Prominent People | Page 164 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

November 15, 2015 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Archibald Scott Cleghorn

Thomas Cleghorn and Janet Nisbet of Scotland had five boys: Thomas Davis, William Edinburgh, Alexander Nisbet, John Inglis and Archibald Scott. In 1840, they immigrated to New Zealand, and then moved to the Islands.

After arriving to Honolulu in 1851, Thomas Sr set up a dry goods store in Chinatown, but within the year, at the age of 54, he suffered a fatal heart attack while on his way home from church.

Archibald took over his father’s business and turned it into one of the most successful mercantile chains in the islands. (Fahrni)

He first married Elizabeth Pauahi Lapeka and they had three daughters: Rose Kaipuala Cleghorn (married James William Robertson,) Helen Manuʻailehua Cleghorn (married James Boyd) and Annie Pauahi Cleghorn (married James Hay Wodehouse.) (Geer, Fahrni)

On September 22, 1870, Archibald married Princess Likelike. She was the sister of a King and Queen – and the daughter of High Chief Kapaʻakea and Chiefess Analeʻa Keohokālole – her sister became Queen Liliʻuokalani and her brothers were King Kalākaua and William Pitt Leleiōhoku.

The wedding was held at Washington Place, the residence of Governor Dominis and Princess Liliʻuokalani. The Cleghorns had one child Kaʻiulani (born on October 16, 1875) – “the only member of the Royal Family having issue.” (Daily Herald, February 3, 1887)

ʻĀinahau, their Waikiki home was said to have been the most beautiful private estate in the Hawaiian Islands. A driveway between rows of stately palms led to the gracious pillared mansion set in a grove of 500 coco palms. Artificial lakes dotted with pink water lilies, and statues found here and there, added to the charming grounds.

Continuing his father’s love of horticulture, Archie also became known as Hawaiʻi’s Father of Parks and served as Oʻahu Parks Commissioner; he was landscaper for ʻIolani Palace.

Archibald is also responsible for the spectacular gardens of the ‘ʻĀinahau estate, where he planted several varieties of plants, shrubs and trees, including Hawaiʻi’s first banyan, which became known as ‘The Kaʻiulani Banyan’. (Fahrni)

In addition he was the lead landscaper for Kapiʻolani Park. Kapiʻolani Park was dedicated on June 11, 1877 and named by King Kalākaua to honor his wife, Queen Kapiʻolani. It was the first public park in the Hawaiian Islands.

Characterized from the beginning as “swamp land in a desert,” Kapiʻolani Park became a park specifically because it wasn’t considered suitable for anything else, and because of its peculiar climate – it’s one of the few places on Oahu where rain almost never falls.

Archibald and Likelike deeded land at Kaʻawaloa to Major James Hay Wodehouse, Her Britannic Majesty’s Commissioner and Consul General for the said Kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands, for a monument in memory of Captain Cook. (Thrum)

Cleghorn served in the House of Nobles from 1873 to 1888, and the Privy Council from 1873 to 1891. He succeeded Prince Consort John Owen Dominis upon his death in November 1891, until February 28, 1893 as Royal Governor of Oahu.

He also served as the first President of The Queen’s Hospital, a member of the Privy Council, the Board of Health, the Board of Prison Inspectors, the Board of Immigration and the president of the Pacific Club (his downtown Honolulu home eventually became the home of the Pacific Club – Kaʻiulani was born there.)

Cleghorn (November 15, 1835 – November 1, 1910) died of a heart attack at ʻĀinahau. He was buried in the Kalākaua Crypt at Mauna Ala, the Royal Mausoleum.

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Kaiulani_and_father_at_Ainahau_in_1889-WC

Archibald_Scott_Cleghorn,_HSA-WC

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November 9, 2015 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Louis Henri Jean Charlot

Born in Paris, Louis Henri Jean Charlot was descended from “sundry exotic ancestors.” His father, Henri, was a French businessman, free-thinker and Bolshevik sympathizer born and reared in Russia. Anna, his mother, an artist and a devout Catholic, was the daughter of Louis Goupil, a native of Mexico City.

Goupil, of French and Mexican Indian stock, married Sarah Louise (Luisita) Melendez, a Jewish woman of Spanish descent and subsequently moved from Mexico to Paris in the late 1860s. (Thompson)

Charlot admiringly describes his maternal grandfather in his earlier years as “… a fine rider, a coleador who could hold a running bull by passing its tail between his knee and the saddle of his galloping horse”.

Also living in Paris was Jean Charlot’s great-uncle, Eugène Goupil, a collector of Mexican works of art. Jean, who began to draw around age two, grew up surrounded by pre-Hispanic antiquities. (Thompson)

In his teens, Charlot had become one of a Catholic group that called itself Gilde Notre-Dame (“Parisian adolescents (who) used to gather in a crypt”) made up of sculptors, stained glass makers, embroiderers and decorators.

The resumption after the war of what Charlot calls his “career as a French liturgical artist” was cut short by the cancellation of the commission for the church mural just after he had completed the scale drawings.

This “first heartbreak at the realization that a born mural painter is helpless without a wall ….” was one of the factors that precipitated a journey to Mexico in 1920. “On this first trip to Mexico I did nothing at all. I was stuck aesthetically in 18th century France.” (Thompson)

“My life in France was on the whole rational, national, obeying this often heard dictum that a Frenchman is a man who ignores geography. There were though, simultaneously, un-French elements at work. Russian, sephardim, Aztec ancestors, warmed my blood to adventure.” (Charlot; Thompson)

After this Mexican trip, in 1928, Charlot and his mother moved to New York where he rented a small apartment on the top floor of 42 Union Square from the artist Morris Kantor. The apartment was unheated, which probably contributed to the death of his mother from pneumonia in January, 1929.

On a brief trip to Mexico in 1931, Charlot met his future wife, Dorothy Zohmah Day. During a visit to Zohmah in Los Angeles in 1933, Charlot met the printer Lynton R Kistler and produced Picture Book, “a repertory of motifs I had used up to then.” Returning to New York, teaching and lecturing occupied much of Charlot’s time.

In May 1939, Jean Charlot and Zohmah Day were married in San Francisco. “It was a long courtship,” commented Charlot. “Eight years. We were always in different places”.

The years from 1941-44 were spent as artist-in-residence at the University of Georgia, Athens, and instructor in art history at the University of California, Berkeley and artist-in-residence at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. (Thompson)

Then he had a chance to come to Hawaiʻi – and he stayed. An invitation to create a fresco at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, brought Charlot to Honolulu in 1949 where he painted Relation of Man and Nature in Old Hawai’i at Bachman Hall.

He accepted a position as professor of art at the University, and Hawai’i became the Charlot family’s permanent home. Attracted to the culture of the native Hawaiian, just as he had been interested in the folk aspects of the residents of rural France and the indigenous peoples of Mexico, he studied Hawaiian history, customs and religion, and learned the Hawaiian language.

From 1949 to 1979 Charlot created almost six hundred easel paintings, several hundred prints, and thirty-six works of art in public places in fresco, ceramic tile and sculpture. He taught summer sessions at several schools, among them San Diego State College (1950), Arizona State University (1951) and the University of Notre Dame (1955 and 1956). In 1950 he was made faculty advisor to the Newman Club, the Catholic student organization of the University of Hawai’i. (Thompson)

Charlot retired from the University of Hawai’i as Senior Professor Emeritus in 1966. Two years later, he traveled to France for the first time since 1921 and, at Malzéville and Paris, created a series of lithographs.

In 1968 the Jean Charlot Foundation was established in Honolulu to collect source materials relating to the life, work, art, philosophy, and values of Jean Charlot and promote publication of Charlot material – and, the “development of interest in the arts, encouragement of artists, and study of art.” (Thompson)

There are very few artists of Jean Charlot’s caliber in Hawaiʻi or the world. From 1958 until his death, Jean Charlot lived in Hawaiʻi in his ‘dream house’ on Wai’alae Country Club. Here, he conducted most of his work in this house and more particularly in his 2nd floor studio.

This was the final period of Charlot’s life, when he reached the peak of his artistic powers and was able to synthesize the esthetics of Europe, Mexico and Pacific Islands, the places he lived and influenced his art. His career spanned these places.

He was an early participant in the revival of liturgical art in France. He was a pioneer of the Mexican Mural Renaissance. He also worked as an archaeologist, moving to Washington D.C. to complete the publication of the report of the Carnegie Institution’s Chichen Itza expedition.

He completed numerous monumental art works in Hawaiʻi, Fiji and elsewhere. His artwork in public places number 74 in his lifetime, over 30 planned in the house, including the large ceramic tile mural on the School Street facade of the United Public Workers Building in Honolulu.

Jean Charlot was primarily a muralist and was also a prolific writer, producing numerous scholarly books and articles along with poetry and drama. He also illustrated over 50 books. Many works and scholarly resources are now housed in the Jean Charlot Collection of the Hamilton Library, University of Hawaiʻi. (NPS)

Among the honors bestowed on Charlot was the election by the Royal Society of Art, London, as a Benjamin Franklin Fellow in 1972. In 1976, the Hawai’i State Legislature presented Charlot with the Order of Distinction for Cultural Leadership. As well as being recognized as a ‘Living Treasure’ by Honpa Hongwanji Mission.

In 1974, Charlot was diagnosed as having cancer of the prostate. Radiation treatments and chemotherapy would keep the disease under control for the next four years. Confined to a wheelchair during the last months of his life, Charlot remained active as an artist and a scholar until his death on March 20, 1979. (Thompson)

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Hawaiian Drummers-Jean Charlot-JCF

Photograph of artist, Jean Charlot (right), and assistants painting mural-Charlot Collection-UH Library

The artist, Jean Charlot standing in front of mural-Hawaiian drummers-Charlot Collection-UH Library

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The Chief’s Canoe-Charlot

Seal of the National University (now UNAM) at the San Ildefonso College-Mexico City-Jean Charlot-WC

Relation of man and nature in old Hawaii-Charlot Collection-UH_Library

Mural ‘Eagle and snake of the Mexican national emblem’ by Jean Charlot-WC

Massare in the Great Temple or The Conquest of Tenochtitlan-Jean Charlot-WC

Koke Kumulipo (The Drummer)-Charlot-HnlAdv

Impressing the cartoon unto the wall-Charlot Collection-UH Library

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Putting up the cartoon-Charlot Collection-UH Library

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October 28, 2015 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Ginaca

‘Pineapple’ was given its English name because of its resemblance to a pine cone. It was first recorded in the Islands in 1813 by Don Francisco de Paula Marin, a Spanish adviser to King Kamehameha I.

Although sugar dominated the Hawaiian economy, there was also great demand at the time for fresh Hawaiian pineapples in San Francisco; then, canned pineapple.

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)

Up to about 1913, various types of hand operated sizing and coring machines were used to perform this operation. The ends of the pineapple were first cut off by hand. The pineapple was then centered on the core and sized.

Production rates were about 10 to 15 pineapples per minute. A large amount of labor was required, and it was not practical to recover the available juice material from the skins. (ASME)

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) In 1907 Hawaiian Pineapple Company opened it cannery in Iwilei.

About 1911, Henry Gabriel Ginaca of the Honolulu Iron Works Company, Honolulu, was engaged by Mr James Dole, founder of Hawaiian Pineapple Company, to develop the machine which made the Hawaiian pineapple industry possible and which bears his name today. (ASME)

The early Ginaca had a production capacity of about 50 pineapples per minute and required from three to five operators depending on how much inspection of the machine product was performed at the machine.

The increase in production from 15 to 50 pineapples per minute was enough to reduce the cannery size to economical proportions and made possible the design of efficient preparation lines. Once the new preparation and handling systems were proven the industry grew rapidly.

The term “Ginaca” is now generally applied to a variety of machines which are designed to automatically center the pineapple on the core, cut out a fruit cylinder, eradicate the crushed and juice material from the outer skin, cut off the ends and remove the central fibrous core.

The cored cylinder leaving the Ginaca machine is then passed to a preparation line where each fruit is treated individually to remove cylinder defects or adhering bits of skin. (ASME)

After a number of years of constantly increasing production, a new high-speed machine was designed at the Hawaiian Pineapple Company capable of preparing from 90 to 100 pineapples per minute depending on fruit size.

The Ginaca machine made canning pineapple economically possible. As a result, until the “jet age” Hawaii had an agricultural economy and pineapple was the second largest crop (behind sugar.)

Henry Ginaca was born May 19, 1876. The records are not clear whether he was born in California or in Winnemucca, Nevada, where his father had worked as a civil engineer. His father was Italian, his mother French.

While a teenager, he became an apprentice at the old Union Iron Works in San Francisco. He also took a course in mathematics to enable him to become a mechanical draftsman.

He was hired by the Honolulu Iron Works and came to Honolulu, apparently to work on engine designs. Dole later hired Ginaca to work specifically on a mechanical fruit peeling and coring machine.

He joined Hawaiian Pineapple Co in March, 1911, at a salary of $300 per month, a substantial wage in those days. Ginaca was 35 years old.

In the first year of Ginaca’s employment he came up with the initial design for his machine. From then until 1914 he added improvements and refinements to it.

Though many “bugs” had to be worked out, Ginaca’s machine was a success from the beginning. The machine was awarded a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.

In 1914 Ginaca and his two brothers decided to return to the mainland and try their hand at mining. The mining ventures of the three brothers were failures.

For Henry Ginaca, a productive career came to an untimely end on October 19, 1918, when he died of influenza and pneumonia at the old Mother Lode mining camp of Hornitos. He was only 42. (ASME)

Dole bought the island of Lānaʻi and established a vast 200,000-acre pineapple plantation to meet the growing demands. Lānaʻi throughout the entire 20th century produced more than 75% of world’s total pineapple.

By 1930 Hawai‘i led the world in the production of canned pineapple and had the world’s largest canneries. Production and sale of canned pineapple fell sharply during the world depression that began in 1929, but rapid growth in the volume of canned juice after 1933 restored industry profitability.

But establishment of plantations and canneries in the Philippines in 1964 and in Thailand in 1972, led to a decline in Hawai‘i (mainly because foreign-based canneries had labor costs approximately one-tenth those in Hawai‘i.) As the Hawaii canneries closed, the industry gradually shifted to the production of fresh pineapples. (Bartholomew)

In 1991, the Dole Cannery closed. Today, Dole Food Company, headquartered on the continent, is a well-established name in the field of growing and packaging food products such as pineapples, bananas, strawberries, grapes and many others.

The Dole Plantation tourist attraction, established in 1950 as a small fruit stand but greatly expanded in 1989 serves as a living museum and historical archive of Dole and pineapple in Hawai‘i.

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Ginaca machines cut cylinders out of pineapples, core them and remove that fruit

Ginaca machine Dole Cannery-Dole-ASME

Ginaca machines Dole Cannery-DOLE-ASME

19640816 – Fresh pineapple is sorted and packed at Dole’s packing shed. SB BW photo by Photo Hawaii.

Women at Dole Pineapple Cannery

Pineapple-Cannery

Dole Pineapple Cannery

Hawaiian Pineapple Company Canning Lines, Honolulu, O‘ahu, 1958

Girls at Dole Pineapple Cannery

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October 26, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Prince and Princess de Bourbon

King Kalākaua was the first ruling Monarch to tour of the world; in doing so, he made good on his motto, and motivation, proclaimed at his accession, ‘Hoʻoulu Lahui!’- (Increase the Nation!)

“Since the concert of the morning stars, or the appearance of man on the globe, sovereigns have done many great and many small things; but not one of them, even in these later days, has had the audacity or pluck to circumnavigate this little planet.” (Armstrong)

“A deep feeling of anxiety and interest pervaded the community on the eve of the departure of the King, and all classes and races strove to outvie each other in their expressions of good-will and affection, in bidding adieu to His Majesty.” (PCA)

“(T)he King goes but for the good of his people, to make the country richer by getting more capital and people to come this way. … So the King this time takes with him a Commissioner to enquire into and bring other people of brown skins here to re-people these isles.” (Kapena)

The King and others were concerned about the declining Hawaiian population in the Islands. “The King himself would be only so in name if he had no people to rule. The King will not rest until his hope of re-peopling these isles has been fulfilled.” (Kapena)

Leaving January 20, 1881 on the Oceanic and arriving back in the Islands October 29, 1881 (nine months and nine days later,) Kalākaua travelled to the US, Japan, China, Siam, Burma, India, Egypt, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

Kalākaua wanted to gain recognition for his kingdom and learn how other monarchs ruled. He believed the best way to conclude diplomatic relations with foreign countries was to understand their customs. He met with the officials of the Austrian Empire, in the absence of the Emperor.

For the most part, the King travelled incognito (his trip was claimed to have “no official significance.”) At times his unannounced arrivals caused some confusion (and missed opportunities to meet with leaders (who were out of town.))

However, he was greeted and handled with stately attendance. He was royally entertained and decorated with the highest orders; armies were paraded before him and banquets held in his honor.

A few years later, another royal party toured the world, with a short visit in the Islands, “Among the passengers on the steamer Australia, which arrived yesterday from Honolulu, were Count de Bardi, an Austrian prince of royal blood, and his wife, the Countess de Bardi. They are accompanied by the Baroness Hertling, Count Luchesi, Count Zileri and Baron Heydebrand, all of the Austrian nobility.”

“Prince Henry of Bourbon, or Count de Bardi, is thirty-six years of age and is a son of the Duke of Parma, and is closely related to the royal family of Austria. The Countess is a daughter of HRH Prince Miguel of Braganza.”

“The royal pair, accompanied, by their retinue, started about two years ago on a tour around the world and are now on their way home. Since leaving home they have traveled in Africa, India, Borneo, Java, China, Japan and other places.”

“The Count did considerable hunting, shooting ten or twelve wild bison in Borneo and five tigers in Java. The party spent some time in Japan, visiting the principal points of interest. Baron Heydebrand is the Count’s chamberlain, and has charge of the distinguished party during their travels.”

“They will remain in San Francisco at the Palace Hotel four or five days, and will then go to New York over the Burlington route via Niagara Falls.”

“While at Honolulu King Kalākaua save a grand ball at the royal palace in their honor. The palace was beautifully decorated with festoons of Chinese lanterns, so thickly that it appeared to be almost covered with them.” (Daily Alta California, November 2, 1889)

“There was a great crush of people in the throne room and main hall at the height of the reception, yet the procession past the royal dais flowed on in remarkably good order, the return stream of observed ones mingling with the throng of observers round the apartment. The band played throughout the ceremony.”

“Every approach to the palace presented a scene of gorgeous resplendence. The illumination of the building and grounds has never been surpassed in style or degree. From basement to battlements on every side the noble pile was profusely hung with rows of colored lanterns, festooned and straight but never departing from artistic symmetry.”

“These myriad lights were interspersed with the glittering rays from the permanent rose-shaped incandescent lamps on the outer walls, every door and window poured forth a welcoming glow from the electric crystal chandeliers richly bestowed within.”

“The paths in the grounds were lined, the trees and shrubbery decked, with hundreds of colored lanterns closely ranged in right lines and curves, all with such consummate art as to yield an effect of exquisite harmony to every point of vision.”

“Inside the palace the decorations were simple but in good taste. In the throne room on either side of the dais were potted palms, pyramids of roses were at the bases of the large mirrors, and a grand feather kahili stood at each side of the throne canopy.”

“An immense pyramid of plants with floral insets made a strikingly beautiful object opposite the grand staircase in the middle of the main hall. At the head of the stairs under a permanent mirror appeared the device of a shield rimmed with white flowers and bearing across the face in red flowers the greeting, ‘Aloha.’”

“This piece was universally admired. Bunches of ferns and flowers were disposed on the hallway walls between the statuary niches. The dining-room and the blue room, besides their usual adornments of curios and plate, were further beautified with bloom and foliage artistically composed and arranged.”

“The Prince and Princess de Bourbon and party were seemingly intensely gratified with the entertainment. Mingling freely with their fellow guests, many of whom were is privately presented to them, they chatted with animation to individuals and groups.”

“They wore respectively the decorations conferred on them by the King during the day. The amiable princess remarked to the Chamberlain her delight with the event, comparing the whole scene to ‘fairyland.’ His Majesty the King expressed his great pleasure, to a Bulletin reporter at the palace with the enthusiastic response made by resident society to the invitation to do honor to the distinguished visitors.” (Daily Bulletin, October 24, 1889)

“An unusually large number of people assembled at the Oceanic wharf on Friday to see the SS Australia leave for San Francisco. The whole Circus outfit and troupe, as well as the Katie Putnam theatrical troupe, left by this vessel.”

“The Prince and Princess de Bourbon and suite, and Princes Kawānanakoa and Kalanianaʻole were also passengers. The Hawaiian band played appropriate selections, and the steamship left the wharf a few minutes after 12 noon with a very full complement of passengers.” (Hawaiian Gazette, October 29, 1889) (The image shows ʻIolani Palace at about the time the Austrians visited in 1889.)

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Iolani Palace, circa 1889

October 15, 2015 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

John Rollin Desha

John Rollin Desha (commonly known as ‘Jack’) was born on January 22, 1887 at Nāpoʻopoʻo, South Kona, Hawaiʻi to Senator and Reverend Stephen Langhern Desha Sr and Mary Kaʻalopua (Kekumano) – a descendant of the Desha family of Kentucky.

He was graduated from the Kamehameha Manual Training School in 1903 and from Oʻahu College (Punahou) in 1906. While at Oʻahu College, Jack was a favorite amongst the faculty and administration.

In a letter of recommendation to Secretary John G. Hart at Harvard University, President Arthur F. Griffiths of Oʻahu College wrote:

“The boy comes of the best Hawaiian stock. He is a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools and of Oʻahu College. In his senior year at Oʻahu College, by a vote of the Faculty and Trustees, he was awarded the Punahou Roll of Honor. This honor goes annually to the student in the school who, during that year, has done the best for the school.”

Griffiths continued: “For a boy with Hawaiian blood to win this in a ‘white’ school, was a single distinction. Moreover, the award was popular among all the students of the school.” (Aki; OHA)

Desha was president of his senior class and president of Hui Pauahi, “a newly organized society for social service among the students and teachers of Oahu College.” (Evening Bulletin, February 3, 1908)

He also captained the baseball team for three years and played football. He excelled in both academics and sports during his time at Oʻahu College.

Desha received his BA degree at Harvard University in 1912; at Harvard Desha was prominent in athletics, being a member of the baseball team from 1911 to 1912. He later attended the George Washington Law School.

He married Agnes Ready at Medford, Mass.; they had two children: Evelyn and Jacqueline.

Desha began his career as secretary to Prince Jonah Kūhio Kalanianaʻole, delegate to Congress, holding this office from 1912 to 1917.

Returning to Honolulu from Washington, he entered the law office of Thompson & Cathcart and was admitted to practice in all of the courts of the Territory in July, 1918.

The following year he became deputy city and county attorney, holding this position from January to June, when he started a law practice in Hilo with his brother, Stephen L Desha, Jr., under the firm name of Desha & Desha.

On April 28, 1920, Desha was appointed second district magistrate of South Hilo. In 1921, he was appointed judge of the Circuit Court by President Warren Harding, taking office in January of 1922 for the first of two four year terms; he would be reappointed to the second by Calvin Coolidge.

Upon completion of his final term in 1927, he returned to private practice. From 1927-1948, Jack held a number of positions in the public and private sectors, eventually returning to public office as second assistant to the public prosecutor in 1946, and acting public prosecutor in 1948.

Throughout his life, Jack “was devoted to Hawaiʻi and to various organizations which kept alive the ways of old Hawaiʻi.” He served as Aliʻi ʻAimoku (supreme head) of the Royal Order of Kamehameha and was also a past president of the Hawaiian Civic Club. (Aki; OHA)

John Rollin Desha died March 11, 1958.

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