jarvis staged a Mother’s Friendship Day at the courthouse in Pruntytown, W.Va., to bring together people who supported the Confederacy and people who supported the Union. (New England Historical Society)

Anna Reeves Jarvis died at 72 in Pennsylvania on May 9, 1905. Julia Ward Howe died five years later, at age 91 in Portsmouth, R.I., Four years after her death, President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother’s Day a national holiday. But not for peace.

Anna Reeves Jarvis’ daughter, Anna Jarvis, finally succeeded in founding the Mothers’ Day holiday. She held a memorial for her mother on May 10, 1908, at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, W.Va.

Anna Jarvis continued to campaign for a Mother’s Day holiday until President Woodrow Wilson issued the proclamation on May 8, 1914.

Although Jarvis had promoted the wearing of a white carnation as a tribute to one’s mother, the custom developed of wearing a red or pink carnation to represent a living mother or a white carnation for a mother who was deceased.

Over time the day was expanded to include others, such as grandmothers and aunts, who played mothering roles. What had originally been primarily a day of honor became associated with the sending of cards and the giving of gifts.

However, in protest against its commercialization, Jarvis spent the last years of her life trying to abolish the holiday she had brought into being. (Britannica)

We typically don’t recognize Howe for her Mother’s Day Peace Day; rather, we acknowledge other accomplishments of hers including writing a song during the Civil War.

By November 1861, the early enthusiasm of the Civil War had faded into a grim appreciation of the magnitude of the struggle.

Julia Ward Howe joined a party inspecting the condition of Union troops near Washington DC. To overcome the tedium of the carriage ride back to the city, Howe and her colleagues sang army songs, including “John Brown’s Body.”

One member of the party, Reverend James Clarke, liked the melody but found the lyrics to be distinctly un-elevated. The published version ran “We’ll hang old Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree,” but the marching men sometimes preferred, “We’ll feed Jeff Davis sour apples ‘til he gets the diarhee.”

The next day, Howe awoke to the gray light of early morning. As she lay in bed, lines of poetry formed themselves in her mind. When the last verse was arranged, she rose and scribbled down the words with an old stump of a pen while barely looking at the paper.

She fell back asleep, feeling that “something of importance had happened to me.” The editor of the Atlantic Monthly, James T. Fields, paid Howe five dollars to publish the poem. (The Atlantic)

“It’s a good march,” says Sparky Rucker. A folk singer and historian who performs a show of Civil War music with his wife, Rucker says it rallies with its rhythm: “It’s just the right cadence to march along, if you’re marching at a picket line or marching down the street carrying signs. … It really gets your blood going [so] that you can slay dragons.” (NPR)

On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to speak in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee (his I’ve been to the Mountaintop speech). “I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land,” King announced.

“And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.” And then he closed in his lyrical voice: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir won the Award for Best Pop Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus singing this song in 1959 (not this rendition).

May 13, 2023 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Punahou – It Had More Than One Campus

Kapunahou, the site of the present Punahou School campus, was given to Kameʻeiamoku by Kamehameha, after the Battle of Nuʻuanu. The land transferred to his son Hoapili, who resided there from 1804 to 1811. Hoapili passed the property to his daughter Kuini Liliha.

Sworn testimony before the Land Commission in 1849, and that body’s ultimate decision, noted that the “land was given by Governor Boki about the year 1829 to Hiram Bingham for the use of the Sandwich Islands Mission.”

The decision was made over the objection from Liliha; however Hoapili confirmed the gift. It was considered to be a gift from Kaʻahumanu, Kuhina Nui or Queen Regent at that time.

In Hiram Bingham’s time, the main part of the Kapunahou property was planted with sugarcane by his wife Sybil, with the aid of the female church-members.

Bingham’s idea was to make Kapunahou the parsonage, and to support his family from the profits of this cane field, selling the cane to the sugar mills, one of which was in Honolulu.

The other mill was in Mānoa Valley, owned by an Englishman; but he also made rum, and Queen Kaʻahumanu’s consistent hostility to rum caused his failure, and also the failure of sugar-cane culture at Punahou. (Punahou Catalogue, 1866)

Founded in 1841, Punahou School (originally called Oʻahu College) was built at Kapunahou to provide a quality education for the children of Congregational missionaries, allowing them to stay in Hawaiʻi with their families, instead of being sent away to school. The first class had 15 students.

The land area of Kapunahou was significantly larger than the present school campus size.

While many see Punahou today as the college preparatory school in lower Mānoa, over the years, the school, though based at Kapunahou, also had campuses and activities elsewhere.

All students who entered the Boarding department were required to take part in the manual labor of the institution, under the direction of the faculty, not to exceed an average of two hours for each day. (Punahou Catalogue, 1899)

“We had a dairy, the Punahou dairy, over on the other side of Rocky Hill. That was all pasture. We had beautiful, delicious milk, all the milk you wanted. The cows roamed from there clear over to the stone wall on Manoa hill. There were a few gates and those gates caused me trouble because the bulls wanted to get out or some boys would leave a bar down … Occasionally, just often enough to keep me alert, there would be a bull wandering around across the road and down the hill onto Alexander Field or just where I wanted to go.” (Shaw, Punahou)

By vote of the trustees, the standard of the school was raised, and the course of study included a thorough drill in elementary algebra, Latin, colloquial and written French, and a careful study of the poems of Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Bryant and Emerson. There is also regular instruction in freehand drawing and vocal music through the year. Lectures were given with experiments, designed to serve as an introduction to the study of physical science. A brief course in physiology and hygiene was given by the president of the College. (Punahou Catalogue, 1899)

In 1881, at the fortieth anniversary celebration of the school, a public appeal was made to provide for a professorship of natural science and of new buildings. President William L Jones in his speech expressed the need for Punahou to meet the changing times.

He said: “The missionaries when they landed here were all cultivated gentlemen, trained in the colleges of the United States, and they were unwilling that their children would suffer from their self exile into this country. … A change has been coming over the aims of college education lately; people desire less Latin and Greek and more Natural Science, more Astronomy, more Chemistry, more modern language … We have to teach Chemistry without laboratory, Astronomy without a telescope, Natural History only from books. More men and machinery is what we want.” (Soong)

The appeal was so successful that the trustees moved to purchase the Reverend Richard Armstrong premises at the head of Richards Street (at 91 Beretania Street adjoining Washington Place) from the Roman Catholic mission for the Punahou Preparatory School (the property had previously been used by the growing St Louis High school.)

On September 19, 1883, the Punahou Preparatory School was opened for the full term at the Armstrong Home … Three of the trustees were present at the opening exercises, together with many parents of the pupils, of whom there were 85 present, with a prospect of a larger attendance … It is the design of the trustees to have no pupils at Punahou proper, except such as are qualified to proceed with the regular academic course. (The Friend, October 4, 1883)

By the 1898-1899 school year, there were 247 students in grades 1-8 in the Punahou Preparatory School campus downtown. Later, in 1902, the Preparatory School was moved to the Kapunahou campus, where it occupied Charles R Bishop Hall.

Near the turn of the last century, the Punahou Board of Trustees decided to subdivide some of the land above Rocky Hill – they called their subdivision “College Hills;” at that time the trolley service was extended into Mānoa, which increased interest in this area.

The College Hills subdivision, the largest subdivision of the time (nearly 100 acres of land separated into parcels of from 10,000- to 20,000-square feet,) opened above Punahou and became a major residential area.

Then, in January 1925, Punahou bought the Honolulu Military Academy property – it had about 90-acres of land and a half-dozen buildings on the back side of Diamond Head. (The Honolulu Military Academy was originally founded by Col LG Blackman, in 1911.)

It served as the “Punahou Farm” to carry on the school’s work and courses in agriculture. “We were picked up and taken to the Punahou Farm School, which was also the boarding school for boys. The girls boarded at Castle Hall on campus.” (Kneubuhl, Punahou) The farm school was in Kaimuki between 18th and 22nd Avenues.

In addition to offices and living quarters, the Farm School supplied Punahou with most of its food supplies. The compound included a big pasture for milk cows, a large vegetable garden, pigs, chickens, beehives, and sorghum and alfalfa fields that provided feed for the cows. Hired hands who tended the farm pasteurized the milk in a small dairy, bottled the honey and crated the eggs. (Kneubuhl, Punahou)

The Punahou dairy herd was cared for by the students as part of their course of studies – the boys boarded there. However, disciplinary troubles, enrollment concerns (not enough boys signing up for agricultural classes) and financial deficits led to its closure in 1929.

By the mid-1930s, the property was generally idle except for some faculty housing. In 1939, Punahou sold the property to the government as a site for a public school (it’s now the site of Kaimuki Middle School.)

In addition to these, there belonged in former times, as an appurtenance to the land known as Kapunahou, a valuable tract of salt-ponds, on the sea-side to the eastward of Honolulu Harbor, called Kukuluāeʻo, and including an area of seventy-seven acres (this was just mauka of what is now Kewalo Basin.) (Punahou Catalogue, 1866)

It’s not clear how/when the makai land “detached” from the other Punahou School pieces, but it did and was given to the ABCFM (for the pastor of Kawaiaha‘o Church.)