General | Page 81 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

January 3, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Palolo Municipal Golf Course

The first public golf course in the US was the Van Cortlandt Golf Course in the Bronx, New York in 1895. Since that time many other cities developed their own facilities both for local use and the tourist industry.

Honolulu’s first golf course was a private course built by Samuel Damon in 1898 at Moanalua Valley. Built four miles beyond the nearest trolley line (which ended at Pālama), it was too far outside of town to use for those without private transportation.

Another private course, located in Manoa Valley, was begun in 1904, as well as O‘ahu Country Club opened in 1906 and Waialae in 1928.

Planning for a Honolulu municipal golf course was underway in 1925. The City Planning Commission wanted a location that was not too far away from the center of the population that had access from the transit system.

They decided to concentrate their efforts for a site in Kalihi, but the price was unmanageable. “In March 1926 Palolo Valley landowners CF Wright and CA Long approach the [Planning] Commission with a proposal to sell their land to the City for a golf course site at 8 cents per square foot”.

“The Commission decided to recommend that the Board of Supervisors [equivalent to what we call the City Council] take advantage of the Palolo Valley site for an eighteen hole golf course.” (Stephenson)

“[T]he City Planning Commission on May 13, 1926, decided to formally endorse the Palolo Valley golf course site to the City Board of Supervisors. … On December 6, 1931, the Palolo Municipal Golf Course was officially opened.” (Stephenson)

“Honolulu’s new municipal golf course, a nine-hole layout off Palolo avenue, will be thrown open to the public today with a team match bringing together the best golfers on this island as the attractions.”

“The match begins promptly at 8 am, and the players will start off in fivesomes, representing teams of Haoles, Hawaiians, Japanese, Chines and the Braves.” (Honolulu Advertiser, December 6, 1931) “Senator Francis Brown, one of Hawaii’s best golfers, will shoot the first ball”. (Star Bulletin, Dec 5, 1931)

“You turn off Waialae road onto the Palolo belt road which branches off Waialae opposite the King’s Daughter’s home. You then drive straight up the valley on the Palolo road, the links being on the right hand side of the road about a mile from Waialae.” (Star Bulletin, Dec 5, 1931)

“Eventually the Palolo course should be extended to 18 holes. As it is now Honolulu has a regulation nine hole municipal course.”

“This is a fine start and it won’t be long before the links start bringing money into the revolving fund, even with the low fees that are to be charged.” (Star Bulletin, Deb 9, 1931)

“The demise of the Palolo Municipal Golf Course began during World War II. On September 22, 1944, the Honolulu City Planning Commission granted variances from existing zoning regulations to allow construction of temporary prefabricated houses on 2400 to 2500 square foot plots on the golf course.”

“This was done to help alleviate the existing wartime housing shortage. The continued shortage of housing precluded reopening the golf course.” (Stephenson)

Interest then went to the Territorial Fair Grounds, just mauka of the Ala Wai Canal, and the ultimate expansion of the Ala Wai Golf Course as the municipal course.

The first Territorial Fair was held during June 10-15, 1918; over a six-day period, one hundred and eighteen thousand tickets of admission were sold. With that initial success, the Chamber sought “A Bigger and Better Fair.”

A second fair was held June 9-14, 1919. “Help Win the War!” was the slogan that made the first Fair a success and it was based on common sense and a real need.

In 1921, the Territorial legislature appropriated funds from the “general revenues of the Territory of Hawaii for the purpose of purchasing and improving land to be used for territorial fair and amusement park purposes.”

A site was selected and “set aside for territorial fair and amusement park purposes that portion of the government lands lying mauka of the proposed Waikiki drainage canal (Ala Wai) and adjacent to Kapahulu road.”

Then field work was undertaken for the Fair Commission in connection with improvements of the fairgrounds and amusement park: polo field and race track; grandstand site was surveyed; two baseball diamonds and two indoor baseball diamonds were staked out.

The Territorial fair continued for a number of years. However, it’s not clear why the use of the site transitioned from a Fair Grounds to something else – but a transition appears apparent, starting in 1923.

Reportedly, golf started at the Fair Grounds in 1923, when someone placed a salmon can down as its first hole. A year later, three more holes were built for a total of four. By 1931 five more holes were designed and it became a nine-hole course. It was renamed the Ala Wai Golf Course.

The second nine was added in 1937, and the original clubhouse followed in 1948. In the 1980s, a new water feature was added and the course was also fitted with a new sprinkler system. The driving range was relocated to make room for expansion of the Honolulu Zoo in 1989 and, finally, a new clubhouse was built in 1990.

January 1, 2023 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Happy New Year!!!

When we were kids, we weren’t allowed to set off fireworks.

Our parents told us our uncle had lost an eye and they wanted to make sure that didn’t happen to us.

It never dawned on me, then; but, I never had an uncle with one eye … hmmm.

I still can’t believe we bit that one. (It is right up there with my sister convincing her kids that it was “white chocolate milk” in their glasses.)

Anyway, we only did sparklers – now, you can’t even do that.

I realize it is simply a change in the movement on the clock and the turning of the page on the calendar, but we still celebrate this change with anticipation and optimism.

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

December 28, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Edgar Young

The year was 1900 when William and Herb Young arrived in Hawai’i to enter this promising new line of business.

At the tum of the century, Honolulu’s waterfront was well known throughout the Pacific, being as the Territory of Hawai‘i had been annexed to the United States in 1898, and its largest city was the port of call for vessels east- and west-bound.

Ships came around the Horn laden with general merchandise; vessels from the West Coast might be carrying produce or livestock, while those from Australia carried coal.

In Honolulu, they would discharge their cargoes, then load up with sugar bound for distant ports. Interisland trade was serviced by local steamship companies with a combined fleet of eighteen vessels, plus a “mosquito fleet” of independent operators that owned interisland vessels.

The Young brothers weren’t strangers in the harbor life that awaited them. The family hailed from San Diego – four boys, Herb, William, Jack and Edgar, and older sister, Edith. The family patriarch, John Nelson Young, was a sailor.

The boys must have inherited this nautical bent because, at an early age, they were hiring themselves out for fishing trips using a small skiff that they sailed around the bay.

In the summer of 1899, all four boys ran a glass-bottomed boat excursion at Catalina Island. After the season ended, Herb landed a berth on a schooner bound for the Hawaiian Islands, and William decided to join him on what he would later call ‘the great adventure.’

They had made passage on the Surprise, a two-masted schooner engaged as an interisland carrier to serve the Kona Sugar Company. Twenty-nine year old Herb had served as chief engineer during the ten-day journey from San Francisco, while William, then age twenty-five, served before the mast.

The company that was to become Young Brothers began as a an enterprising series of small jobs utilizing skills that Herb and William added to along the way.

By the end of the year, Young Brothers was becoming established as a small but prospering harbor business. Younger brother Jack, age eighteen at the time, had arrived on October 16, 1900, to join the growing partnership.

Then steps in a fledgling Hawaiʻi company, also seeing expansion opportunities, and it was through shipment of Libby’s pineapple from Molokai to Libby’s processing plant in Honolulu that Young Brothers expanded into the freight business.

In the early years of the company, the brothers carried supplies and sailors to ships at anchor outside the harbor, as well as run lines for anchoring or docking vessels. They also gave harbor tours and took paying passengers to participate in shark hunts.

Libby’s need to ship fruit from the growing area on Molokai, to pineapple processing on Oʻahu created an opportunity for the brothers. The brothers, using their first wooden barges, YB1 and YB2, hauled pineapples from Libby’s wharf to Honolulu. “That’s how (Young Brothers) started the freight.” (Jack Young Jr)

Youngest of all, Edgar (who was born January 21, 1885 in San Diego), arrived in July 1901, but being only fifteen at the time, he attended Honolulu High School. (YB 100 yrs)

Graduating high school in 1904, Edgar then sailed aboard the ‘Alameda’ on July 27, 1904 for San Francisco to attend Cooper Medical Cooper. Newspaper accounts note that Edgar reported safe from the 1906 earthquake and fire.

(In 1908, Cooper Medical College was transferred to Stanford University. Instruction by Stanford University began in 1909 and continued in San Francisco until 1959, at which time the Stanford School of Medicine opened on the Stanford campus.)

On Marcy 9, 1907, Edgar married Eunice Mae Hilts. Then, Edgar returned to the Islands, “Dr. Young is a graduate of the Cooper Medical School of San Francisco, and while in that city he had a laboratory of his own.”

“Dr. Edgar Young, who graduated eight years ago from the Honolulu High School, and well known in Honolulu by the young people of the city, has taken up practise at Kahului.”

“He is under regular appointment by the railroad and will be given some of the work of Puunene plantation, which was too heavy for one physician to carry alone. It is likely, too, that when he can spare the time, he will be called to Wailuku to assist in that part of Maui, where the work also is unusually exacting, and demands more time than one physician can usually give.”

“His coming to Maui is much appreciated by the other physicians here as well as the people as a whole. He has brought with him his wife and child. A new house will probably be erected in Kahului on the beach on the Wailuku side of the cottage occupied by Elmer R. Bevins.” (Star Bulletin, August 12, 1912)

Edgar later substituted for Dr Durney at the Kula Sanitarium. (SB, Sept 19, 1917) Edgar went to Kauai and in addition to general medical practice, he was superintendent of the 35-bed Lihue Hospital (American Medical Directory (1921)).

“He practiced in Hawaii for many years [on Kauai (including Lihue Plantation) and Maui (including Kahului RR Co)]. He left Honolulu for California just before outbreak of war in December, 1941. Owing to ill health, he had been inactive for the past four years.” (Star-Bulletin, Dec 27, 1943)

Edgar Young died on December 23, 1943 (polio ‘finished him’ (Jack Young Jr), in San Diego, at the age of 58, and was buried in Cypress View Mausoleum And Crematory in San Diego.

December 26, 2022 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Sisters of Charity

Appropriately, we read a lot about the good work of Father Damien and Mother Marianne (both, now Saints.) But we don’t seem to hear of the many others who worked with them in ministering to those in need.

Here, we look at only a few (some of the earliest Sisters that worked with Mother Marianne,) and the hard work and hardship they endured.

The first shipment of lepers landed at Kalawao (Kalaupapa) January 6, 1866, the beginning of segregation and banishment of lepers to the leper settlement.

Receiving and detention centers were established on Oʻahu. Kalihi Hospital was the first hospital for leprosy patients in Hawaiʻi opening in 1865. Kapiʻolani Home opened in Kalihi Kai in 1891 adjacent to the Kalihi Hospital and Receiving Station; Kalihi Plague Camp (1900-1912) and Meyers Street, Kalihi Uka (1912-1938.) (NPS)

In January 1883, Walter Gibson, Minister of Foreign Affairs and president of the Board of Health, appealed to Hermann Koeckemann, Bishop of Olba, head of the Catholic Mission in Hawai’i, to obtain Sisters of Charity from one of the many sisterhoods in the US to come and help care for leprous women and girls in the Islands.

Father Leonor Fouesnel, with a royal commission from King Kalākaua, was designated as agent to go on this mission. Landing in San Francisco and traveling East, Father Leonor petitioned more than fifty different sisterhoods before a favorable reply was obtained, from the Franciscan Convent of St Anthony at Syracuse, New York.

The reply to the King’s emissary was not made lightly, but only after a long, serious debate among the sisterhood. One of the prime supporters of this action was the Mother Superior, Mother Marianne Cope. (Greene; NPS)

“I am hungry for the work and I wish with all my heart to be one of the chosen Ones, whose privilege it will be, to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of the souls of the poor Islanders… I am not afraid of any disease, hence it would be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned ‘lepers.’” (Mother Marianne; NPS)

Mother Marianne consulted with all the sisters and, to her credit they felt free to voice their concerns. Responded one: “I am very honest with you. I am afraid. I have heard too much about these poor people. I heard also that there are no rules and regulations. That everyone does as he pleases.”

Another stated: “If it is not a suitable place for any woman how can it be for the Sisters.” (NPS) With calmness, good sense, firmness, and a kind heart she was able to get cooperation from all around her. Her religious life was a series of administrative appointments, culminating in her being placed in charge of missions in Hawai’i.

Only six sisters could be spared to go with Mother Marianne, who insisted that as superior of the convent it was her duty to go with the first group of sisters and help them get established. It was not the intent of the convent that she stay in Hawai’i permanently. (Greene; NPS)

On October 23, 1883, Mother Marianne and her companions set off for Hawai’i, arriving on November 9. These were: Sister M Bonaventure Caraher, Sister Crescentia Eilers, Sister Ludovica Gibbons, Sister M Rosalia McLaughlin, Sister Renata Nash and Sister Mary Antonella Murphy.

Three of the sisters and Mother Marianne went to work at the branch hospital for leprosy victims at Kaka’ako in Honolulu on January 11, 1884, and spent almost five years there. Three others were put in charge of the new hospital at Wailuku on the island of Maui.

“For us it is happiness to be able to comfort, in a measure, the poor exiles, and we rejoice that we are unworthy agents of our heavenly Father through whom He deigns to show His great love and mercy to the sufferers.” (Mother Marianne, 1884)

Queen Kapi‘olani had visited Kalaupapa in 1884 to learn how she could assist those who were diagnosed with leprosy and exiled there, and she raised the funds to build the Kapiʻolani Home for Girls. (KCC) She and others also recognized the need for a home for the non-infected children of the leprosy patients.

On November 9, 1885, the healthy girls living in Kalawao moved into Kapiʻolani Home on the grounds of the sisters’ convent at the Kaka’ako Branch Hospital. (Hawaii Catholic Herald)

On April 22, 1885, a second group of sisters arrived from Syracuse as reinforcements. This included Sister Leopoldina Burns, Sister Carolina Hoffmann, Sister Martha Kaiser and Sister Benedicta Rodenmacher. Shortly after, Sister Antonia Brown, Sister M. Vincentia McCormick, Sister M. Irena Schorp and Sister Ephrem Schillinger. (More came later.)

News continually filtered back to Kaka’ako about conditions at the Moloka’i settlement. The children on the island were in desperate need of care and the venerable Father Damien himself had been diagnosed as having leprosy and obviously had few years left in which to continue his work.

Mother Marianne, however, was being kept busy in Honolulu all this time. At one point she had suggested to Walter Gibson that a home for children of leprous parents be built near the sisters’ residence in Honolulu. This establishment opened in November 1885 as the Kapiʻolani Home for Girls. (Green; NPS)

Then, Mother Marianne Cope and Sisters Leopoldina Burns and Vincentia McCormick of the Third Order of St. Francis, Sisters of Charity arrived on November 14, 1888. They managed the Charles R Bishop Home for Unprotected Leper Girls and Women, which opened at Kalaupapa in 1888. (NPS)

Sister Leopoldina describes the place: “One could never imagine what a lonely barren place it was. Not a tree nor a shrub in the whole Settlement only in the churchyard there were a few poor little trees that were so bent and yellow by the continued sweep of the birning wind it would make one sad to look at them.” (Voices of Kaulapapa; SanDiego-gov)

While there was no cure for the residents of Molokai, the sisters tried to bring dignity to their lives. Before the sisters arrived, patients dressed in rags. The sisters gave the girls proper clothes and taught them embroidery, sewing and gardening. They also gave them music lessons.

Father Damien himself succumbed to leprosy on April 15, 1889. Upon the death of Damien, Mother Marianne agreed to also head the Boys Home at Kalawao. The Board of Health had quickly chosen her as Saint Damien’s successor and she was thus enabled to keep her promise to him to look after his boys.

A traveler on a steamer that later (May, 1889) brought Sisters Crescentia and Irene to Kalaupapa noted, “When I was pulled ashore one early morning there sat with me in the boat two sisters bidding farewell (in humble imitation of Damien) to the lights and joys of human life. One wept silently and I could not withhold myself from joining her.” (The Messenger)

The workload was extremely heavy in that Bishop Home alone provided shelter for 103 girls in 1893. There were times when the burden seemed overwhelming. In a moment of despair, Sister Leopoldina reflected, “How long Oh Lord must I see only those that are sick and covered with leprosy?” (Sister Leopoldina: NPS)

The Baldwin Home, which opened in May of 1894, replaced the Boys’ home built by Father Damien. Mother Marianne Cope and the Sisters of Saint Francis managed the Baldwin home until they turned over jurisdiction to Joseph Dutton and the Sacred Hearts Brothers in 1895.

While at Kalaupapa, Mother Marianne predicted that no Franciscan Sister would ever contract leprosy. Additionally she required her sisters use stringent hand washing and other sanitary procedures. No sister has ever contracted the disease. Mother Marianne died in the summer of 1918 at the age of 80.

Mother Marianne was canonized on Oct. 21, 2012, making her the first Franciscan woman to be canonized from North America and only the 11th American saint. Forevermore, she will be known as St Marianne Cope, with the title “beloved mother of outcasts.” (Lots of information here is from NPS and Hawaii Catholic Herald.)

Gibson with the Sisters of St. Francis and daughters of Hansen’s disease patients, at the Kakaako Branch Hospital-1886

Sr. M. Rosalia, Sr. M Martha, Sr M. Leopoldina, Sr. M Charles, Sr. M. Crescentia, and Mother Marianne rear-Walter Murray Gibson-1886

Mother Marianne Cope (in wheelchair) with other nuns and the women and girls of Bishop Home in Kalaupapa, Hawaii, shortly before her death in 1918.

Mother_Marianne_Cope_in_her_youth

Sisters (Mother Marianne center) and patients at the Bishop Home in Kalaupapa

Kakaako Branch Hospital-Patients’ Cottage-Hanley&Bushnell-1886

Beginnings of the Kalaupapa Leprosy Colony

Kalaupapa peninsula on the island of Molokai

Rebuilt-Kapiolani_Home

Charles R Bishop Home for Unprotected Girls and Women-Kalaupapa, Molokai-1900

Old Settlement at Kalawao

Mother_Marianne_Cope,_Kalaupapa,_1899

Malulani_Hospital-women’s_ward-(MauiNews)

Kapiolani_Home

Kalawao-Kalaupapa

Kalaupapa home for unprotected girls

Bishop Home for Unprotected Leper Girls

Edward_Clifford_–_Damien_in_1888

December 23, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Animal Drawn Streetcars

In the quarter century from 1872 to 1896 the population just about doubled in the kingdom from 57,000 to 109,000; Honolulu doubled from 15,000 to 30,000.

The increase of the population of Honolulu was taken care of in two ways: (1) more people crowded into Chinatown (the area between Fort Street and Nuʻuanu stream makai (seaward) of Beretania Street and (2) area of settlement was pushed outward and “downtown” enlarged. (Kuykendall)

This extension of settlement combined with the growing attraction and popular resort use in Waikīkī meant transportation became more of a problem.

People who could afford them had horses and buggies; independent buggy served as available on a limited basis and mass production of the gas automobiles didn’t get underway until the turn of the century, so a more organized public transportation system was needed.

The earliest public transit was the Pioneer Omnibus Line, with a horse-pulled vehicle serving parts of Honolulu for a few years beginning in the spring of 1868. (Schmitt)

In 1884, the legislature passed a law “granting to William R. Austin and his associates the right to construct and operate a street railroad upon certain streets of the city of Honolulu.” Later amended, the law granted authority the Hawaiian Tramways Company, Limited (from England.) (Kuykendall)

An April 14 1888 London public offering prospectus to raise £130,000 by selling 26,000 shares at £5 each noted, “The following are the routes of the proposed lines of Tramway, viz.;

(1) From Nuuanu Street, the chief residential quarter, through the business part of the City skirting the Docks and Custom House, to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and thence along Beretania Street, touching the extensive Portuguese quarter, to a point where at several closely populated Avenues converge.

(2) Starting from the densely-populated Chinese quarter, past the King’s Palace, the Legislative Chambers, the Opera House, and the Native Church, to the principal pleasure resorts and residential district of the well to-do classes in the southern suburbs.

The total length of the above lines, including sidings and crossings will be about 12 miles.”

On May 19, 1888, ground was broken and track laying started for a street railway system. On New Year’s Day 1889, a mule or horse-drawn tram along King Street between Pālama and Pawaʻa became the first streetcar in Honolulu with four open cars, bringing what was later described as “Honolulu’s first real transit service.” (Schmitt)

The Pacific Commercial Advertiser grumbled that it was “a very unsatisfactory service for the public, however, as hundreds waited at the corners for the belated cars …. The company should have had double the cars on the line that it had.” (Kuykendall)

The tramcars were well patronized, first as a novelty and then as a proven convenience. The speed limit for the cars was eight miles per hour. By July 1889, the trams speeded along King Street from Kalihi to Waikīkī, Beretania from Nuʻuanu to Punahou.

The streetcar tracks added to the traffic problem on Honolulu’s main streets, none of which were wide enough. As far back as 1880, a newspaper article gave an entertaining description of traffic conditions then existing.

“The traffic in ours streets has increased five-fold within the last three or four years, but the streets are no wider than before. It therefore behooves the police to keep a sharp lookout. …”

“In all great cities which we have visited, it is held to be a most important function of the police, to render locomotion as easy and safe as possible, by forbidding unnecessary stoppages, keeping drivers on their own side of the street, seeing that no heavy drays or wagons are allowed to move unless the drivers have sufficient control over their beast.” (Kuykendall)

The animal-powered service was short-lived, making its last run on December 23, 1903; Hawaiian Tramways, Ltd. was taken over in 1900 by the Honolulu Rapid Transit & Land Co.

Honolulu Rapid Transit operated electrically powered buses on Honolulu streets. Power came from overhead wires. Ten new buses began service on August 31, 1901, replacing the horse and mule drawn cars which had in service 33 horse cars, 113 horses and 194 mules.

Eventually more comfortable, speedy gasoline-powered buses replaced other means of mass transit for Honolulu and rural Oʻahu.