Prominent People | Page 126 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

October 6, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

First American Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe

Jeanne Baret, a French woman from the Loire Valley, and her lover, botanist Philibert Commerson, implemented an elaborate plot so she could join him on a French expedition around the world, led by explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville.

Just before Bougainville’s ship, the Etoile, set sail in December 1766, Baret dressed as a man and showed up on the dock to offer her services – introducing herself as “Jean.”

They set sail, and over the couple of years amassed more than 6,000 plant specimens – including one they named for the expedition’s commander, bougainvillea. Although later found out to be a woman, and disembarked along the way, she later made it back to France – the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. (Cohen)

The credit of first American woman to circumnavigate the globe is given to Lucia Ruggles Holman – like Jeanne Baret’s, her trip around the world had its complications.

The 1819 departure of the Pioneer Company of missionaries to the Islands missionary was in danger of indeterminate delay because they lacked a physician.

One in the company, Samuel Ruggles, thought of Lucia, his sister, and her suitor, Thomas Holman, a physician practicing in Cooperstown, New York. If the doctor could be persuaded to join the missionary cause, events could proceed on schedule.

Ruggles thought Lucia and Thomas could marry, and then he would have the company of kin on this endeavor. However, Holman, a recent graduate of Cherry Valley Medical School in New York could not marry due to the debts incurred by the doctor’s unsuccessful practice. Then, a solution appeared in the guise of becoming missionaries.

The Prudential Committee acting on behalf of the American Board assumed the debts, purchased the necessary medical books, instruments, drugs, and supplies, and sent Holman to the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall for training. (Wagner-Wright)

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries from the northeast US set sail on the Thaddeus for the Hawaiian Islands.

Dr Thomas Holman and his wife Lucia joined two Ordained Preachers, Hiram Bingham and his wife Sybil and Asa Thurston and his wife Lucy; two Teachers, Mr. Samuel Whitney and his wife Mercy and Samuel Ruggles and his wife Mary; a Printer, Elisha Loomis and his wife Maria; and a Farmer, Daniel Chamberlain, his wife and five children.

After rounding Cape Horn (the southern tip of South America) and 164-days at sea, on April 4, 1820, the Thaddeus arrived and anchored at Kailua-Kona on the Island of Hawaiʻi. Hawai‘i’s “Plymouth Rock” is about where the Kailua pier is today.

On April 11, King Kamehameha II gave the missionaries permission to stay. However, “The King gives orders that Dr. H. 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)

Things did not go smooth for the Holmans and the rest in the mission – it started on the trip over – “Long before the close of the voyage this little community began most sensibly to feel the unpropitious influence of a most refractory spirit in (Dr Holman) …”

“… (who declared) determination not to comply with the principles established by the Board, & expressed to us in the instructions of the prudential committee, for the regulation of our economical policy.”

“Both the Dr. & his wife spoke often of acquiring personal wealth & returning early if they should succeed, to their own country. The Dr. objected to subscribing to our byelaws founded on the above named principles, because he said they cut him off from his original plans.”

“He wished to acquire the miens of returning at pleasure to America, & to educate his children there &c. … When he was referred to the general tenure of our instructions, he replied … that he had not subscribed them all &c. Sister H. too, from the time of leaving Boston repeatedly talked loudly of returning to her friends.”

“He has now received the 2nd admonition – Br. Thurston says ‘it is most manifestly our duty to proceed in our course of discipline with him even to excision if he does not confess his faults & evidence repentance future amendment’”. (Bingham to Samuel Worcester, October 11, 1820)

Dr. Holman, contrary to the unanimous advice and request of the brethren, left them, and went to reside on the island of Maui, more than 80 miles from any of them. This they considered an abandonment of the mission.

“The subject is too painful to dwell on, except when imperious duty demands – All the mission family is exhausted with it and with one voice, much as they need a physician, they would desire the Dr & his wife were safely landed on their native shore.” (Bingham to Evarts, November 2, 1820)

After only four months in the islands, the Holmans had not adjusted to the spirit of the mission. (Kelley) He withdrew from the mission on July 30, 1820 and returned to the US with his family (including Lucia Kamāmalu Holman born in 1821).

On October 2, 1821, Dr. Holman and family accepted free passage home on the Mentor, a whaleship, via China and the Cape of Good Hope. Mrs. Lucia Ruggles Holman is believed to be the first American woman to circumnavigate the globe. (Portraits)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Thomas and Lucia Holman-Samuel_Morse-400

October 5, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘Pine City’

After methodically buying up individual parcels, by 1907, Charles Gay, youngest son of Captain Thomas Gay and Jane Sinclair Gay, acquired the island of Lānaʻi (except for about 100-acres.) He was the first to establish the single-ownership model for Lānaʻi (with roughly 89,000 acres.)

Around 1919, Gay experimented with planting pineapple on a small scale. In November 1922 James Dole’s Hawaiian Pineapple Company, Ltd (HAPCo) acquired nearly the entire island and began the subsequent establishment of its pineapple plantation.

HAPCo was incorporated in 1901 by Dole and began its pineapple operations at Wahiawa on the Island of Oahu. Over the next two decades, the company grew in scale and prospered. Production increased from 1,893 cases of canned pineapple in 1903 to over 1,700,000 cases in 1920.

The acquisition of Lānaʻi “means that (the) pineapple business which has grown so rapidly into large proportions may safely grow much further. The future of canned Hawaiian pineapple looms large.” (HAPCo, 25th Anniversary)

Plans for building Lānaʻi City were drawn up in early 1923, as Dole and his partners set out to make Lānaʻi the world’s largest pineapple plantation.

Dole contracted Hawaiian Dredging Co of Honolulu to ‘establish a small town … with suitable water supply, electric lights, sewerage, etc,’ build a harbor with a breakwater and wharf at Kaumālapaʻu, and a road from there to the site of the new city. (HABS)

Dole had originally proposed that his main town on Lānaʻi be named Pine City. He preferred this name for the town as a shortened version of Pineapple City.

When the US Postal service began to set up postal operations there, it informed HAPCo that it would not allow the use of the name Pine City (apparently that name was already over-used on the US mainland). The main town was instead named Lānaʻi City. (HAPCo, 25th Anniversary)

With Hawaiian Dredging Co. contracted to build much of the infrastructure, it fell to HAPCo engineers to formulate the design of the new city’s layout and its buildings. For this task they turned to HAPCo plantation engineer David E Root and his assistant James T Munro.

Root was plantation engineer for HAPCo on Lānaʻi from 1923 to 1926. HAPCo hired Munro in 1923 to assist Root by taking charge of the ‘development and operation of the water system and other responsibilities.’ In 1926 Munro took over as plantation engineer, a position he held until 1939 when he was transferred to the Honolulu office.

Building construction in Lānaʻi City began in 1923 using Japanese work crews under the direction of Kikuichi Honda, who was a contractor on Maui before coming to Lānaʻi City to work for HAPCo.

Honda and his crew worked on buildings (mostly residences) into 1924. Honda left Lānaʻi in mid-1924 for reasons unknown and did not return to do any more construction work.

In his stead, he appointed a member of his 1923-24 construction crew, Masaru Takaki as the crew leader for building on Lānaʻi. Takaki directed building from 1924-1929. (HABS)

“Lānaʻi is about 60 miles from the cannery. So we needed a harbor. By cutting away the cliffs on one side, running a heavy breakwater into the ocean on the other and then dredging, we got it.”

“Then a road for heavy trucking – seven miles back and 1600 feet up into the island. That was built. Water was brought across the mountain range on the windward side of the island to a reservoir near the town.”

“A city was needed where laboring families and overseers could live happily. Lānaʻi City stands (as) a model community of its kind – population already past 1,000 and complete even to stores, bank, schools, hospital, Buddhist temple, ‘movies’ and ‘Mayor!’”

“The island is completely organized and is in daily touch with the cannery by radio telephone.” (HAPCo, 25th Anniversary) (Lānaʻi City would ultimately house about 3,000 HAPCo employees and their families.)

Under Dole’s tenure, the Lānaʻi plantation and city grew, and at one time the island supported nearly 20,000 acres of cultivated pineapple, making it the world’s largest plantation.

Lānaʻi City blossomed upon the landscape; most of the buildings and streets which we still see today were constructed during this short period.

By March 1924, the general layout of Lānaʻi City was established and some 40 buildings—many of which remain in the present-day Lānaʻi City—were built or were under construction.

In the early years of the plantation, the largest group of immigrant laborers was made up of skilled Japanese carpenters and stone masons. Their initial work was undertaken on an almost barren landscape, overgrazed by years of sheep, goat, and cattle pasturing.

Lānaʻi City was the first planned community in the Territory of Hawaii and today is the last intact plantation town in Maui County.

It was laid out and built using the contemporary principles of the Garden City planning concept developed in the 1890s and adopted in the 1920s by the HSPA.

This was a rejection of the model of worker housing as an industrial slum. It embraced the idea that a well planned and laid out city in the midst of a greenbelt with open spaces and tree-lined streets was more conducive to worker productivity.

For seventy years, from 1922 to 1992 when the last harvest took place, the name “Lānaʻi” was synonymous with pineapple.

Early photographs of Lānaʻi City do not show it to be appreciably superior to other, contemporaneous plantation towns.

However, the wide streets and commodious-looking structures eventually enhanced by thousands of Norfolk pine trees make Lānaʻi City now one of the handsomest small towns in Hawaii. (HABS) (Lots of information here is from Lānaʻi Culture & Heritage Center, HABS and HAPCo 25th Anniversary.)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Lanai_City_under_Development-(LanaiCHC)-1924

Lanai City PP-48-5-014-00001

Lanai_City-1924

Lanai_City-Dole_Park-(LanaiCHC)-1928

Lanai City-S00056-1929

Lanai City-PP-48-5-015-00001

Lanai City-PP-48-5-012-00001-1929

Lanai-Pineapple

Lanai-Hawaii-Dole-Food-Company-Historical-Pineapple-Fields

October 4, 2017 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Gertrude Gardinier

“I found out very early that I could be as naughty as I liked with my nurses and I enjoyed that very much, because I was naturally naughty, I suppose.”

“I remember that I envied my friends very much and I envied the children of the servants, who did quite as they pleased, even more. Then I can remember a quite new sensation which came to me when I found out that they also envied me. That was a very delicious feeling.”

“It served to give quite a new taste to life and I was not lonely for a long while after that. It came about in this way. I had a friend, a very jolly, careless little girl, and one day when we had been playing together we went up into my bedroom and she threw herself down on my bed.”

“I remember how my nurse rushed at her across the room, ‘How dare you,’ she said, and she took hold of her roughly and pulled her to the floor. ‘Sit there!’ she said, ‘that is the place for you.’”

“‘The little girl went home and I thought about it a long time. I never had seen my nurse angry and it made a great impression on me. ‘Why is the floor the place for her?’ I asked, and my nurse said, ‘Because.’”

“‘That didn’t seem a very good answer and then I asked, for the first time I think, ‘Why shouldn’t people touch me or use my things or sit on my chair or on my bed?’”

“‘And my nurse said, ‘Because you are a Princess and the others are not.’ ‘Is it very nice to be a Princess?’ I asked, and my nurse said that it was the nicest thing in the world except to be a Queen, and after that, although I was glad I was a Princess, I always wanted to be a Queen.’”

“‘Always?’ ‘Yes always,’ answered Kaiʻulani. ‘Why shouldn’t I tell the truth about it? I was mad with joy when the news of the proclamation declaring me heiress to the kingdom reached me abroad.’”

“‘I said to myself like a little girl, ‘Now some day I shall be a Queen.’ And meantime, after the Queen, I would come first in the kingdom. I thought my heart would break when I heard that the monarchy was overthrown, and I had all a girl’s disappointment, and I think all a Queen’s. I had wanted to be a good Queen some day.” (Kaʻiulani, The Call, August 7, 1898)

First Miss Barnes, then Miss Gertrude Gardinier, and later Miss de Alcald served as governesses to Kaʻiulani.

Kaʻiulani’s governess, Miss Barnes, of whom the family was very fond, died unexpectedly in 1883. Replacements were tired, but the arrival of Gertrude Gardinier from New York changed that.

Kaʻiulani’s mother, Likelike, approved immediately and the ten-year-old Kaʻiulani and Miss Gardinier took to each other immediately.

In 1885, Gardinier wrote to her parents noting, “She is the fragile, spirituelle type, but very vivacious with beautiful large, expressive dark eyes. She proves affectionate; highly spirited, and at times quite willful, though usually reasonable and very impulsive and generous.” (Zambucka)

“Miss Grandinier’s lessons were always so lively. We would awaken early, and then take breakfast out on the lanai – veranda – to enjoy the bright morning sunshine.”

“I always like a cup of rich, hot coffee, by Miss Gardinier insisted that I also drink fresh milk each day. At times, I know she thought me frail, and she was sure the milk would make me more robust.”

“Then we would read and write, and she would teach me about history. Names and dates and places that I would try very hardtop imagine. The music lessons were my favorite. Our family was fond of music.” (Kaʻiulani; White)

“Miss Gardinier said it was important for me to concentrate on my studies, because one day I will be called upon to rule our people, and I must be a wise and learned Queen.”

“In the afternoons, after my rest, we would often attend social engagements. These are many skills I need to learn, so that I will be able to receive and greet people properly, and be a gracious hostess.”

“Miss Gardinier and I used to discuss God a great deal. Then we would read the Bible. I have so many questions, but the Reverend says that all of the answers in the world as in the Good Book.”

“Mama once told me that when the missionaries first came to Hawaii, our people called the Bible ‘God in a little Black Box.’ You see, it was the only book they had ever seen.” (Kaʻiulani; White)

Gardinier remained at ʻĀinahau as Kaʻiulani’s governess until the day of her wedding to Mr Albert Heydtmann in May 1887. (Zambucka)

On a later visit to, now, Mrs Heytmann, Kaiʻulani noted, “I wish everything was the way it used to be.” Gertrude Heytmann responded, “I know, but you are very strong, Kaʻiulani. You will not only survive these changes, but you will thrive.” (White)

“Miss Gardinier – oh how I miss her! – always told me my moods changed like the tropical winds. I confess that I was often very willful with her, and I am sorry now, but such fun we had!” (Kaʻiulani; White)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Kaiulani_and_Miss_Gardinier-WC

Kaiulani_with_Miss_Gardinier-1880s-WC

September 21, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pendulum Peak

Early pendulum experiments helped calculate the force of gravity. By taking different readings at different locations across the planet, it is possible to calculate the contours of the earth, as well as the density of the interior. (A later Foucault pendulum was used to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth.)

Lt Charles Wilkes, as part of the US Exploring Expedition, came to Hawai‘i in 1840 with a 68-inch long pendulum and a pendulum clock. After suspending the pendulum from a tripod, he set up the pendulum clock nearby.

Both the clock and pendulum were swung – since they had different lengths, they swung at different rates. Every so often, they would coincide. Observing the pendulums through a telescope, he would record the time of the coincidence.

Over time, enough data was accumulated to determine the duration of a single swing of the pendulum. With the time and the length of the pendulum, he was able to calculate the force of gravity. (Philbrick)

Just after new year’s in 1841, Wilkes conducted pendulum observations on the top of Mauna Loa, at a site they named Pendulum Peak.

In the days before Christmas, with temperatures in the teens, and “water in the bags, under my pillow, froze,) “it blew a perfect hurricane for several hours, causing an incessant slamming, banging, and flapping of the tents, as though hundreds of persons were beating them with clubs”.

At other times, “at sunset, we had a beautiful appearance of the shadow of the mountain, dome-shaped, projected on the eastern sky: the colour of a light amethyst at the edges, increasing in intensity to a dark purple in the centre; it was as distinct as possible, and the vast dome seemed to rest on the distant horizon.”

“The night was clear, with moonlight, the effect of which on the scene was beautiful: the clouds floating below us, with the horizon above them, reminded us of the ice bergs and ice-fields of the Antarctic: the temperature lent its aid to the deception.”

“The 3d proved fine, and the pendulum-clock and apparatus being arranged and adjusted, the clock was put in motion, and a comparison made with the three chronometers every two hours.”

They made other observations, as well, “During our stay on the summit, we took much pleasure and interest in watching the various movements of the clouds; this day in particular they attracted our attention; the whole island beneath us was covered with a dense white mass, in the centre of which was the cloud of the volcano rising like an immense dome.”

“All was motionless, until the hour arrived when the sea-breeze set in from the different sides of the island: a motion was then seen in the clouds at the opposite extremities, both of which seemed apparently moving towards the same centre, in undulations …”

“… until they became quite compact, and so contracted in space as to enable us to see a well-defined horizon; at the same time, there was a wind from the mountain, at right angles, that was affecting the mass, and driving it asunder in the opposite direction.”

“The play of these masses was at times in circular orbits, as they became influenced alternately by the different forces, until the whole was passing to and from the centre in every direction, assuming every variety of form, shape, and motion.”

“(T)he outward variation (in temperature) still continued from 17° to 50° during the twenty-four hours.”

“On the 8th, we had a change to cold, raw, and disagreeable weather; snow began to fall, and a kona or southwest gale set in; the temperature fell soon to 20°.”

“At 10 pm, I was unable to proceed with the pendulum observations; for such was the fury of the storm, that the journeyman-clock, with a loud beat, although within three feet of my ear, could not be heard. I was indeed apprehensive that the whole tent, house, and apparatus would be blown over and destroyed.”

“This storm continued until sunrise of the 9th, when it moderated. I have seldom experienced so strong a wind; it blew over and broke one of the barometers, although its legs had been guarded carefully by large stones; and the wind was so violent at times, that it was with difficulty we could keep our footing.”

“On the 10th of January, we had snow again. The temperature rose to 32°: the snow melted fast, causing excessive dampness within and without, while other discomforts that may be imagined prevailed.”

“On the 11th, having the eprouvette mortar (a small cannon) with me, I tried some experiments on the velocity of sound, comparing it with our measured bases and the sides of the triangles: these gave results as satisfactory … The great difference was in the sound itself: the report of the gun producing a kind of hissing noise.”

“The eprouvette was of iron, and was fired with a plug driven into it very tightly after it was loaded. When fired near the level of the sea, it was necessary to close the ears when standing within twenty feet of it. The sound could be heard six miles, and the report was equal to that of a large gun.”

“But on the summit we stood close to it without any precaution whatever, and the noise it there made was more like that of a squib (a small firework that burns with a hissing sound before exploding.) … This night we finished the pendulum, and all the dip and intensity observations”.

“When day broke, on the 13th January, all was bustle on the summit of Mauna Loa. Every one was engaged in taking down and packing up the instruments and equipage, loaded with which the native labourers scampered off.”

“Previous to our departure, I had the words ‘Pendulum Peak, January 1841,’ cut in the lava within our village. JG Clarke, one of the seamen belonging to the Vincennes, who made these marks came to me and desired, on the part of the men, that I would allow them to add to it US Ex Ex, in order that there might be no mistake as to who had been there; to this I readily gave my consent.”

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Lt. Charles Wilkes campsite-Mauna Loa

Crater of Moku-A-Weo-Weo, Mauna Loa-Wilkes

Wilkes-Pendulum_Peak-(davidrumsey)

Pendulum_Peak-Layout-(Wilkes, NPS)

Wilkes_Camps_and_Routes-1840-1841

September 20, 2017 by Peter T Young 4 Comments

Lewers & Cooke

What started as a lumber company of Christopher H Lewers evolved into Lewers & Dickson, and eventually Lewers & Cooke. The primary parties in this process included Lewers, Robert Lewers (his cousin,) Joshua Gill Dickson and Charles Montague Cooke.

Christopher Hamilton Lewers, a cabinet maker hailing from Dublin, Ireland, landed in Honolulu in about 1850. In 1852, he started into the business in the Islands with the purchase at auction of a cargo of eastern white pine shipped from the States via Cape Horn.

The Honolulu carpenters at that time kept on hand small lots of white pine to make sash, doors, blinds, etc, which were made entirely by hand. Lewers’ purchase cornered the market on white pine, and he found it a profitable transaction and made it the basis for a regular lumber business.

At that time lumber, mostly Douglas fir, was sent to the Hawaiian Islands from the American West Coast by the Hudson Bay Co. This trade began about 1840, and in 1860 small vessels carrying approximately 300,000-feet of lumber came regularly to the islands to supply the trade. (American Lumberman)

In early 1854, the newspaper ‘The Polynesian’ first carried an advertisement for ‘S Johnson and Christopher H Lewers, House Carpenters and Joiners.’ Their projects would include the Fort Street Church, the Royal School, Queen’s Hospital and the Royal Hotel.

CH Lewers leased a ‘spacious old beer shop’ opposite the French Hotel from Mr Piʻikoi, announcing that he intended to import a steam saw mill and planing machine. (Walker-Moody)

Among other interests, Christopher H Lewers founded Waiheʻe sugar plantation on Maui. It the mid-1860s it was managed by Samuel Thomas Alexander. Henry Perrin Baldwin hoped to earn enough money to go to medical school, and took a ‘Luna’ (foreman) job.

Baldwin never got into medicine; in 1869, Baldwin and Alexander became business partners and bought 12 acres in Hāmākuapoko (an eastern Maui ahupuaʻa (land division.) (They later formed Alexander & Baldwin, one of Hawai‘i’s ‘Big Five’ companies.)

About 1855, CH Lewers sold out his lumber business and went to the eastern US for a visit, but returned to the islands the next year, accompanied by his two sisters and Robert Lewers, his cousin. CH Lewers bought the business back.

Robert Lewers was born in New York City, NY, on March 15, 1836; he was the son of William and Mary (Lowe) Lewers. Robert Lewers came to Honolulu on February 21, 1856 and started in Honolulu as a carpenter. (Siddall)

“He was (o)ne of the last survivors of those merchants who came to Honolulu in the days of her commercial infancy and aided in the upbuilding of the Islands, industrially and socially, Robert Lewers was a link for years between that glamorous early Hawaii with its monarchial pomp and court ceremony, and the thriving business community Hawaii became under American jurisdiction.” (Orr)

“There were not many occupations then open for a young man in Honolulu and Mr Lewers got employment as a carpenter. He helped to build many of the old frame houses in Honolulu, and one or two on Kauai.”

“It was his practical knowledge of building and of frame construction that made his services valuable, when, in 1860, he was offered a position by his cousin, Christopher H Lewers. The firm was later known as Lewers & Dickson.” (Orr)

“There was but little business done in those years; but shortly the sugar plantations were started on most of the islands, and these created a better market.”

“At that time our 1-inch boards of all widths were piled together, all mixed up, and those who have charge of lumber yards can easily realize how difficult and slow it was to get out an order.”

“The cartage of lumber in those days was done mostly with handcarts. Sometimes when we had a large quantity to deliver to a schooner we would hire a 2-wheeled dray, as there were no lumber wagons in town. We shoved the lumber up over the driver’s head, or he had to sit on top of it. Delivery was made more difficult by the very bad conditions of the roads.” (Lewers, American Lumberman)

Joshua Gill Dickson was born on August 2, 1830 in Charleston, Massachusetts, the son of Captain Joshua and Sarah Dickson. His father was “for many years well known as a very popular commander of several of the Boston and Liverpool packets, and later held the honorable office of warden of the port of Boston.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 27, 1888)

Charles Montague Cooke was born in Honolulu May 16, 1849, second of four sons of missionaries Amos Starr and Juliette Montague Cooke. The family home for more than a generation was at the Mission at Kawaiahaʻo. (The Friend)

His schooling as completed by a year or two at the Massachusetts Agricultural College; he returned to the Islands in 1871 and worked for Castle & Cooke, the company started by his father and Samuel Northrup Castle (another of Hawai‘i’s Big Five companies.)

Cooke later accepted an offer from Lewers & Dickson. In 1877, following the death of Christopher H Lewers, Robert Lewers and Cooke became partners of Dickson and continued the operation as Lewers and Dickson.

Dickson died July 11, 1880. Within a few months the surviving partners (Robert Lewers and Charles M Cooke) bought the interest of the Dickson Estate and launched the new firm of Lewers and Cooke, ‘the largest dealers in the Territory of Hawai‘i in Lumber and Building Materials.’

On January 1, 1901, Lewers & Cooke Ltd succeeded Lewers & Cooke. “A noteworthy fact in the establishment of the firm of Lewers & Cooke, Ltd., was the inclusion of a clause in the articles of incorporation empowering the directors to contribute a portion of the earnings for social, benevolent and religious purposes. It was the first time this had been done in Hawai‘i.” (Orr)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger