Economy | Page 188 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

July 1, 2017 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Joe Bal & Jack Ena

As early as 1811, the fur trading Hudson’s Bay Company (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.

The number of Hawaiians working as contract laborers for the Hudson’s Bay Company steadily grew. The large number of Hawaiian workers in the village at Fort Vancouver led to the name “Kanaka Town” in the early 1850s.

The first Native Hawaiian seamen who shipped aboard a foreign whaler in the Pacific fleet left Maui on October 10, 1819. And rather than the Northwest, many ended up in the Atlantic Northeast.

Let’s look back …

The over-fishing of “on shore” New England whales in the 1700s forced local whalers to venture “offshore”, journeying further west in search of their lucrative prey.

The first New England whalers rounded Cape Horn in 1791, and fished off both the Chilean and Peruvian coasts. Many sailed around South America and onward to Japan and the Arctic.

Edmond Gardner, captain of the New Bedford whaler Balaena (also called Balena,) and Elisha Folger, captain of the Nantucket whaler Equator, made history in 1819 when they became the first American whalers to visit the Sandwich Islands (Hawai‘i.)

“I gave orders in the morning to put the ship on a WSW course putting on all sail. … We made the best of our way to the Sandwich Islands where we arrived in six-teen days, had a pleasant passage to the Islands and arrived at Hawaii 19th 9 Mo 1819.“ (Gardner Journal)

Gardner then “Left Oahu 10th of 10 Mo 1819 for Coast of California. I shipped two Kanakas from Maui and had them the remainder of the Voyage and took them to New Bedford.”

“Their names were Joe Bal and Jack Ena, the two names comprising that of my ship Balaena. Much notice was taken of them, singing their national songs and airs. They were the first brought to this place.”

“On a subsequent Voyage I took them back to Maui and left them there, they preferring to stay at their own Island. They were well fitted with clothing for the Voyage. I gave them all the clothing that had been furnished them by the ship, which was sufficient for three years. We had been but six months from home.”

“On a subsequent Voyage I visited Kealakekua and was visited by Comocow (Keʻeaumoku) the principal chief in the province or district. He came often and dined with me.” Gardner then went to Maui.

“On leaving Maui I discharged my Kanakas and these with the desertion of one man left me three ‘short of my complement of the ship’s company. I took two natives from Maui, one from Oahu and one from Onehow (Ni‘ihau.)”

“The names I gave them were Henry Harmony, George Germaine, John Jovel and Sam How. I finished recruiting at Niihau, where we took as many potatoes and yams as we needed. I bought twenty barrels of yams and the same quantity of potatoes of George Tamoree (Kaumuali’i) at Attowai (Kauai.) (Gardner Journal, first whaler in Hawai‘i)

A year later, Captain Joseph Allen discovered large concentrations of sperm whales off the coast of Japan. His find was widely publicized in New England, setting off an exodus of whalers to this area.

These ships might have sought provisions in Japan, except that Japanese ports were closed to foreign ships. So when Captain Allen befriended the missionaries at Honolulu and Lāhainā, he helped establish these areas as the major ports of call for whalers. (NPS)

The whaling industry had a major effect upon Hawaiian commerce and trade. As the Northwest fur trade decreased and sandalwood supplies and values dropped, the whaling industry began to fill the economic void.

Thousands of Hawaiians shipped out as seamen aboard the whaling ships, so many that the crews were often half Hawaiian. Whaling had been “an economic force of awesome proportions in these Islands for more than forty years,” enabling King Kamehameha III to finally pay off the national debts accumulated in earlier years. (NPS)

Many of the Native Hawaiian seamen who arrived were named George, Jack, Joe, or Tom Canacker, Kanaka, Mowee, or Woahoo. Their given names remain lost to us because of the common practice among whaling captains of giving them English nicknames and surnames denoting their origins in the Sandwich Islands, an early name for the Hawaiian Islands.

An 1834 editorial in the New Bedford Mercury defined “Canackers” for New England readers. “The term Canacker bears the same meaning as our English word man and is used by the natives to signify man, in general …”

“… and a man as distinguished from a woman or female. The present established mode of writing it is Kanaka, pronounced Kah nah kah, with the accent on the second syllable.” (Lebo)

Other Native Hawaiians landed in Nantucket, New Bedford, and nearby ports almost immediately after Joe Bal and Jack Ena. By the 1830s, Nantucket whalers employed about fourteen hundred seamen, including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Four or five hundred men arrived or departed annually.

At least six sailor boarding houses operated during the 1820 to 1860 period when Native Hawaiian seamen frequented Nantucket.

At least one house, near Pleasant Street in Nantucket’s New Guinea section, primarily or exclusively boarded Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and a sign identified William Whippy’s establishment as the “William Whippy Canacka Boarding-House.”

These whalers, on countless other New England voyages with Hawaiian crews, contributed to the economic and social history there. They shared their cultural traditions, languages, skills and knowledge with New England’s citizens and with each other aboard the whaleships. (Lebo)

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June 29, 2017 by Peter T Young 4 Comments

Dole Water Tower

The most-visited tourist attraction in the state of Hawaii is the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument (also known as the Pearl Harbor bombing site). The second most visited attraction is about 20 miles north: the Dole pineapple plantation. (Smithsonian)

“I first came to Hawaii … with some notion of growing coffee – the new Territorial Government was offering homestead lands to people willing to farm them – and I had heard that fortunes were being made in Hawaiian coffee.”

“I began homesteading a (64 acre) farm in the rural district of the island of Oahu, at a place called Wahiawa, about 25 miles from Honolulu.” (Dole; JPHS)

“On August 1, 1900 (I) took up residence thereon as a farmer – unquestionably of the dirt variety. After some experimentation, I concluded that it was better adapted to pineapples than to (coffee,) peas, pigs or potatoes, and accordingly concentrated on that fruit.”

The first profitable lot of canned pineapples was produced by Dole’s Hawaiian Pineapple Company in 1903 and the industry grew rapidly from there. (Bartholomew)

The pineapple canning industry began in Baltimore in the mid-1860s and used fruit imported from the Caribbean. (Bartholomew) Commercial pineapple production which started about 1890 with hand peeling and cutting.

Operations soon developed a procedure based on classifying the fruit into a number of grades by diameter centering the pineapple on the core axis and cutting fruit cylinders to provide slices to fit the No. 1, 2 and 2-1/2 can sizes. (ASME)

Despite knowing nothing about canning, Dole opened the Hawaiian Pineapple Company in 1901, which the local press begged as being “a foolhardy venture.” And in its early years, it did indeed operate at a loss.

However, Dole invested in developing new technologies – notably hiring a local draftsman to develop machinery that could peel and process 100-pineapples a minute. (Smithsonian)

With the expanding plant, in 1927, the Hawaiian Pineapple Co, needed a water tower for its cannery’s fire-prevention sprinkler system. The company was enlarging its cannery operations, which now covered some 19 acres.

Hawaii architect Charles William Dickey (Dole’s brother-in-law) proposed to company engineer Simes Thurston Hoyt that the water tank might be fashioned to resemble a pineapple.

Hoyt designed a 100,000-gallon tank, complete with 46 leaves, in eight sizes, rotated “to avoid too much regularity.” The tallest leaf was nearly nine feet tall, the smallest three feet.

The tank would be 40 feet tall with a 24-foot circumference, constructed of 5/16 steel plates. He decreed that it should be painted in the “appearance of a pineapple.” (Honolulu Magazine)

Engineer Hoyt developed the tank design and contracted its manufacture to the Chicago Bridge and Iron Co. (CB&I) factory in Greenville, Pennsylvania. The tank was shipped to Honolulu in three pieces.”

“The Watertower, Chicago Bridge and Iron’s newsletter, predicted the tank would “no doubt be one of the important objects of interest to visitors at Honolulu.”

Erection of the tank was completed in January of 1928. The tank measured 24-feet in diameter and 40-feet in height. It was placed on top of a 100-foot steel structure.

When the delicate leafy crown and red aircraft beacon were placed, the Pineapple Water Tank stood out as the tallest structure in Honolulu.

Since 1968, land in central Oahu, once used to cultivate pineapple land, was being used for the development of the bedroom community of Mililani. Pineapple production on Oahu began a steady decline.

Finally, the Iwilei cannery ceased operations in 1992. Along with this, the Pineapple Water Tank, the largest pineapple in the world, that Honolulu icon for 65 years, had gotten old.

In 1993, the rusting tank and tower were taken down. The tank was “stored” in its original three pieces. It was treated like that once favorite toy of which the child had tired. Sitting in a vacant lot at the Cannery, it continued to corrode, eventually rusting into oblivion.

The Pineapple made CB&I famous and started a trend. CB&I later built other product based water tanks including the Gerber Baby Food Jar in Rochester, New York and the Sir Walter Raleigh Tobacco Can in Louisville, Kentucky. (Dannaway) Other product-based water towers were also built.

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Dole_Water_Tower

Dole Water Tower

Dole_Pineapple_Cannery-(vic-&-becky)-1955

Dole_Pineapple_Cannery-Aerial-1940

World’s Largest Swedish Coffee Cup -birthplace of Virginia Christine, ‘Mrs. Olson’ of Folger’s Coffee fame-Stanton, Iowa

Swedish settler heritage-Kingsburg, California

Soda Can Water Tanks-Osgood Area, Idaho

Route 85 in Gaffney, South Carolina

Pearl Brewery – San Antonio Texas

Old Forester Bourbon Water Tower, Louisville Kentucky

McDonald’s water tower above the McDonald’s in Barstow, California

lden-Hebron High School won the state basketball championship in 1952

Gerber Baby Food Jar Water Tower Rochester NY

Earffel Tower is not used to hold water, it was inspired by the working water tower in Burbank, Calif

Dixie Cup Water Tower, Lexington KY

Corn Cob Water Tower – Seneca Foods (Libby’s)-Rochester, Minnesota.

Brooks-World’s Largest Bottle of Catsup, IL

Braum’s Giant Milk Bottle-Oklahoma City Oklahoma

June 25, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Free Health Care for Hawaiians?

In King Kamehameha IV’s initial speech to the legislature in 1854, the King voiced his desire to create a hospital for the people of Hawai’i. At that time, the continued existence of the Hawaiian race was seriously threatened by the influx of disease brought to the islands by foreign visitors.

Queen Emma enthusiastically supported the dream of a hospital, and the two campaigned tirelessly to make it a reality. They personally went door-to-door soliciting the necessary funding. The royal couple exceeded their goal in just over a month, raising $13,530. In turn, the Legislature appropriated $6,000. (Queen’s)

Hawaiians called the hospital and dispensary Hale Ma‘i o ka Wahine Ali‘i (literally, sick house of the lady chief,) or Hale Ma‘i for short. Opening day was August 1, 1859. (Greer)

“The Queen’s Hospital was founded in 1859 by their Majesties Kamehameha IV and his consort Emma Kaleleonalani. The hospital is organized as a corporation …”

“… and by the terms of its charter the board of trustees is composed of ten members elected by the society and ten members nominated by the Government ….” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 31, 1901)

“(A) number of persons, resident in Honolulu and other parts of the Kingdom have entered into a voluntary contribution, by subscription, for the purpose of creating a fund, for the erection and establishment of a Hospital at Honolulu, for the relief of indigent sick, and disabled people of the Hawaiian Kingdom, as well as of such foreigners, and others, as may desire to avail themselves of the same …”

The “subscribers … resolved that they should associate themselves together as a Body Politic and Corporate, for the purpose of carrying into effect the objects and intentions of the said subscribers …”

“…the following on behalf of the said subscribers were elected by ballot to act as Trustees, on behalf of the said subscribers, viz, BF Snow, SC Damon, SN Castle, CR Bishop, IW Austin, EO Hall, TJ Waterhouse, WA Aldrich, WL Green and H Hackfeld …”

“His Majesty then designated the following ten persons, Trustees, on behalf of the Government, viz, His Royal Highness Prince L (Lot) Kamehameha, David L Gregg, Wm Webster, GM Robertson, TC Heuck, John Ladd, James Bissen, HIH Holdsworth, AB Baker, L John Montgomery.” (Charter of the Queen’s Hospital)

The initial intent was “to establish a temporary Dispensary, with suitable Hospital accommodations at Honolulu, until the permanent Hospital, contemplated by this Charter, shall have been established, and for that purpose, to hire, and furnish, a suitable house premises …

“… also to purchase, or rent, or lease, a suitable site for, and provide for and proceed with the erection, furnishing, establishing and furthering into operation, a permanent Hospital at Honolulu, with a Dispensary, and all necessary furnishings and appurtenances …”

“… for the reception and accommodation, and treatment of indigent, sick, and disabled Hawaiians, as well as such foreigners, and others, who may choose to avail themselves of the same.” (Charter of the Queen’s Hospital)

While there was no specific provision in the hospital’s charter for free medical service to native Hawaiians, “all native Hawaiians have been cared for without charge, while for others a charge has been made of from $1 to $3 per day.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 31, 1901)

In part, the Hospital was funded with government funds (taxes and appropriations.) On May 13, 1859, the king approved an ‘Act to Aid in the Establishment of Hospitals for the Benefit of Sick and Disabled Hawaiian Seamen.’

It provided that each passenger arriving from a foreign port should pay a tax of $2.00 to the Collector of Customs for the support of such hospitals.

Additional revenue was expected from a tax on seamen sailing under the Hawaiian flag. The Civil Code of 1859 provided that: (1) ship owners or masters arriving from foreign ports should pay twenty-five cents a month for each seaman employed on board since the last entry at any Hawaiian port;

(2) masters of coasting vessels should pay, quarterly, twenty-five cents a month for each seaman employed. The tax was withheld from wages, and funds realized were retained as a ‘Marine Hospital Fund’ for the relief of sick and disabled Hawaiian seamen. (Greer)

However, when Hawai‘i became a US Territory, “‘There is a possibility that the legislative appropriation will be cut off after the first of the year,’ said George W Smith yesterday, ‘but even se we shall have funds enough to get along, although the hospital will be somewhat crippled.’”

“You see there is a provision in the United States Constitution that public property shall not be taken for private use, or that the people shall be taxed to support private institutions.”

“Under the Monarchy and the Republic $10,000 was annually appropriated for its support, but now that the Islands are a part of the United States this sum may be eliminated from the appropriation list.”

“We have already lost the $1 tax which was exacted from everyone who landed on the Islands, which amounted to something over $30,000 annually, and likewise the seamen’s tax, which netted us another $2,000 or more, so with this additional money lost we shall be out a considerable portion of our revenue.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 30, 1900)

“The Legislature at its last session made an appropriation for the Queen’s Hospital of $40,000, to be used in the next biennial period. This was in line with the previous policy of the Government in making appropriation for the hospital, similar appropriations being made at the same time to other like Institutions.”

“There was, however, one very peculiar incident in connection with the appropriation made for the Queen’s Hospital. In the past the sum of $20,000 had always been given to the hospital for the biennial period, and Governor Dole recommended that the Legislature make the usual appropriation.”

“Instead that body appropriated just double the amount asked, or $40,000. Attached to the bill, however, was a rider providing that no distinction should be made as to race in the care of patients at the hospital.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 31, 1901)

“Under the provisions of the Organic Act the Legislature has no power to give a subsidy to any institution and, under the construction likely to be placed by the Board of Health of the intentions of the Legislature, the Queen’s Hospital must be placed under the control of the Government before it may receive the appropriation of $40,000.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 31, 1901)

Today, the Queen’s Medical Center is a private, non-profit, acute medical care facility. It is the largest private hospital in Hawaiʻi, licensed to operate with 505 acute care beds and 28 sub-acute beds. The medical center has more than 3,000 employees and over 1,200 physicians on staff.

As the leading medical referral center in the Pacific Basin, Queen’s offers a comprehensive range of primary and specialized care services. (Queen’s)

Since its founding in 1859, The Queen’s Medical Center has strived “to fulfill the intent of Queen Emma and King Kamehameha IV to provide in perpetuity quality health care services to improve the well-being of Native Hawaiians and all of the people of Hawai‘i.” (Queen’s) (The image shows the original Queen’s Hospital in 1860.)

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June 23, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

New Guinea

In 1602 the English colonist Bartholomew Gosnold arrived in the ship Concord, landed at Cuttyhunk Island, off Cape Cod, and laid claim to the entire region.

In 1652 English settlers from the Plymouth Colony acquired from Chief Massasoit control of 115,000 acres along the south coast of Massachusetts.

The colonial town government, organized in 1664, encompassed the present towns of Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven, New Bedford, and Westport. The economy was agrarian – a few scattered villages that supported themselves by farming and fishing.

The merchant families who came to New Bedford from Nantucket in the 1760s brought not only their whaling expertise, but also the Quaker traditions that had sustained them on the island. These traditions profoundly influenced business dealings and social relations during the whaling era and afterwards.

In the mid-18th century Nantucket emerged as the world’s most vigorous whaling port in the colonies, with a substantial fleet dedicated exclusively to pelagic sperm and right whaling on distant grounds, and a highly developed network of merchants and mariners to prosecute the hunt.

By the 1840s, with its harbor no longer deep enough to handle newer, larger whaling ships, most of the vessels relocated to New Bedford, while most of the financiers and much of the money and good life stayed in Nantucket.

There were more than three hundred Nantucket whaling voyages to Hawaii and the Native Hawaiian crewmen aboard. Thousands of Hawaiians shipped out as seamen aboard the whaling ships, so many that the crews were often half Hawaiian.

Whaling had been “an economic force of awesome proportions in these Islands for more than forty years,” enabling King Kamehameha III to finally pay off the national debts accumulated in earlier years. (NPS)

Many of the Native Hawaiian seamen who joined the whalers were named George, Jack, Joe, or Tom Canacker, Kanaka, Mowee, or Woahoo. Their given names remain lost because of the common practice among whaling captains of giving them English nicknames and surnames.

As early as 1825, The Nantucket Inquirer estimated that there were more than fifty Pacific Islands on Nantucket, all employed on whale ships.

“… and a man as distinguished from a woman or female. The present established mode of writing it is Kanaka, pronounced Kah nah kah, with the accent on the second syllable.” (Lebo)

By the 1830s, Nantucket whalers employed about fourteen hundred seamen, including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Four or five hundred men arrived or departed annually.

As far as residents of Nantucket were concerned, Kanaka meant ‘male Pacific Islander,’ for whaling ships brought only young men, ‘single mariners,’ halfway around the world.

As ‘black men,’ Pacific Islanders ashore on Nantucket lived in ‘New Guinea.’

New Guinea was the segregated section of Nantucket where blacks lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 18th century, a number of free blacks bought lots on the West Monomy shores, near the Old Mill.

Once known as Newtown, the area became known by 1820 as New Guinea, indicating the African roots of the property owners. (The label “New Guinea” was used in numerous cities and towns to designate the section in which people of color resided.) (MuseumOfAfroAmericanHistory)

The settlement, known as Guinea, or New Guinea, after the territory of the same name in West Africa, was a cluster of residences, gardens, and pastures physically separated from the white community by Newtown Gate, a sheep barrier at the end of Pleasant Street. There were stores, shops, churches, a school, and later on an abolition society. (Nantucket HA)

Among the residents of New Guinea in the 19th century, were at least three who had been born in Africa. One of them was James Ross. He had found his wife Mary Pompey on-island. Their children were, in order of birth: James Jr, Maria, Elizabeth, Sarah, and Eunice.

“In 1837 Maria Ross married William Whippey (identified as a ‘coloured’ man,) who was had been born in New Zealand in 1801, apparently the son of a Maori mother and one of the Nantucket whaling Whippeys.”

At least six sailor boarding houses operated during the 1820 to 1860 period when Native Hawaiian seamen frequented Nantucket. Together William and Maria ran a boarding house for Pacific Islanders on-shore from Nantucket whaling vessels.

That house, near Pleasant Street in Nantucket’s New Guinea section, primarily or exclusively boarded Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and a sign identified William Whippy’s establishment as the “William Whippy Canacka Boarding-House.”

After William’s death from tuberculosis in 1847, Maria kept the boarding house going for a while and then remarried. Widowed again, she went to work as a stewardess on the Island Home, a steamboat running between Nantucket and Hyannis. (lots of information here is from Lebo, Karttunen, Carr and Okihiro.)

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William Whippy Canacka Boarding-House-sign-NantucketHA

Nantucket-New Guinea-map-1834

June 21, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Chinese Wo Hing Society Temple and Cookhouse

Some suggest Captain James Cook’s crew gave information about the “Sandwich Islands” when they stopped in Macao in December 1779, near the end of the third voyage.

In 1788, British Captain John Meares commanded two vessels, the Iphigenia and the Felice, with crews of Europeans and 50-Chinese. Shortly thereafter, in 1790, the American schooner Eleanora, with Simon Metcalf as master, reached Maui from Macao using a crew of 10-Americans and 45-Chinese. (Nordyke & Lee)

Crewmen from China were employed as cooks, carpenters and artisans, and Chinese businessmen sailed as passengers to America. Some of these men disembarked in Hawai’i and remained as new settlers.

The growth of the Sandalwood trade with the Chinese market (where mainland merchants brought cotton, cloth and other goods for trade with the Hawaiians for their sandalwood – who would then trade the sandalwood in China) opened the eyes and doors to Hawaiʻi.

The Chinese referred to Hawaiʻi as “Tan Heung Shan” – “The Sandalwood Mountains.” The sandalwood trade lasted for nearly half a century – 1792 to 1843. (Nordyke & Lee)

Starting in the 1850s, when the Hawaiian Legislature passed “An Act for the Governance of Masters and Servants,” a section of which provided the legal basis for contract-labor system, labor shortages were eased by bringing in contract workers from Asia, Europe and North America. The first to arrive were the Chinese (1852.)

“These Chinese were taken to the plantations. There they lived in grass houses or unpainted wooden buildings with dirt floors. Sometimes as many as forty men were put into one room.”

“They slept on wooden boards about two feet wide and about three feet from the floor. … (T)hey cut the sugarcane and hauled it on their backs to ox drawn carts which took the cane to the mill to be made into sugar” (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

The sugar industry grew, so did the Chinese population in Hawaiʻi. Between 1852 and 1884, the population of Chinese in Hawai’i increased from 364 to 18,254, to become almost a quarter of the population of the Kingdom (almost 30% of them were living in Honolulu.) (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

During the years 1852-1898, many thousands of Chinese came to Maui to work on sugar plantations and in sugar mills. Chinatown in Lahaina began as one-story shops and housing on Front Street, and as more Chinese were attracted to the area, two-story wooden buildings were built to accommodate them.

Between 1869 and 1910 over thirty secret societies that have their roots in seventeenth century China were established in the Islands, six on Maui. These secret societies were formed to politically re-establish the deposed Ming dynasty.

The societies in Hawai‘i were not significantly interested in the political aspects of the parent societies. However, these societies made financial contributions to the 1911 Chinese revolution conducted by Sun Yat-Sen.

These local clubs were mutual aid societies which met social and recreational needs of its members providing funeral services and burial, protective services and made contributions to their members.

The Wo Hing Society – Wo, meaning “peace and harmony” and Hing, meaning “prosperity” – a branch of the Chee Kung Tong in Lahaina was incorporated in 1905 and the original structure repaired in 1906. “The extensive improvements at the Wo Hing Society House will be completed in season for the Chinese New Year’s festivities.” (Maui News, December 23, 1905)

The Society was an important aspect of cultural and social life for its immigrant Chinese members. Since many of the early Chinese immigrants were single men the society provided a fraternal structure which was a substitute for the absent family.

The Chinese Tong Society was a club opened to men sixteen to sixty. An initiation fee was paid and members participated in rigorous initiation rites and took an oath based on thirty-six codes of morality, brotherhood, patriotism and chivalry. Members could be identified by special gestures, secret chopstick maneuvers and passwords.

The members would meet to exchange news of China with people from other island , and read, or have read to them Chinese newspapers. The festivals and celebrations have included the Kuan Ti festival , to celebrate the god, the New Year festival to celebrate the Chinese New Year, the Ching Ming in April , when offerings were made to ancestral graves.

In 1912, using private donations, the society built a two-story temple on Front Street; the society provided social contacts, support in times of crisis, and housing for retired workers. It is believed that the present building replaced the older structure.

Upstairs is a temple with an altar for religious ceremonies, downstairs was the social hall and adjacent was the cookhouse. It served the growing Chinese population centered in Lahaina.

By the 1940s the declining Chinese population in Lahaina slowly made the building redundant and the property was neglected. In 1983, Lahaina Restoration Foundation took steps to restore this valuable site for Lahaina.

Under a long-term agreement with the Wo Hing Society, the foundation provided funds to bring the buildings back to life and maintain them as a museum. (Lots of information here is from Lahaina Restoration Foundation and National Park.)

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