Economy | Page 167 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

May 4, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Captain Cole

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).

Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was a fur trading company that started in Canada in 1670; its first century of operation found HBC firmly focused in a few forts and posts around the shores of James and Hudson Bays, Central Canada.

As early as 1811, HBC had already hired twelve Hawaiians on three year contracts to work for them in the Pacific Northwest. By 1824, HBC employed thirty-five Hawaiians west of the Rocky Mountains.

“(Y)oung Hawaiian males left Hawai’i as workers on whaling ships and traveled to China, Europe, Mexico, and the U.S. mainland. In addition, many ventured into the Pacific Northwest territory, worked in the fur trade, and ended up settling in those areas.” (pbs-org)

Ships sailed from London around Cape Horn around South America and then to forts and posts along the Pacific Coast via the Hawaiian Islands. Trappers crossing overland faced a journey of 2,000 miles that took three months.

On January 21, 1829 the Hudson’s Bay Company schooner ‘Cadboro’ arrived at Honolulu from Fort Vancouver with a small shipment of poles and sawn lumber. Another goal of the trip was to recruit Hawaiians for HBC operations on the Northwest Coast.

One such recruit who later came from the Islands to work with the HBC was ‘Captain Cole’. Cole entered the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company at O‘ahu in 1840.

On the continent, ‘Captain Cole’ was witness to a killing.

“Just after midnight on April 21, 1842, John McLoughlin, Jr – the chief trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Stikine (situated at what is now Wrangell on the Alaska panhandle), in the northwest corner of the territory that would later become British Columbia – was shot to death by his own men.”

“The men were known to have disliked McLoughlin and some had threatened to kill him, but the company’s governor, Sir George Simpson, relied on their accounts of the incident to conclude that the murder was a matter of self-defense”.

They claimed it was “their only means of stopping the violent rampage of their drunk and abusive leader. Sir George Simpson, the HBC’s Overseas Governor, took the men of Stikine at their word, and the Company closed the book on the matter.” (Komar)

It is estimated that by 1844 between 300 and 400 Hawaiians were in HBC service in the Pacific Northwest, both in vessels and at posts.

Journal entries in early 1848 identify Cole as “Captian Cole,” but in later entries for 1848 and 1849 he is simply referred to as “Cole.” He was posted to Fort Stikine in the Columbia District as a ‘midman,’ middleman, from 1841-1843.

Cole continued in service to the HBC until November 23, 1844, when he returned to Honolulu. He re-enlisted in 1847, serving as a laborer at Fort Victoria (1847-1849) and Fort Rupert (1849-1850), where he died of tuberculosis on March 12, 1850. (Fort Victoria Journal)

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Stikine, Alaska

April 30, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Early Doctors in Hawai‘i

Hawaiian culture had a well-established class of expert priestly physicians known as kāhuna. There were specialists among the kāhuna.

Diagnosticians, kāhuna hāhā, were able to arrive at diagnoses through palpation, observation and communication with the gods.

The kāhuna lā‘au lapa‘au were knowledgeable about botanical medicines. The kāhuna pā‘ao‘ao cared for children, and the kāhuna ho‘ohānau keiki cared for expectant mothers. (Young)

The first Western physicians to arrive in Hawai‘i were ships’ surgeons. On board Captain James Cooks’ HMS Resolution and Discovery in 1778 were 8. On board the HMS Resolution were surgeon Dr. William Anderson and surgeon’s mate Dr. David Samwell. On board the HMS Discovery were surgeon Dr. John Law and surgeon’s mate Dr. William Ellis.

Dr. Anderson, along with the captain of the HMS Discovery, Lt. Charles Clerke, and some of the sailors, already had advanced tuberculosis (and they likely introduced that disease at Waimea and 10 months later at Kealakekua).

Anderson died on August 3, 1779, from tuberculosis after the expedition departed from Kealakekua. He was buried at sea, and Dr. David Samwell was appointed to the position of surgeon on the HMS Resolution.

Later, a Spaniard, Francisco de Paula Marín, settled in the islands sometime around 1793 and effectively became the first resident Western Physician. However, there is some doubt as to whether or not he was a trained doctor.

Another early physician in Hawai‘i was Juan Elliott de Castro, described as surgeon to King Kamehameha. He may have settled in the islands as early as 1811 and had a family here. De Castro was the attending physician at the time of Kamehameha’s death in 1819.

Dr. Meredith Gairdner, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland, was with the Hudson’s Bay Company and was stationed on the Columbia River. Dr. Gairdner came to the islands in about 1834, but his health failed, and he died on March 26, 1837, in
Honolulu.

Almost 30 years after Marín settled in Hawai‘i, other Western physicians arrived under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM).

Dr. Thomas Holman, Hawai‘i’s first missionary doctor, and his wife Lucia arrived with the Pioneer Company of missionaries in Hawai‘i on April 4, 1820. (Young)

On April 11, King Kamehameha II gave the missionaries permission to stay. However, “The King gives orders that Dr. H(olman) and our teacher must land at Kiarooah – the village where he now resides, and the rest of the family may go to Oahhoo, or Wahhoo.”

“(H)e wanted the Dr. to stay with them, as they had no Physician and appeared much pleased that one had come; as to pulla-pulla (learning), they knew nothing about it. Consequently it was agreed that Dr. H. & Mr. Thurston should stay with the King and the rest of the family go to Oahhoo.” (Lucia Ruggles Holman) The Holman’s left in 1821.

The second missionary physician to come to Hawai‘i was Dr. Abraham Blatchley, with the Second Company, in 1823. Dr. Blatchley’s services were in great demand, and urgent requests came from every island in Hawai‘i.

His “usual” practice territory covered an area of 200 miles on Hawai‘i Island. Often his wife would accompany him on service calls. He was the attending physician when Queen Keōpūolani passed away in Lāhaina, Maui.

Within three years, he was so overworked that he submitted a request to be released from his duties as a missionary physician. This request was rejected, but due to his deteriorating health, he left Hawai‘i in November of 1826.

The third missionary physician to come to Hawai‘i, Dr. Gerritt P. Judd. He arrived in Hawai‘i with the Third Company of missionaries in 1828 and served the ABCFM for 14 years until 1842, when he resigned to enter the service of King Kamehameha III.

Judd had published the first medical textbook in 1838, Anatomia, the only medical textbook written in the Hawaiian language and taught basic anatomy to Hawaiians enrolled at the Mission Seminary (Lahainaluna.)

Later, Judd formed the Islands’ first modern medical school. “On the 9th of November, 1870, he opened a school with ten pupils.” (The Friend, July 1, 1871) The school ended on October 2, 1872, when Laura Fish Judd (Dr Judd’s wife) died.

Judd recommended to the Board of Health that all 10 students be certified and licensed medical physicians. The licenses were issued on October 14, 1872. (Mission Houses)

Dwight Baldwin arrived with the Fourth Company of missionaries in 1831. However, his lack of credentials led the Hawai‘i Medical Society to refuse him a license even though he practiced for 27 years as capably as any of his peers.

Dartmouth Medical College later awarded him an honorary degree in medicine, and he was eventually granted a license to practice in Hawai‘i.

Alonzo Chapin, MD, arrived with the Fifth Company of missionaries in 1832. He assisted Dr. G. P. Judd in providing medical services throughout the islands, mainly on Kauai and Maui. His wife suffered declining health, and they both returned to America in 1835.

Thomas Lafon, MD, arrived with the Eighth Company of missionaries in 1837 and was assigned to Kauai. He was stationed at Kōloa and became the first resident physician for that island.

Dr. Lafon was the first of the sugar plantation doctors, arrangements having been made with the Kōloa Sugar Plantation to care for plantation workers. Dr. Lafon was a staunch abolitionist and opposed the church’s receiving any contributions from slaveowners. He returned to America in 1842.

Seth Lathrop Andrews, MD, in the eighth company of missionaries, arrived with his wife in 1837. In 1852, Dr. Andrews requested
release as a medical missionary and returned to America.

James William Smith, MD, was a member of the Tenth Company of missionaries, arriving in Hawai‘i in 1842. He was assigned to the island of Kauai. In July 1854, Dr. Smith was ordained to the ministry. He served as pastor until 1860, when the ABCFM decided to place the churches under the charge of native ministers and Dr. Smith resigned.

Charles Hinkley Wetmore, MD, arrived with the Twelfth Company of missionaries in 1848. His main responsibility was to care for the families of missionaries. The relatively few deaths from the smallpox epidemic of 1853 in Hilo was due to his diligent immunization work.

He opened the first drugstore in Hilo. His daughter, Frances Matilda, studied medicine at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and was the first female physician in Hawai‘i.

Sarah Eliza Pierce Emerson was another early female physician who practiced in the islands. She was born in Massachusetts in 1855, came to Hawai‘i as a young child, and married the renowned missionary descendant, Civil War veteran, and physician Nathaniel Bright Emerson. She was trained as a homeopathic physician. (Young) (Most information here is from Young.)

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caduceus-clipart-Medical sign

April 28, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Artesian Way

Actually, a lot of streets fit into the telling of this story: Marques Street, Evelyn Lane, Oliver Street, and Artesian Way. They are all associated with Auguste and Evelyn Oliver Marques and, the drilling of the first artesian well in Makiki, Honolulu.

A plaque marks the spot – I’ve been by it too many times to count, and never noticed it – and as the plaque notes, “This Means the Promise of Beauty and Fertility For Thousands of Acres.”

Most of the early water wells were drilled in and around Honolulu. It was James Campbell who furnished the first conclusive demonstration of the practicability of artesian wells in Hawaii, when on the summer of 1879, on the plain near his ranch house in Ewa, a good flow of water was obtained. (Kuykendall)

Success of this experiment created intense interest and a group of men in Honolulu brought over from California another well-driller, AD Pierce, with better equipment, and in the spring of 1880 a flowing well was completed (April 28) on the land of Auguste Marques near Punahou.

Subsequently, many other wells were drilled, and it became evident that a large supply of water could be obtained by this method. Early in the 1880s, the McCandless brothers (James S., John A., and Lincoln L.) began their long career as artesian well drillers in the islands. (Kuykendall)

“The first artesian well bored in Honolulu was marked in appropriate ceremonies yesterday on the premises of the Marques home on Wilder avenue near Metcalf street.”

“The first shaft tapping Honolulu’s subterranean water supply was marked with a bronze plaque which reads, “Site of Honolulu’s Pioneer Artesian Well, brought in on April 28, 1880 for Dr. Augustus Marques. ‘This means the promise of beauty and fertility for thousands of acres’ —King Kalakaua. Sealed August, 1938—Board of Water Supply.” (Nippu Jiji, June 21, 1939)

Doctor Marques lived much of his Hawaiian life at 1928 Wilder Avenue (now the site of a small apartment building). He originally owned about 30 acres of land, most on the slope below Vancouver Place.

Immediately Ewa side of it is Punahou School. The eventual tract (of about 30 acres, one supposes) was complete by 1880, at a cost of perhaps $10,000.

The area was called ‘Marquesville.’ He “was instrumental in bringing a colony of Portuguese to Honolulu … and sold lots on long term credit to encourage them to become home owners.” (Bouslog) Later, there was also a Catholic Church, with services in English and Portuguese.

“When asked to what nationality he belongs, Dr. A. Marques replies that he Is a true cosmopolitan”. (Hawaiian Star, March 9, 1899) Marques Auguste Jean Baptiste Marques was born in Toulon, France, on November 17, 1841.

His father was French and Spanish and was a general in the French Army. His mother, of English an Scotch descent, was the daughter of General Cooke of the British Army. Auguste’s boyhood was spent in Morocco, Algiers and the Sahara.

His early ambition was to become a doctor, but his mother wanted him to become a scientist. As a compromise, he acquired a medical and scientific education but agreed not to take a diploma or to practice medicine.

After four years of medical training, he was valedictorian of his class at the University of Paris, but, true to his agreement, never accepted his diploma. For some years following his graduation he was connected with the Bureau of Agriculture in Paris.

Shortly after his mother’s death in 1875, Dr. Marques started on a trip around the world. Arriving in Honolulu Christmas Eve of 1878, he decided to stay over between steamers, and so liked Hawaii that he cancelled his passage and from then on made his home in Honolulu and later became a naturalized citizen.

From 1890 to 1891 Dr. Marques served in the Hawaiian legislature. In 1893 he organized the Theosophical Society in Honolulu and six years later went to Australia to serve as General Secretary of the Society for that country.

From Australia he was sent to India as a delegate to the Theosophical Society convention, representing both Australia and the United States. In 1900 he returned to Honolulu.

On June 7, 1900, Dr. Marques married Evelyn M. Oliver, manager of the Woman’s Exchange in Honolulu. (Mamiya Medical Heritage Center)

Born in Canada in 1863, Evelyn Oliver had come to Hawai’i from Canada in 1889 as a publisher’s representative. She soon became interested in providing a sales outlet and a source of income, for Hawaiian women’s handicrafts.

“This institution served a double purpose, it preserved the old arts and it enabled native women to profitably market their products.” In 1899, her store was at 215 Merchant Street, which was also her residence.

The 1905-6 Directory describes her business as “South Seas Curios, hats and calabashes.” Women of Hawaii thought her noteworthy because of her joining the struggle for women’s suffrage, as “an active worker in the Women’s League of Voters of Hawaii…” (Bouslog)

As with her husband, Mrs. Marques is also remembered by a street name or two. Across from their home on Wilder Avenue is Artesian Street, commemorating the “pioneer artesian well.” East of Artesian is Evelyn Way, then Oliver Lane.

Both first appear in the City Directory of 1914. And so for her last 25 years she lived across from street signs displaying her maiden names. (Bouslog)

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109-Honolulu Sanford Fire Maps-1914-Waikiki-portion-portion

Auguste-Jean-Baptiste-Marques

April 25, 2018 by Peter T Young 4 Comments

Watumulls

Jhamandas Watumull, originally from Hyderabad, Sindh (in what became Pakistan), the son of a brick contractor, was one of the first people of Indian descent to come to Hawai‘i.

Jhamandas left his home as a young boy of 14 to earn a living and help his disabled father. His mother sold her jewelry to buy his passage to the Philippines.

Jhamandas stayed with an older brother and worked in Manila’s textile mills. He opened a small import shop in Manila that specialized in imports from the Orient with his partner Rochiram Dharamdas. The shop attracted American troops stationed in the Philippines and business was good.

In 1913, when the troops were withdrawn from the Philippines and moved to Hawai‘i, the two partners decided to follow them and explore business opportunities.

A year later, Dharamdas opened a branch of ‘Dharamdas and Watumulls’ on Hotel Street in Honolulu. Unfortunately, two years later, Dharamdas died of cholera and the store became Jhamandas’ responsibility.

Unable to leave the Manila business for long, he decided to send his younger brother, Gobindram (GJ), to take care of the Honolulu store, which was renamed ‘East India Store’

GJ settled in Hawaii and, in 1922, married Ellen Jensen, an American music teacher. (IPAHawaii and Sharma)

Ellen’s sister, Elsie Jensen, traveled to Hawaii in 1928 to visit her. Elsie then started working at Watumull’s East India Store as a window display designer.

Watumull’s later commissioned Elsie to create hand-painted floral designs on silk for interior decoration. Her clothing designs would come later. (Honolulu)

During the following years, Jhamandas spent much time travelling looking for merchandise and visiting his family in Sind. Though he returned to Hawaii often, he could not make it his home as his wife Radhibai did not want to live in a foreign country.

The initial years in Hawaii were difficult and trying. As the first Indian businessmen in Hawaii, they faced many setbacks, discrimination and daunting immigration laws, including denial of citizenship to GJ although he was married to an American. His wife, Ellen, lost her American citizenship because she had married a British East Indian subject.

As time passed, the East India Store flourished, selling raw silk goods and ‘aloha shirts’ on the island, turning into a major department store, before eventually opening additional branch stores in Waikiki and the downtown Honolulu area.

They opened the Leilani Gift Shop, and introduced their coordinated Hawaiian wear for the entire family – men’s and boys’ shirts and women’s and girls’ muumuus in matching authentic island prints. The shop also sold Hawaiian gifts and souvenirs and imported goods from the Far East.

After the Partition of India in 1947, Jhamandas and his family left Sind and moved to Bombay, India. The family celebrated India’s independence in faraway Hawaii by serving refreshments at an extended Open House and offering a 10 per cent discount on all purchases at the Waikiki branch of the East India Store.

The proceeds of the day’s business were donated to Indian charities. Later the Watumulls helped install a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Kapiolani Park on Waikiki beach in Honolulu.

In 1954, there were a total of eight Watumull stores. Rejecting a consultant’s advice to change the “tourist-oriented” names of his stores like Leilani Gift Shop and focus on mainland-type goods, they opened more “tourist-oriented’ stores.

During the next 20 years, the number of stores increased to 29 and included East India Stores, Aloha Fashions, Malihini Gifts and Leilani Gift Shops.

The business became among the top 250 businesses of Hawai‘i. Over time, the Watumull stores have all closed down; one remains at the Ala Moana Center.

The Watumull family also set up several local philanthropic and educational institutions, including the Rama Watumull Fund, the J. Watumull Estate, and the Watumull Foundation.

The Watumulls are also involved in considerable charitable work in India — a hospital and an engineering college in Mumbai, a school in Pune and the funding of a Global Hospital in Mt. Abu. . (Lots of information here is from Hope, Honolulu, Watumull, Allen and Sharma.)

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East India Store window decorated for Indian independence-SAADA

Photograph of window display of one of the Watumull stores. Image credited to Salart Studios-SAADA

Gulab Watumull speaking with customers. Photo credited to Honolulu Star-Bulletin.-SAADA

Gulab Watumull, the son of Jhamandas Watumull-SAADA

Watumull-family-Honolulu

‘Watumull’s Might’ in Indian Home magazine-SAADA

Watumull’s Advertisement (1987)-SAADA

April 21, 2018 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Cyclorama

On May 1, 1893, nearly five months after the overthrow of the Hawaiian constitutional monarchy, the Chicago World’s Fair opened its doors. This fair was a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World.

At the fair, a road called the Midway Plaisance showcased different ethnic villages and performances, including Hawai‘i’s.

The Midway Plaisance of the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition packed amusements along a mile-long strip and segregated them from the main exposition or the ‘White City’. (Imada)

The Hawaiian exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893 was organized by settler Hawaiians who were rallying for American annexation and trying to encourage tourism and more white settlement in the Islands. (Kamehiro)

“Between the Chinese Theatre and the Ferris Wheel stood the cyclorama (a large pictorial representation encircling the spectator and often having real objects as a foreground) of the greatest active volcano in the northern hemisphere.”

“In front of the pavilion was a heroic statue of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, made by Mrs (Ellen Rankin) Copp, the sculptor, and under the canopy a choir of Kanak musicians sang to the public, evoking much applause.”

“The crater of the volcano is 800 feet deep and 2 miles across. It is a lake of bubbling and thunderous lava set in the side of Mona Loa, a mountain 15,000 feet high. The station for the spectator of the picture was a heap of lava which had exuded and solidified in the center of the crater.”

“A priest climbed the cliffs that rimmed the scene and chanted an invocation to Pele, and his form added to the realism of the effects. The mountain peak and the Pacific Ocean, the baleful fires of the never slumbering volcano, the mists and lava floods, all conspired to make a great picture.” (The Inter Ocean, Chicago, January 7, 1894)

Circling the walls within are some 22,000 square feet or nearly half an acre of canvas, whereon is depicted ‘the inferno of the Pacific,’ the largest volcano on the face of the earth.

While not without merit, it does not compare with the other as a panoramic painting, the effect being largely produced by electric lights, pyrotechnics, and other mechanical contrivances.

The point of observation is in the very heart of the crater, and not on its brow where thousands of travellers have stood. Gazing upward and around, the spectator is encompassed with a hissing, bubbling sea of lava, with tongues of flame and clouds of steam rising from fathomless pits to overhanging crags and masses of rock.

All this is expressed with studied but not with artistic realism, fragments of rock being blended with painted cliffs on which are dummies and painted figures, presumably intended for tourists, while flashlights in various colors, with detonation of bombs and crackers, imitate in showman fashion the awful grandeur of an eruption. (Chicagology)

Such was Hawai‘i’s participation in the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.

The volcano concession also advertised the first hula troupe to perform at a world fair, accentuating the shift in the character of Native Hawaiian displays in international exhibitions from sovereign, historically-situated, and modern self-presentation to feminized, exotic, tourist curiosity.

Jennie Wilson, whose mother is a native Hawaiian, and an unknown companion, performing at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago at the Midway Plaisance in an exhibit called the” South Seas Islanders.”

This was the first time the hula was performed in the mainland of the United States. She and her group inadvertently contributed to the bad reputation of the hula with the ‘come-on’ song they were required to sing to urge audiences to see the ‘naughty hula.’ (Chicagology)

Besides the Hawai‘i cyclorama, there were five other rotunda panoramas represented at World Columbian Exposition: Gettysburg (Philippoteaux studio), Jerusalem On The Day Of The Crucifixion (Reed & Gross), Chicago Fire panorama (Reed & Gross), Bernese Oberland,(import from Switzerland), and Battle Of Chattanooga (Eugen Bracht studio, Berlin).

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