Prominent People | Page 61 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

October 4, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kimo Ona-Milliona

James was son of William and Martha (Adams) Campbell, descended from the Scottish Campbell clan, the eighth child in the family of eight boys and four girls (born in Ireland, February 4, 1826.) His father was a carpenter who operated a furniture and cabinet shop adjacent to the home where he and his wife raised their family.

With limited opportunities on that island, at the age of 13, he stowed away on a schooner for Canada and later wound up on a whaler out of New Bedford and was bound for the Pacific. He survived a shipwreck in the South Pacific (Tuamotus) on the way.

He and two shipmates immediately were seized by the Islanders and bound to trees to await their fate. After Campbell fixed the chief’s broken musket, they were freed and accepted as members of the community. A few months later Campbell left the Island by drifting out to a passing schooner that took him to Tahiti, and later (1850) he went to Hawaiʻi.

He settled in Lāhainā, Maui and honed his skill as a carpenter in building and repairing boats and constructing homes. He boarded with a European named Barla and married Barla’s only child, Hannah. There were no children of this marriage, which ended with the death of young Hannah Barla Campbell in 1858.

He expanded beyond carpentry and ventured into the Islands’ fledgling sugar industry. In 1860, Campbell, with Henry Turton and James Dunbar, established the Pioneer Mill Company (Dunbar later left;) they not only invested capital in the business, they also worked alongside employees in the field and mill.

When Campbell and Turton were starting the plantation, the small sugar mill consisted of three wooden rollers set upright, with mules providing the power to turn the heavy rollers. The cane juice ran into a series of boiling kettles that originally had been used on whaling ships.

By 1876, the annual production had increased to 1,708-tons of raw sugar and the World’s Fair in Philadelphia awarded Pioneer Mill a prize for its fine quality sugar that year. In 1882, Honolulu Iron Works built an iron three-roller mill for the factory and soon there were six boilers generating steam power to drive the machinery.

Pioneer Mill Company not only survived but thrived and enabled Campbell to build a palatial home in Lāhainā. Despite his success in sugar, his interests turned to other matters, primarily ranching and real estate and he started to acquire lands in Oʻahu, Maui and the island of Hawaiʻi.

In 1876, he purchased approximately 15,000-acres at Kahuku on the northernmost tip of Oʻahu from HA Widemann and Julius L Richardson. In 1877, he acquired from John Coney 41,000-acres of ranch land at Honouliuli.

In 1877, he sold his interest in Pioneer Mill Company to his partner, Turton; he married Abigail Kuaihelani Maipinepine (age 19) and soon after moved to a home on Emma Street in Honolulu, which Campbell purchased from Archibald S Cleghorn in 1878. (Now the site of the Pacific Club.)

Princess Kaʻiulani, daughter of the Cleghorns, was born there in 1875. The Campbells’ first daughter, Abigail Wahiikaahuula, later Princess Abigail Kawānanakoa, was born in the same room as Princess Kaʻiulani. (Other children included Alice, Beatrice and Muriel; four other children were born to the couple but died in infancy.)

In 1883 he built the Campbell Block Building at the corner of Merchant and Fort Streets, Honolulu, where he established his office. (This building was headquarters for the Campbell Estate until 1967, when the Estate constructed the modern James Campbell Building at this site to house its offices.)

In 1885, Pioneer Mill Company, cultivating about 600 of its 900 acres of land and producing about 2,000 tons of sugar a year, encountered difficulties and Turton declared bankruptcy. To protect his mortgage, Campbell, with financial partner Paul Isenberg of Hackfeld and Company, acquired all the stock and Campbell again took on management of the operation.

With major interests on Maui and Oʻahu, Campbell split his time between the Islands. He was a member of the House of Nobles representing Maui, Molokai and Lānaʻi in the special session of 1887 and the regular session of 1888.

Back on Oʻahu, critics scoffed at the doubtful value of Campbell’s purchase of Honouliuli. But he envisioned supplying the arid area with water and commissioned California well-driller James Ashley to drill a well on his Honouliuli Ranch. In 1879, Ashley drilled Hawaiʻi’s first artesian well; Campbell’s vision had made it possible for Hawaiʻi’s people to grow sugar cane on the dry lands of the ʻEwa Plain.

In 1889, Campbell leased about 40,000-acres of land for fifty years to BF Dillingham (of Oʻahu Railway and Land Co;) after several assignments and sub-leases, about 7,860-acres of Campbell land ended up with Ewa Planation.

(ʻEwa Plantation was considered one of the most prosperous plantations in Hawaiʻi and in 1931 a new 50-year lease was executed, completing the agreement with Oʻahu Railway and Land Company and beginning an association with Campbell Estate. The ʻEwa mill closed in the mid-1970s; the mill was demolished in 1985.)

After a lengthy illness, Campbell died on April 21, 1900, in his Emma Street home. On the afternoon of his funeral the banks and most of the large business houses closed. (In January of 1902, Abigail Campbell married Colonel Sam Parker.)

“We knew him then as a very capable and industrious mechanic at Lahaina. By hard work and sound judgment, twenty years later he had built up a valuable sugar plantation in Lahaina. From that beginning of wealth he became the possessor of more than three millions of property, all of it, to the best of our knowledge, honestly gained without detriment to others.”

“Mr. Campbell was a good citizen, although not a religious man. He was remarkable for sound business judgment, capacity for hard persistent effort, and for great personal courage, qualities very commonly accompanying Scotch descent.” (The Friend, May 1, 1900)

When Campbell died, the Estate of James Campbell was created as a private trust to administer his assets for the benefit of his heirs (in 2007, the James Campbell Company succeeded the Estate of James Campbell.) The Estate played a pivotal role in Hawaiʻi history, from the growth of sugar plantations to the growing new City of Kapolei.

Over the years, Campbell became known by the Hawaiians as “Kimo Ona-Milliona” (James the Millionaire.) Campbell himself said that the principle upon which he had accumulated his wealth was in always living on less than he made. (Lots of information here from Campbell Estate publications.)

September 30, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Arrival of the Young Brothers

In 1899, Herbert, William, Jack and Edgar Young were at Catalina Island; the year, before they started taking fishing parties out daily and conducting excursions to the coral gardens.

Some suggest this was the beginning of charter fishing; likewise, this marked the beginning of the famous glass-bottom boat rides which were to prove of such great interest and profit at Catalina.

Then the Hawaiian Islands attracted their attention, and, as William put it, they “went with high hopes and the spirit of a pioneer toward strange lands and all the beauty of sky and sea in the blue Pacific.” (Herb and William were headed to Hawai‘i.)

On January 9, 1900, we sailed out of Golden Gate toward the Great adventure …”

“The Surprise, a two-masted schooner-equipped with one of the first gas engines of considerable horsepower – under the command of Captain Bray, was headed for the Hawaiian Group to engage in inter-island trade, serving the Kona Sugar Co., of Kailua – a most promising business.”

“Although there was then no actual tourist trade, which has of late years assumed such importance in Hawaii, all ships on their way to or from the Orient and Australia made Honolulu a port of call, and the harbor in 1900 was always a veritable forest of masts so that mooring was at a premium.”

“In fact, from twenty to thirty additional ships were always anchored in ‘Rotten Row,’ from where the chanteys of the windlass crews sounded out, floating across the smooth water to shore.”

“Herb was chief engineer aboard the Surprise while J served before the mast. It was a pleasant trip. Harry Wharton, later captain, was first mate; an Englishman, Harry, was the other sailor, but the real character was Tom, the cook, who fed us so much salt beef that the salt came through our pores and stuck to our shirts in the sun.”

“On the trip to Honolulu Herb would sit by me in the evening as I stood my trick at the wheel. The deepening glory of the Pacific sunset, as the ship rose and fell on a lazy ocean, tinted every spar and line and sail with colors that surpassed any we had ever seen back home in coastal waters.”

“Night after night we talked, in the dusk as the stars came out and the Southern Cross hung in the sky, of Hawaii, the Paradise of the Pacific. Captain Bray, a bluff, good-hearted skipper if I ever met one, told us yams of the Islands and described them as the most marvelous place a man could imagine.”

“For years we had heard tales of Hawaii; now at last we were to see it for ourselves. Every passing hour, every wave curling under our bows brought us so much nearer, and the eyes of youth, straining ahead of the ship, seemed almost to glimpse a palm-fringed shore where life was gay and living carefree.”

“Singularly enough, for the first time since I had become fired with the ambition to hunt sharks. I found myself giving little thought to the possibilities of shark fishing among the Islands.”

“The prospect of seeing and living in these elysian isles had unceremoniously overshadowed my original purpose in going there. I was, to put it mildly, all anticipation.”

“Yet no sooner had we set foot on Hawaiian soil than the old urge flared up again. Wherever I went I found the subject one of absorbing interest to all hands …”

“… but I soon discovered that, as usual, no one knew anything about sharks except rumors, legends and the apocryphal yarns of sailors who needed no encouragement to tell how they had outswum, tricked, caught or killed one or more sharks in desperate hand-to-fin encounters.”

“In fact, so avid was my quest for authentic information that I soon became known as ‘Sharky Bill,’ which name identifies me still in many ports and among many seafaring people.”

“At last, on January 19, after a fine voyage, we Sighted Honolulu. The green shores. the white beach and coral formations, the boats of the Kanakas, the town rising at the harbor edge to be lost in the verdure of the tropical plants …”

“… the great forest of masts and spars in the harbor, the clear water and brilliant coloring of everything within eyeshot made a picture that the years could not dim. Here at last was the land of my dreams, the real El Dorado, the place which one may leave, but to which he will always return, the enchanting isles where there is no good-bye, but only Aloha.”

“We dropped anchor at quarantine and stood on deck, silently, in wonder at the natural beauty of the island. Would our dreams come true here?”

“At the very outset it seemed that our plans were to lead only to disappointment. We could not even go ashore. Honolulu was under quarantine for bubonic plague. People had been dying off like flies and supervision was strict.”

“The night before our arrival one of the dilapidated thatched hovels in Chinatown had been burned by order of the authorities to rid the neighborhood of contagion, and the fire had been permitted to spread unchecked.”

“Chinatown was a smoldering mass of ruins where only a short time before dirty streets had been peopled with touts, women of easy virtue, hop-heads, smoke eaters, thieves, and beggars.”

“Honolulu had rid herself of a festering sore, and the populace was living in detention camps already built on the outskirts of the town. It was the end of an era.”

“We conferred on the situation. Obviously, if we landed we would be quarantined along with everybody else, and there was no telling when we might be free to make our start in trade among the islands.”

“Herb and I had just seventy-five dollars between us, which wasn’t very much. It had to last until we were able to find some new occupation. The decision was easy as we were in no danger of starvation aboard the Surprise, and we could still have our jobs there.”

“So, for the next three months we plied between Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, and Kailua, on Hawai‘i, a total distance of perhaps 150 miles.”

“If there happened to be a lumber shipment in Honolulu harbor for another port quarantine restrictions forced us to pick up floating lumber. Any cargo such as machinery was transferred from a lighter alongside our ship, but not before it was thoroughly sprayed with strong disinfectant.”

“But away from the danger zone we could land on any island, enjoying to the full the thrill of exploring a new land which was beautiful far beyond anything we had ever imagined.”

“Once we came very near losing not only our liberty but our ship and cargo. Harry, the mate, complained one evening of a swelling in the groin, high fever and all the symptoms of the dreaded plague.”

“It was sailing night, and any minute we expected the quarantine doctor to come aboard in order to give us our ‘pratique,’ or medical clearance. Visions of the authorities burning ship, cargo and all our effects rose before us. Yet there was nothing we could do except wait and see what happened.”

“Finally he climbed over the side. The crew, cook, captain, all lined up for critical inspection. Harry was last in line, feeling pretty low. But the swift tropical twilight came on in time to hide the feverish flush of his cheeks.”

“The doctor, impatient, scarcely gave him a glance, and signed clearance. What a relief! At nightfall we set sail and luck was with us again, for the mate’s ailment was not bubonic, but a localized infection which passed off after a few days.”

Younger brother Jack (my grandfather) arrived in October 1900. I am the youngest brother of the youngest brother of the youngest brother of Young Brothers.

Jack Edgar and Will Young 1903

Boats_in_Honolulu_Harbor-1900

Honolulu_Harbor-1890

Honolulu_Waterfront-1890

Honolulu_Waterfront-1905

On_Honolulu_Waterfront-1890

Several_Ships_at_Anchor_in_Honolulu_Harbor-1900

Ships_in_Honolulu_Harbor-1900

Kenny Young

September 28, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819. The family name was Melvill, and he added the “e” to the name. His father was a merchant from New England. His mother came from an old, socially prominent New York Dutch family.

Melville lived his first 11 years in New York City. After the collapse of the family’s import business in 1830 and Allan Melvill’s death in 1832, Herman’s oldest brother, Gansevoort, assumed responsibility for the family and took over his father’s business.

After two years as a bank clerk and some months working on the farm of his uncle, Thomas Melvill, Herman joined his brother in the business. About this time, Herman’s branch of the family altered the spelling of its name.

Inexperienced and now poor, Melville tried a variety of jobs between 1832 and 1841. He was a clerk in his brother’s hat store in Albany, worked in his uncle’s bank, taught school near Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

In 1839, at the age of 20, Melville took his first voyage across the Atlantic sea as a cabin boy on the merchant ship the St. Lawrence. After this expedition and a year exploring the West, Melville joined the crew of the whaling ship Acushnet in January of 1841.

He later sailed for a year and a half aboard the Acushnet; Melville and a fellow seaman deserted the ship, only to be captured by cannibals in the Marquesas Islands, the Typee. But the natives turned out to be gentle hosts.

More than five months after deserting the Acushnet, Melville’s adventures were not over. He later joined the crew of whaler Charles and Henry, where he worked as harpooner.

When the Charles and Henry anchored in Maui Island five months later in April of 1843, Melville took up work as a clerk and bookkeeper in a general store in Honolulu.

On August 17, 1843, he enlisted as a seaman on the frigate “United States,” flagship of the Navy’s Pacific Squadron.

His four years during his twenties (1841-1845) working on whaling ships provided him with material for his first three novels. Melville was also able to communicate the fear and terror of a whale hunt, a feat that would make his greatest work, Moby Dick, a literary tribute to the whaling industry.

Melville returned to his mother’s house determined to write about his adventures. His subsequent writings borrowed from his own experiences as well as other peoples’ fantastic stories that he heard during his travels.

The books that recounted his experiences and made his reputation were Typee (1846); Omoo (1847); Mardi (1849), a complex symbolic romance set in the South Seas; Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850).

Melville then began Moby-Dick, another “whaling voyage,” as he called it, similar to his successful travel books. He had almost completed the book when he met Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, etc.) Hawthorne inspired him to radically revise the whaling documentary into a novel of both universal significance and literary complexity.

Melville had a brief stay in Hawaiʻi.

In 1843, he spent four months in Hawaiʻi; at some point early in his stay he worked in a Honolulu bowling alley as a pinsetter. He also spent time beachcombing in Lāhainā.

He describes surfing in passages of Mardi and a Voyage Thither (his first pure fiction work – reportedly based on his travels linked to his brief stay in the Islands:)
“Past the break in the reef, wide banks of coral shelve off, creating the bar where the waves muster for the onset, thundering in water bolts that shake the whole reef till its very spray trembles. And then is it that the swimmers of Ohonoo most delight to gambol in the surf.”

“For this sport a surfboard is indispensable, some five feet in length, the width of a man’s body, convex on both sides, highly polished, and rounded at the ends. It is held in high estimation, invariably oiled after use, and hung up conspicuously in the dwelling of the owner.”

“Ranged on the beach, the bathers by hundreds dash in and, diving under the swells, make straight for the outer sea, pausing not till the comparatively smooth expanse beyond has been gained. Here, throwing themselves upon their boards, tranquilly they wait for a billow that suits.”

“Snatching them up, it hurries them landward, volume and speed both increasing till it races along a watery wall like the smooth, awful verge of Niagara. Hanging over this scroll, looking down from it as from a precipice, the bathers halloo, every limb in motion to preserve their place on the very crest of the wave.”

“Should they fall behind, the squadrons that follow would whelm them; dismounted and thrown forward, as certainly would they be run over the steed they ride. ’Tis like charging at the head of cavalry; you must on.”

“An expert swimmer shifts his position on his plank, now half striding it and anon, like a rider in the ring, poising himself upright in the scud, coming on like a man in the air.”

“At last all is lost in scud and vapor, as the overgrown billow bursts like a bomb. Adroitly emerging, the swimmers thread their way out and, like seals at the Orkneys, stand dripping upon the shore.” (Herman Melville)

Melville died September 28, 1891. (The inspiration and information, here, is primarily from pbs-org)

September 23, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Future Captains

Captain James Cook set sail on three voyages to the South Seas. His first Pacific voyage (1768-1771) was aboard the Endeavour and began on May 27, 1768. It had three aims; go to Tahiti to record the transit of Venus (when Venus passes between the earth and sun – June 3, 1769;) record natural history, led by 25-year-old Joseph Banks; and search for the Great South Land.

Cook’s second Pacific voyage (1772-1775) aboard Resolution and Adventure aimed to establish whether there was an inhabited southern continent, and make astronomical observations.

Cook’s third and final voyage (1776-1779) of discovery was an attempt to locate a North-West Passage, an ice-free sea route which linked the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Cook commanded the Resolution while Charles Clerke commanded Discovery. (State Library, New South Wales)

“Every Fighting Service has, and must have, two main categories – ‘Officers’ and ‘Men.’ The Royal Navy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was no exception. The distinction existed: was indeed more than ordinarily marked. It was not only a naval distinction, but a sharp social one too.”

“‘Officers’ as contemporary society used that word, came from one walk of life, ‘Men’ from another: and, as it was not easy in Society to pass from a lower stratum to a higher, so in the Navy, it was not easy for a ‘Man’ to become an Officer. But it was possible.” (Captain Cook Society)

“Cook had chosen his subordinates well or had been lucky. The officers of the third voyage were a remarkably intelligent group of men.” (Captain Cook Society)

“All the great remaining voyages of the eighteenth century drew on Cook’s officers. Bligh, Portlock, Vancouver, Colnett, Riou, and Hergest all got their commands and served with great distinction. These men then passed on their skills to a second generation of men such as Flinders and Broughton.” (Mackay, Captain Cook Society)

We’ll look at three of these familiar names, here in the Islands, as well as the Pacific – Portlock, Bligh and Vancouver.

Nathaniel Portlock was born in Norfolk, Virginia in about 1748. At about the age of 24, he entered the Royal Navy as an able seaman on the St Albans. On March 30, 1776, he served as master’s mate on Captain James Cook’s third Pacific voyage aboard the Discovery. Portlock was transferred to the Resolution, also on the expedition, in August 1779.

Then, in 1785, a group of London merchants formed the “King George’s Sound Co” (also known as Richard Cadman Etches and Company,) for the purpose of carrying on the fur trade from the western coast of America to China, bringing home cargoes of tea from Canton for the East India Company. They bought two boats; Portlock and George Dixon were selected to sail them (Dixon also previously sailed with Cook to Hawai‘i.)

That year, the two traveled to the North Pacific. Portlock commanded the 1785-1788 expedition from the ship King George, while Dixon captained the Queen Charlotte. The purpose of the expedition was to investigate the potential of the Alaskan fur trade and to resume Cook’s search for a Northwest Passage through the continent.

The pair left England on August 29, 1785, and took nearly a year to reach Alaska, rounding Cape Horn and touching at Hawaiʻi on the way. During the course of their 3-year expedition, they made three trips to Hawaiʻi, first arriving off the coast of Kaʻū, May 24, 1786.

A favorite anchorage on Oʻahu for Portlock was at Maunalua Bay, between Koko Point and Diamond Head (which Portlock named King George’s Bay.)

Maunalua was thought to be well-populated in ancient times. Maunalua was known for its offshore fishing resources, a large fishpond, and sweet potato cultivation. Taro was farmed in wet areas, sweet potato was grown in the drier regions and a series of fishing villages lined the coast. (McElroy) Part of that area now carries the Portlock name.

William Bligh was part of the Cook’s crew on its third voyage. Bligh later captained the Bounty on a voyage to gather breadfruit trees from Tahiti and take them to Jamaica in the Caribbean. There, the trees would be planted to provide food for slaves.

According to a legend, the chief Kahai brought the breadfruit tree to Hawaiʻi from Samoa in the twelfth century and first planted it at Kualoa, Oʻahu. Only one variety was known in Hawaiʻi, while more than 24 were distinguished by native names in the South Seas. (CTAHR)

“This tree, whose fruit is so useful, if not necessary, to the inhabitants of most of the islands of the South Seas, has been chiefly celebrated as a production of the Sandwich Islands; it is not confined to these alone, but is also found in all the countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean.” (Book of Trees, 1837)

Bligh didn’t make it back on the Bounty, his crew mutinied (April 28, 1789;) one reason for the mutiny was that the crew believed Bligh cared more about the breadfruit than them (he cut water rationing to the crew in favor of providing water for the breadfruit plants.) Bligh’s tombstone, in part, reads he was the “first (who) transplanted the bread fruit tree.”

In the introduction to Captain George Vancouver’s journals of his voyage to the Pacific, his brother John wrote, “that from the age of thirteen, his whole life to the commencement of this expedition, (to the Pacific) has been devoted to constant employment in His Majesty’s naval service.” Vancouver was one of the seamen and midshipman who had travelled with Cook on his second and third voyages.

In 1791, Vancouver later entered the Pacific a dozen years later in command of the second British exploring expedition. (HJH) Vancouver visited Hawaiʻi three times, in 1792, 1793 and 1794.

On the first trip, Vancouver’s ships “Discovery” and “Chatham” first rounded the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, and traveled to Tahiti, via Australia and New Zealand, and then sailed north to the Hawaiian Islands.

On his second trip in February 1793, the “Discovery” and “Chatham” first circled and surveyed the Island Hawaiʻi. From a meeting he had with Kamehameha, he noted in his Journal, that he was …

“… agreeably surprised in finding that his riper years had softened that stern ferocity, which his younger days had exhibited, and had changed his general deportment to an address characteristic of an open, cheerful, and sensible mind; combined with great generosity, and goodness of disposition.” (Vancouver, 1798)

When Kamehameha came aboard the ship, taking Vancouver’s hand, he “demanded, if we were sincerely his friends”, to which Vancouver answered in the affirmative. Kamehameha then said “he understood we belonged to King George, and asked if he was likewise his friend.”

“On receiving a satisfactory answer to this question, he declared the he was our firm good friend; and according to the custom of the country, in testimony of the sincerity of our declarations we saluted by touching noses.” (Vancouver, 1798)

In the exchange of gifts, after that, Kamehameha presented four feathered helmets and other items, Vancouver gave Kamehameha the remaining livestock on board, “five cows, two ewes and a ram.”

The farewell between the British and the Hawaiians was emotional, but both understood that Vancouver would be returning the following winter.

Just before Vancouver left Kawaihae on March 9, 1793, he gave Isaac Davis and John Young a letter testifying that “Tamaahaah, with the generality of the Chiefs, and the whole of the lower order of People, have conducted themselves toward us with the strictest honest, civility and friendly attention.” (Speakman, HJH)

George_Vancouver-arriving_at_Kealakekua_Bay

Mutiny_HMS_Bounty

Kahai-The_Grandson_of_Moikeha-(herbkane)

Transplanting_of_the_bread-fruit_trees_from_Otaheite,_1796

ohn Ellis, the Bread-fruit-1775

Bligh’s_survival_voyage_after_the_mutiny-(HerbKane)

William Bligh’s tombstone-(first_transplanted_breadfruit)

Cook_-_Bligh_Map_of_Hawaii_-_Geographicus_-_Hawaii-cook-1785

Nathaniel_Portlock-(WC)

Portlock-China_Walls

Maunalua_Bay-(bishopmuseum)

Koko_Marina-05-26-52

King_George-Queen_Charlotte-(Raymond Alistair Massey-maunalua-net)

George_Vancouver-(WC)

George_Vancouver’s_Discovery

George_Vancouver_statue-(WC)

September 14, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Volcano School

In early nineteenth-century France, Château de Fontainebleau, the Forest of Fontainebleau, became a sanctuary for the growing leisure classes, for whom a train ride from Paris was an easy jaunt.

Called “the branch-office of Italy”, the Forest of Fontainebleau spread across 42,000 acres of dense woods with meadows, marshes, gorges, and sandy clearings. Quiet hamlets ringed the forest.

It was to one of those villages, Barbizon, that artists journeyed beginning in the 1820s, with a promise of room and board at the newly established inn Auberge Ganne. The Auberge provided lodging for these pioneering painters of nature came to be called the Barbizon School and they collectively shared a recognition of landscape as an independent subject. (Met Museum)

In America, the Hudson River School was America’s first true artistic fraternity. Its name was coined to identify a group of New York City-based landscape painters that emerged about 1850 under the influence of the English émigré Thomas Cole (1801–1848) and flourished until about the time of the Centennial.

Several of the artists built homes on the Hudson River. The term “Hudson River School” in the 1870s fairly characterizes the artistic body, its New York headquarters, its landscape subject matter, and often literally its subject. (Met Museum)

In the Islands, there was the Volcano School.

The Volcano School was a generation of mostly non-native Hawaiian painters who portrayed Hawaiʻi Island’s volcanoes in dramatic fashion during the late 19th century. (NPS HAVO)

In the 1880s and 1890s, Mauna Loa kicked off an eruption that brought lava closer to the town of Hilo than ever before. Hawai‘i residents and tourists alike flocked to the Big Island for a chance to see the orange and red glow over the city of Hilo.

This was in the days before color photography – painters were among the most eager to witness and recreate the explosive lava plumes and vibrant flows. (HuffPost)

A distinctive and recognizable school of Hawaiian painting developed; it is perhaps best exemplified by Jules Tavernier’s depictions of craters and eruptions. Other artists, fresh from exposure to the current trends in Europe and America, reinterpreted the lush light and varied landscape of Hawai‘i to create a distinctive body of work.

With the dawning of the twentieth century, art in Hawai‘i reflected the diminishing isolation of the islands and the emergence of a multicultural modernist tradition. (Forbes)

Author and humorist Mark Twain, on assignment for the Sacramento Daily Union, described seeing Kīlauea at night: “…the vast floor of the desert under us was as black as ink, and apparently smooth and level …”

“… but over a mile square of it was ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire! Imagine it— imagine a coal-black sky shivered into a tangled network of angry fire!”

Kīlauea was such a popular subject for painters that a group emerged called “the Volcano School,” which included well-known Hawai‘i painters Charles Furneaux, Joseph Dwight Strong, and D. Howard Hitchcock.

Jules Tavernier (French 1844–1889) was arguably the most important Volcano School painter; he arrived in Hawai‘i in December of 1884. He created paintings that came to characterize the genre with dramatic scenes of molten lava bubbling under diffused moonlight, jagged black cliffs, and fiery glows, as seen in his nocturnal view of Kīlauea. (HoMA)

Tavernier had lived in San Francisco with roommate Joseph Dwight Strong. In October 1882 Joseph Dwight Strong, born in Connecticut and at age two came to the Islands with his New England missionary father (American 1852–1899), returned to the Islands with his wife Isobel on a commission to paint landscapes for shipping magnate John D Spreckels, son of the Sugar King Claus Spreckels. (Theroux) (Strong’s step-father-in-law was Robert Louis Stevenson.)

David Howard Hitchcock, grandson of American missionaries (American 1861–1943), is perhaps one of the most important and loved artists from Hawaiʻi. Although born and raised in Hawaiʻi, he left the islands to study art in San Francisco and Paris.

Before his formal training abroad, Hitchcock was inspired by other Volcano School painters and was encouraged by Jules Tavernier to endeavor life as an artist. Hitchcock admits to following Tavernier and Joseph Strong around, ‘like a parasite.’ (NPS HAVO)

“Hitchcock was early hailed as ‘our island painter’ and his early canvases met an enthusiastic reception in Hilo and Honolulu. The Honolulu press commented on them at length. His early work, up to his European trip in 1890, shows great indebtedness to (Jules) Tavernier…” (Forbes)

Charles Furneaux (American 1835–1913), showcased the fiery Hawai‘i volcano scenes that have intrigued viewers since he began painting them in the late 19th century. Furneaux’s paintings are described as “among the most sublime depictions of smoldering lava pools, lightning bolts over the ocean, steaming vents and heavy clouds signaling the active presence of the volcano.” (HoMA)

Painter and printmaker Ambrose McCarthy Patterson (Australian 1877–1966) arrived in Hawai‘i on a stopover in 1916 and remained for the next 18 months. Patterson was described as having particular interest in Kīlauea, incorporating the subject into many of the paintings and block prints he produced during his time here. (HoMA)

Other Volcano School artists include Ernst William Christmas (Australian 1863–1918), Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming (Scottish 1837–1924), Ogura Yonesuke Itoh (Japanese 1870–1940), Titian Ramsey Peale (American 1799–1885), Louis Pohl (American 1915–1999), Eduardo Lefebvre Scovell (British 1864–1918), William Pinkney Toler (American 1826–1899), William Twigg-Smith (New Zealander 1883–1950) and Lionel Walden (American 1861–1933).