Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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The Thelma

Clifford Carlton “Gavvy” “Cactus” Cravath (March 23, 1881 – May 23, 1963,) was an American right fielder and right-handed batter in Major League Baseball who played primarily for the Philadelphia Phillies.

In the seven years from 1913 to 1920 he led the National League in home runs six times, in runs batted in, total bases and slugging average twice each, and in hits, runs and walks once each.  Cravath had part-ownership in a 40-foot boat, the Thelma.

On June 14, 1925, the Thelma was leaving Newport Harbor with 17-people, going out for a fishing expedition.

“The fishing party, including high school boys, left early and found a smooth sea until within 150 feet of the Jetty, Bland (the skipper) testified, when one wave turned the craft sideways. The boat rode the second, but the third, said to be at least 20 feet high, crashed over the boat.” (San Bernardino County Sun, June 15, 1925)

“When she neared the end of the breakwater a large wave smashed the engine room hatch, disabling the motor. Another wave, closely following, carried away part of the rigging, leaving the craft overturned, but another wave righted it.”  (San Bernardino County Sun, June 15, 1925)

“Big green walls of water were sliding in from the horizon, building up to bar like heights, then curling and crashing on the shore.  Only a porpoise, a shark or a sea lion (ought) to be out there.”

Some surfers were nearby; one had his board with him the others ran for theirs.  What follows is a recounting of the events that followed.

“It was obvious that the Thelma had capsized and thrown her passengers into the boiling sea.  Neither I nor my pals were thinking heroics; we were simply sunning – me with a board, and the others to get their boards – hoping we could save lives.”

“I hit the water hard and flat with all the forward thrust I could generate, for those bobbing heads in the water could not remain long above the surface of that churning surge.”

“Fully clothed persons have little chance in a wild sea like that, and even the several who were clinging to the slick hull of the overturned boat could not last long under the pounding.”

“It was some surf to try and push through! But I gave it all I had, paddling until my arms begged for mercy. I fought each towering breaker that threatened to heave me clear back onto the beach, and some of the combers almost creamed me for good.”

“I hoped my pals were already running toward the surf with their boards. Help would be at a premium. Don’t ask me how I made it, for it was just one long nightmare of trying to shove through what looked like a low Niagara Falls.”

“The waves were pounding so furiously that when a breaker came in, he had to scramble beneath the board and hold on with all fours as the waves broke over him. Fighting his way out, he came upon the havoc of the sinking boat and began grabbing its occupants and shoving them onto the board, begging them to hold on.”  (Sports Illustrated)

“The prospects for picking up victims looked impossible. Arm-weary, I got into that area of screaming, gagging victims, and began grabbing at frantic hands, thrashing legs.”

“I didn’t know what was going on with my friends and their boards. All I was sure of was that I brought one victim in on my board, then two on another trip, possibly three on another – then back to one.”

“It was a delirious shuttle system working itself out. In a matter of a few minutes, all of us were making rescues. Some victims we could not save at all, for they went under before we could get to them.”

“We lost count of the number of trips we made out to that tangle of drowning people. All we were sure of was that on each return trip we had a panicked passenger or two on our boards. Without the boards we would probably not have been able to rescue a single person.”   (as quoted by Burnett and HawaiianSwimBoat))

After the ordeal, 5 had died, 12 were saved (8 were saved by the primary rescuer.)

“At an inquest held at the Smith & Tuthill parlors at Santa Ana yesterday afternoon the Jury brought in a verdict of ‘unavoidable accident’ and thus absolved Bland, a cigar store owner and pilot of the craft, from blame.”  (San Bernardino County Sun, June 15, 1925)

The primary rescuer, known to many, received a hero’s welcome.

The Los Angeles Times reportedly noted, “His role on the beach that day was more dramatic than the scores he played in four decades of intermittent bit-part acting in Hollywood films. For one thing, that day he was the star.”

The Hawaiian Society of Los Angeles presented a medal of heroism on September 25, 1925.  On Christmas Day 1925, the Los Angeles Athletic Club honored him with a gold watch.

Several decades later (1957,) three of the survivors thanked him in person before a national television audience of ‘This is Your Life.’

The humble hero, Duke Kahanamoku, reportedly simply replied, “That’s okay.”

This is Your Life – Duke Kahanamoku
https://archive.org/details/this_is_your_life_duke_kahanamoku

The Newport Beach, Calif., chief of police was quoted in the newspapers as saying, “Kahanamoku’s performance was the most superhuman rescue act and the finest display of surfboard riding that has ever been seen in the world.”  (Sports Illustrated)

In addition to Duke, rescuers included Antar Deraga, captain of the Newport lifeguards; Charles Plummer, lifeguard; Thomas Sheffield, captain of the Corona del Mar Swimming Club; Gerard Vultee, William Herig and Owen Hale.

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Sutter’s Hawaiians

Early California history is closely linked with Hawaii. (Kenn)

“[I]n December 1838, there arrived in Honolulu one of the most colorful soldiers of fortune to land on Hawaiian shores. This individual was Captain John Sutter, later to make his mark on California history, accompanied by a small party of followers.  The previous October, Sutter and his party had reached Fort Vancouver after an overland trek from Missouri.”

“He was welcomed at Fort Vancouver and treated generously. An excellent raconteur with an active imagination (his title of former Captain in the Swiss Guards serving France was entirely his own invention), a congenial guest, part visionary and part con man, Sutter’s presence enlivened this active but still relatively isolated post.” (Spoehr)

“It was in the latter part of 1838 that Captain John Sutter arrived in Honolulu from Oregon on his way to California where he hoped to make his fortune, and where he realized his ambition until gold was discovered on his land when he lost everything in the turmoil that followed.”

“Sutter was a citizen of the Principality of the Grand Dutchy of Baden, Germany, where he left his wife and four children to seek his fortune in America. After crossing two oceans and a continent, Sutter found himself in Honolulu where he remained for five months, eagerly awaiting passage to California.”

“He made friends with Honolulu merchants and participated in a few business ventures, one of which was to purchase the abandoned ship Clementine moored in the harbor. He served as supercargo, sailing first to Sitka, Alaska, then to Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, where he disembarked with some Sandwich Islanders.”

“There were contracted to serve him for three years at ten dollars each per month …. He was to pay their passage back to Hawaii after that time. The actual number of Hawaiians who accompanied Sutter is not definitely known. Sutter claimed there were ten, eight men and two women, while William Heath Davis numbered eight, four men and four women.” (Kenn)

“Sutter was very poor on names and referred to the Sandwich Islanders merely as ‘Canacas,’ though he observed that had it not been for his Canacas he would not have been able to succeed in his California venture.  They helped to build his fort [near present-day Sacramento] said to be patterned after Kekuanohu (the Honolulu fort)”. (Kenn)

“The task of [Sutter’s] Hawaiian workers was not only to assist with building the fort, but to ensure labor tranquility amongst the hundreds of California natives (including Nisenan, Miwok, and Yokut) who would eventually be laboring at New Helvetia by 1846. Some Americans would compare these Sacramento Valley natives to Pacific Islanders.”  (Farnham)

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas. They were always faithful and loyal to me.” (Sutter)

From 1839 to 1849, Sutter’s Fort was the economic center of the first permanent European colonial settlement in California’s Central Valley. During that time, the Fort catalyzed patterns of change across California. Then, the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.

So, what happened to the Sutter Hawaiians and other Hawaiians on the continent?

“[B]y the mid-1800s, there were hundreds of Hawaiians in what is now Canada and California. In 1847, Hawaiians made up 10% of San Francisco’s tiny but growing population.”  (Terrell)

“In the aftermath of the gold rush, many Hawaiians stayed in California. And as they settled in California, a number of Hawaiian men married local indigenous women. Which, it turns out, was a common occurrence up and down the West Coast.: (Terrell)

“Both Hawaiians and Indians in the Oregon Territory were explicitly excluded from the dominant society. From the mid-1860s onward, neither they nor their offspring were legally permitted to marry into the dominant society.”  (Barman & Watson)

As a result, Hawaiians were absorbed into local Native American communities through intermarriage. These Hawaiians were less likely to return to the Islands and leave their Native American wives and children behind. (Farnham)

“Sutter’s Hawaiians were to play an important role in the development of Sacramento, and their descendants, many of whom are living in Sacramento and environs today, have contributed greatly to the economic progress and welfare of the region. They became gold miners, salmon fishermen, snag boat operators, river boatmen, farmers, trappers, levee builders, and entertainers.” (Kenn)

“In the summer of 1865 some Hawaiian fishermen and their ‘wahine,’ who had sailed the placid Pacific in search of new realms for their nomad spirits, arrived in San Francisco bay only to discover that the cool fogs bred dire distress in lungs used to none but the fervid breezes of a tropic sea …”

“… so on they kept until, after a day and night of clear weather, they reached Vernon, a busy farming community on the banks of the Feather river.”

“Housed in picturesque huts on the east bank of the Feather river, near the thriving little town of Vernon, and gaining a livelihood

as best they may, and according to the tenets of their native land, caring not for the morrow so long as they may live and enjoy the day…”

“… a hundred or more big brown men and women and numerous tots form a colony where, peace and content rule their world, and where the salubrious climate Is engendering in this languorous race …”

“… an aptitude for labor a foreign element in their home taro-patches and rice field, with the sun shining upon them ten months of the year, and with the brown rush of waters homing myriad finny tribes for their ever ready rods …”

“… these dusky exiles pass their days rowing and fishing and pitching their tents at night in the shaggy thickets that clothe the river reaches, where with their ukuleles and guitars they build harmonies and weave legends into their cloth of dreams.”  (Parkhurst)

“And living up there close to the touch of nature, they have kept all of their race identity. When one of their people visits them bringing pol, ti leaves, kukui and other choice tidbits from home, they have barbecues, chowders and hula-hulas, and all of the delights that comprise a luau or Hawaiian feast.”  (Parkhurst)

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Louis Alexander Williams

Mary Ellen Pleasant was an ardent Abolitionist, and she determined to assist John Brown.

She married John Pleasant (or Pleasants), who had been an overseer on the Smith plantation. She reportedly was involved in the Underground Railroad, and was so successful in assisting escaping slaves that she had “a price on her head in the South.” 

Pleasant moved to San Francisco and put her business acumen and entrepreneurial skills, not to mention her reputation as a noteworthy cook, to work. There was much wealth circulating in the heady days of the gold rush, but few luxuries in the area to spend it on.

Miners and merchants were clamoring for services, and Pleasant, according to San Francisco newspapers, rejected many offers of employment as a cook from people with means. Instead, with her name now well known, she opened a boarding house that provided lodging and food, both of which were scarce.

She expanded her business dealings by lending money to businessmen and miners at an interest rate of 10%, while also investing wisely on the advice of her influential boarders and other associates. During this time, she gained a reputation as “The Fabulous Negro Madam,” acting as a procurer for her male associates.  (Encyclopedia)

She invested her money wisely: Her businesses in San Francisco included laundries, dairies and exclusive restaurants — all of which were quite lucrative in a city filled with miners and single businessmen.

Concerned about racial equality, she became increasingly involved in helping others and in civil-rights activities during the 1850s and 1860s. Mary Ellen Pleasant, used her Gold Rush wealth to provide financial assistance for these causes; she also sought out and rescued slaves being held illegally in the California countryside.

Pleasant also found jobs in wealthy households for runaway slaves and developed an information network. One of the most widely circulated, albeit unsubstantiated, reports on Pleasant concerns her role in abolitionist John Brown’s raid on the US arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859.

She reportedly sailed to the East in 1858 and in Canada gave Brown $30,000 to finance his battle against slavery. When John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859, for murder and treason, a note found in his pocket read,

“The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help.” Officials most likely believed it was written by a wealthy Northerner who had helped fund Brown’s attempt to incite, and arm, an enormous slave uprising by taking over an arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia. No one suspected that the note was written by a black woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant. (NY Times)

Some called her ‘Mammy’, but she asserted, “I am Mammy to no one.”

According to Pleasant, she was born free on August 19, 1814 in Philadelphia.  She claimed her father was Louis Alexander Williams, a native Hawaiian (‘a Kanaka from the Pacific Islands’) and her mother, Mary (her namesake) was a “full blooded Negress from Louisiana.”  (Ball etal)

Pleasant noted, “My father was a native Kanaka [Hawaiian] and my mother a full-blooded Louisiana negress.”

“Both were of large frame, but I think I must have got my physical strength from my father, who was, like most of his race, a giant in frame. His name was Louis Alexander Williams.”

“He was a man of great intelligence and had a fair education, judging from his letters.  He was a commercial man and imported silks from India.  He imported other things, but his main business was silk.”

“My mother’s name was Mary, and I was named after her, but I recall very little about her.  I don’t think she was as well educated as my father, for I don’t remember that she ever wrote me any letters.”

“When I was about six years of age, I was sent to Nantucket, Mass., to live with a Quaker woman named Hussey.  I never knew why I was sent there, and about all I know is that my first recollections of life dated from Nantucket.”

“When my father sent me to live with the Husseys, he also gave them, as I learned afterwards, plenty of money to have me educated, but they did not use it for that purpose, and that’s how I came to have no education.” (Mary Ellen Pleasant, autobiography)

“It is quite possible that a Pacific Islander named Louis Alexander Williams and a free black woman from Louisiana became the parents of a baby girl in Philadelphia in 1814, as Pleasant claimed.”

“According to the US Census there was an Alexander Williams living in Philadelphia in 1810 and 1820.  He is listed as a white male, which is how Pacific Islanders were recorded in the census at the time”.  (Hudson)

Pleasant had another Hawai‘i connection; images of Queen Emma are sometimes mistaken/mislabeled as Mary Ellen Pleasant.

“In 1880 Mammy was invited to the Palace Hotel to meet King Kalakaua of Hawaii.  It was the custom in San Francisco to always send an invitation to any major affair.  She invariably ‘regrets’ but on this occasion she wanted to attend because she wished to ask the king if it was true that she closely resembled the Dowager Queen Emma of Hawaii.”

“He obviously thought she did because when he left for Hawaii he carried with him a negative plate of Mammy’s full length portrait.” (Holdredge to Smyser; Hudson)

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William Geiger

“Few men were more familiar with the history of the settlement and improvement of the Pacific coast than Dr. William Geiger, Jr.” (Smith, Oregon Bios Project)

Geiger was born in Angelica, Allegany County, NY, September 15, 1816, and was a son of William Geiger, a farmer by occupation.  In his native town he was reared and attended a private academy.

When he was about seventeen years of age he moved with his parents to Oakville, Monroe county, Michigan, where he remained from 1833 until 1837, when he started for Quincy, Ill.  About five miles from Quincy was the Mission Institute; Geiger became a student, there. (Smith, Oregon Bios Project)

In 1838 Geiger made plans to cross the plains to the Pacific coast, accompanied by a schoolmate by the name of Benson. (Smith, Oregon Bios Project)

Geiger had been appointed a missionary teacher by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and had been instructed to go to the Pacific Coast to do missionary work among the Indians.  When it came time for him to leave it was found that the association lacked the funds, with which to send him.

Having made up his mind to come to the Pacific Coast, he started out on his own account, traveling on horseback. He taught school at the Methodist Mission near Salem in 1840.  (History of the Columbia River Valley)

The next spring Geiger set out for California with the plan of meeting a party of his friends who were to rendezvous at Sutter’s Fort; but, going by sea to Monterey, he was forbidden to travel in the interior without a passport, which was not procurable short of getting one in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).

So, Geiger headed to Hawaii with the intention, in part, to get a passport.

He then went to Honolulu, where he taught at the newly formed Chiefs’ Children’s School (Royal School) for about eight months, receiving $30 per month. (Smith, Oregon Bios Project and Berger)

In February 1841, having procured a passport, Geiger left Honolulu on the American ship Lausanne for Monterey, and later went in a coaster to San Francisco.

Back then San Francisco was a small place.  The Hudson Bay Company had a double log house there, and there was a combined saloon and billiard hall and a partly finished hotel, containing about one hundred people, fully half of whom were transients.

After a short time at San Francisco, Geiger went across the bay and secured some cattle, and took them up the river to Sutter’s Fort, where he remained until the spring of 1842.  In the meantime, he surveyed Captain Sutter’s claim for him and had charge of the fort while Sutter went to Monterey for supplies. 

For his services, Sutter gave Geiger land three miles square, situated in the forks of the Yuba and Feather rivers; but in the spring of 1842 Geiger traded everything he had to Captain Sutter for horses and mules and started for the states.

Later, in August 1842, Dr. Geiger sold many of his horses and mules to the emigrants, but took the remainder down the Willamette valley and for a while he lived with Alvin T Smith, near Forest Grove.

In October of that year, in compliance with a letter from Dr Whitman, Geiger started to take charge of the Whitman mission, remaining there during a part of 1842-43, or until Dr Whitman’s return in the fall of 1843.

Before this, he had secured a donation claim where the town of Salem now stands but gave it up later because it was wanted by a Methodist mission.  He next secured a donation claim of six hundred and forty acres south of what is now Cornelius.

In 1847, Geiger married Elizabeth Cornwall, a native of the south, and a sister of Rev. JA Cornwall, a Presbyterian minister located at Sodaville, Linn county, Oregon. He then engaged in farming, also further continuing, under Dr WN Griswold, the study of medicine, which he had first taken up some years before under the direction of Dr. Whitman.

Beginning as a ‘regular’ of the blood-letting, fever-starving sort, he became a convert to the virtues of the homoeopathic group, and began the practice of homeopathy in Forest Grove in 1864 and was undoubtedly the pioneer homeopathic physician of the Pacific coast. (Oregon Pioneers-com)

Dr Geiger served as clerk of Washington county while Oregon was still a territory and was afterward county surveyor for several years.  He surveyed land and from the time of his arrival in the northwest took an active part in its development.  He was an honored member of the State Medical Society of Oregon, in which he served as president.

Dr Geiger and his wife celebrated their golden wedding, having traveled life’s journey for a half century, in 1897. Almost four years passed before they were separated by death and then Dr. Geiger was called to his final rest, June 16, 1901.

He was a consistent Christian who held membership with the Presbyterian Church and in many ways he aided his fellow men, so that the world is better for his having lived. (Smith, Oregon Bios Project)

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George Herman Huddy

William Henry Harrison Huddy immigrated from Rhode Island and became a citizen of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i in 1850; he married Kahea, a Hawaiian from the island of Kauai.  Their son, George Herman Huddy – the youngest of a large family, was born in Honolulu in 1869; as a young man he lived on Kauai and was educated in Honolulu.

After distinguishing himself as a student in high school, he sought more education and professional training and moved to San Francisco and apprenticed himself to a dentist in that city.

After little more than a year, he qualified for entrance to the College of Dentistry at the University of California Medical School. After three years of study and internship, he became the first Hawaiian to earn a full Degree in Dental Surgery from a Dental School in the US.

After graduation he returned to Hawai‘i and went into practice for himself as a dental surgeon.  In February 1903, Dr George Huddy was appointed by the Governor as a Representative to the Hawai‘i Territorial Legislature from Kauai. (Dr Huddy, continued to be elected as a Territorial Representative, first from Kauai and later from Hilo, until his retirement from that office in 1917.)

On April 25, 1903, the legislature of the territory of Hawaii, at the instigation of the dental society, enacted a law to regulate the practice of dental surgery.  This statute gives the dental society a recognized standing, as the members of the state dental board are appointed by the governor upon recommendation of this society.  Huddy was an initial member.  (History of Dental Surgery, Koch)

On May 13, 1903, Huddy and his good friend, Prince Kūhio, helped reestablish the Order of Kamehameha I (originally organized in 1867 by Kamehameha V).

Kūhiō chose Huddy to preside at this initial session as a charter member where a constitution was written and adopted, and officers elected; Kūhiō was elected as the President.

“Credit for the founding of this order, which dates from May, 1903, or a little more than ten years after the close of the monarchy and a little less than five years after annexation to the United States, belongs to Dr George H Huddy, who has served the territory faithfully and well as a representative in the legislature, first from Kauai and then from Hawaiʻi”

“Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, delegate to congress, was the first aliʻi ʻaimoku, or sovereign head of the revived order.” (Star-Bulletin; June 10, 1913)

In 1905, the Order of Kamehameha brought solemnity to the holiday (Kamehameha Day) by draping a lei on the statue of Kamehameha in front of Aliʻiolani Hale and standing watch throughout the day.  (Stillman)

On July 16, 1907, they petitioned for a Charter for the Hawaiʻi Chapter No. 1, Order of Kamehameha.  “… the object for which the same is organized is as follows, 1. To inculcate the cardinal principles of Friendship, Charity and Benevolence; to provide for Sick and Funeral Benefits …”

“… to aid the widows and orphans; and to improve the social and moral conditions of its members.”  (Hawaii Chapter No. 1, Order of Kamehameha; Petition for Charter, July 16, 1907) (An announcement in the Hawaiian Star, shortly after, noted similar language for the Māmalahoa Chapter. No. 2)

In March 1915, “Mrs. Henrietta E Sullivan of Honolulu nei [the daughter of John Hassinger, the long time and well-known Chief Clerk for the Interior Ministry, during the Monarchy and into the Territorial times] and Representative George H Huddy of Hilo became one in the bond of marriage”.

“For the first time in the history of the legislature of Hawaii nei, wed were the Honorable Dr George H. Huddy in the covenant of marriage with Mrs. Henrietta E Sullivan, in the throne room [of Iolani Palace].”

“The one who bound the couple tightly together in the three-stranded cord of matrimony was Father Steven of the Catholic faith, and while the newlyweds were surrounded by their many friends, the priest spoke the words which made the two one, and it is only death that will part them.”

“After the marriage took place, hands were shook with aloha with congratulations from their friends, with prayers that they live their lives in happiness.” (Kuokoa, 03-12-1915)  Theirs is the only wedding ever to take place in the Throne Room of the Palace.

Dr Huddy continued in his dental surgery practice in Honolulu until in 1922 (at the untimely death of his wife, June 20, 1922).  On September 1, 1922, Huddy signed on with the Territorial Board of Health as the Resident Dentist at Kalaupapa, serving alongside Dr Goodhue.

“In December, 1922, Dr George Huddy, a dentist employed by the board of health, began work at the [Kalihi] hospital and spent five months attending to the dental needs of the patients.”

“The employment of this officer meets a very pressing need of the patients, as the teeth of many of the inmates were in bad condition and required the services of a competent dentist. Already a beneficial effect from this work can be noted.”

“I wish to record my unqualified approval of the inauguration of dental service for the patients and to acknowledge the full and free cooperation of the dental officer with the medical officers at Kalihi Hospital.”

“The dentist [Huddy] employed by the board of health for Kalihi Hospital and Kalaupapa settlement has given a great amount of relief to the patients.”  (Report of the Governor to Dept of Interior, 1923)

For the next 8 years, Huddy worked full time for the Board of Health. During these years he rotated between living at Kalaupapa for 2 – 3 months at a time and then back to Honolulu where he served as Dentist at the Old Prison and at the Leper Intake Hospital in Kalihi.

Huddy remarried in 1926 to a resident of Hawai‘i with German origins.  On June 30, 1929, Dr Huddy retired from the Board of Health, having worked himself into ill health and left for Europe for a two year ‘cure’ in Germany.

Returning in early 1932 in somewhat restored health, he reopened his dental surgeon offices in the Boston Building on Fort Street and practiced there until leaving for Germany again in late-1935.

This latter trip turned fatal, and Huddy died in Bremen, Germany. (His ashes were brought back to Hawai‘i and interred in Hilo at Homelani Cemetery.)  (Lots of information here is from Tatibouet.)

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