Prominent People | Page 95 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

November 6, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Foster Botanical Garden

In 1853, Queen Kalama leased 4.6 acres of land to William Hillebrand, a botanist as well as a physician; he and his wife built a home in the upper terrace area of the present garden. The magnificent trees which now tower over this area were planted by him.

Six years after his arrival, he and nine other Honolulu physicians petitioned to charter an organization called the Hawaiian Medical Society. Today, it is the Hawaii Medical Association.

Appointed physician to the royal family at The Queen’s Hospital (now The Queen’s Medical Center), Hillebrand also served as chief physician at the hospital from 1860 to 1871.

While on a mission for the King to bring Chinese immigrants to work in the islands’ sugar fields, Hillebrand introduced Common Myna birds to Honolulu (as well as “carrion crows, gold finches, Japanese finches, Chinese quail, ricebirds, Indian sparrows; golden, silver and Mongolian pheasants; and [two] axis deer from China and Java”.)

After 20 years, Hillebrand returned to Germany, where he published Flora of the Hawaiian Islands in 1888.

In 1884, the Hillebrand property was sold Thomas R. Foster and his wife Mary E. Foster, who continued to develop the garden at their homesite.

In 1919, Foster leased two-acres to the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association for its experiment station, under the direction of Dr. Harold L. Lyon, a botanist and plant pathologist.

Lyon proceeded to build on the work of plant conservation and landscape architecture which Dr. Hillebrand and Mrs. Foster had initiated. By 1925, his plant nursery had produced over a million trees, most of them exceptional varieties which were not grown elsewhere.

Hundreds of new species of trees and plants had been imported, cultivated and distributed throughout the Hawaiian Islands.

Upon Mrs. Foster’s death in 1930, the 5.5 acre site was bequeathed to the City and County of Honolulu as a public garden and was opened to the public on November 30, 1931, with Lyon as its first director.

Over a span of 27 years, Dr. Lyon introduced 10,000 new kinds of trees and plants to Hawaiʻi. The Foster Garden orchid collection was started with Dr. Lyon’s own plants.

Through purchases by the City and gifts from individuals, under the directorship of Paul R. Weissich (1957-89), Foster Garden expanded to over 13.5-acres and also developed four additional sites on Oahu Island to create the 650-acre Honolulu Botanical Gardens system (including, Hoʻomaluhia Botanical Garden, Koko Crater Botanical Garden, Liliʻuokalani Botanical Garden and Wahiawa Botanical Garden.)

Taken as a whole, these five gardens feature rare species from tropical environments ranging from desert to rainforest, comprising the largest and most diverse tropical plant collection in the United States.

In addition to being a pleasant place to visit, Foster Botanical Garden is a living museum of tropical plants, some rare and endangered, which have been collected from throughout the world’s tropics over a period of 150 years.

Today the garden consists of the Upper Terrace (the oldest part of the garden); Middle Terraces (palms, aroids, heliconias, gingers); Economic Garden (herbs, spices, dyes, poisons); Prehistoric Glen (primitive plants planted in 1965); Lyon Orchid Garden; and Hybrid Orchid Display.

It also contains a number of exceptional trees, including a Sacred Fig which is a clone descendant of the Bodhi tree that Buddha sat under for inspiration, a sapling of which was gifted to Mary Foster by Anagarika Dharmapala in 1913.

In 1975, the Hawaiʻi State Legislature found that rapid development had led to the destruction of many of the State’s exceptional trees and passed Act 105 – The Exceptional Tree Act.

The Act recognizes that trees are valuable for their beauty and they perform crucial ecological functions. All told, Foster Botanical Garden contains 25 of about 100 Oʻahu trees designated as exceptional.

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Bodhi_tree_foster_botanical_gardens-Genetically identical to the Bodhi Tree (original) at Sri Mahabodhi temple, India

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Daibutsu-replica of the Great Buddha of Kamakura-dedicated in 1968 for centennial of Japanese immigration to Hawaii

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False Olive Tree, Elaeodendron orientale

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October 24, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Kainalu

This spot was formerly called Kalehuawehe. The surf break ‘Castles’ is named after the Castle family’s four-story beachfront home.

In 1837, Samuel Northrup Castle arrived in Honolulu as a missionary. He left Hawaiʻi for a short time then returned as a businessman for the mission. With Amos Cooke, he founded Castle & Cooke Company in 1851 – it grew into being one of Hawaiʻi’s “Big Five” companies.

One of his ten children would surpass him as a businessman. James Bicknell Castle was born November 27, 1855 in Honolulu to Samuel and Mary (Tenney) Castle. He attended Punahou School 1867–1873, and then Oberlin College.

Castle acquired property in Waikīkī; it had been the home of Boki, the governor of O’ahu, and his wife Liliha. In 1899, James B. Castle built his Waikīkī home and called it ‘Kainalu.’ It was a lavishly furnished four-story mansion with extensive grounds, an ocean pier and other amenities.

In business, he greatly expanded Castle & Cooke in the sugar and railroad industries. One of his first moves was in 1890 when Lorrin Thurston and others joined to create the Kahuku Plantation Company on land subleased from Benjamin Dillingham.

Castle is credited with winning control of the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company from Claus Spreckels in 1898, which he sold to Alexander & Baldwin for a large share of their stock. He later bought large amounts of land, such as Kāneʻohe Ranch.

He then moved to his next phase of his work, which was to connect the Dillingham’s Oahu Railway & Land Co. (OR&L) in Kahuku with the proposed street railway system in Honolulu by way of the Windward Coast.

His plan was to extend his Koʻolau Railroad Co. south of Kahana Bay through Kāneʻohe and Kailua, and on to Waimanalo where it would go through a tunnel and into Manoa Valley and connect with the Rapid Transit & Land Co.

Unfortunately, he died in 1918 before the project could be completed; however, he ran the line from Kahuku to Kahana Bay and extended his plantation and used this railway to haul it to the Kahuku mill. The train service completely closed down by 1952.

When Castle died, his widow found the beachfront property more than she wished to keep up. Mrs. James B. Castle was impressed by the charitable work being done by the Elks (the Honolulu Elks Lodge 616 was established on April 15, 1901) and in 1920 sold them 155,000 square feet on the beach at Waikīkī complete with lavish home, for $1 a square foot.

For decades, the Elks membership and officers worked to raise funds to pay off the mortgage. Every possible method of raising funds was tried. Elks held carnivals, “smokers,” baseball matches, boxing matches, theatricals, auctions, circuses, concerts and dances.

Funds were raised for charity, and a bit set aside to retire the mortgage. Finally, on March 3, 1943, as members sang “Auld Lang Syne;” the mortgage was burned with great ceremony.

Several times since 1920 the sale of the property was proposed and even authorized, but motions were defeated or rescinded. Most prominent was a protracted discussion with the Outrigger Canoe Club, which was looking for a new home.

Between 1954 and 1956, Outrigger Canoe Club made several offers to purchase about half the Castle property. All were refused. Eventually, in 1955, the Elks agreed to lease property to Outrigger. Negotiations continued, and a lease was signed effective November 17, 1956.

In 1958 the Lodge determined to raze Kainalu and rebuild a new lodge. After an April gala aloha event, the old Lodge was demolished in June of 1959. Ground breaking for the new building took place on August 17, 1959. On June 20, 1960, the first meeting was held in a new building, the present lodge building.

In the sand, constantly washed by the waves, are 6 flat-topped black basalt rocks set in cement. The rock is said to come from the Kaimuki Quarry. Also visible is one round, bowl-shaped object. These are the last remnants of the James Castle home.

The multi-sided stones were the footings for pillars holding up the Castle home’s dining room. Facing the ocean, 9 tubular wooden pillars sat on the round cement footings, and in the rear a second row of heavier pillars sat on the lava rock.

In 2007, a rent dispute between the Elks Lodge and Outrigger Canoe Club was settled by a three-member arbitration panel. Terms of the new rent between the next-door neighbors were not disclosed because of a confidentiality agreement (the Elks Lodge, the landowner, was seeking up to $1 million or more a year in rent from the canoe club for a 99-year lease that was renegotiated midway through the term.)

James Castle and his wife had one child, Harold Castle; in the form of various gifts, Harold Castle is the man behind Castle Hospital, Castle High School, Kainalu Elementary, Central Union Windward Church and the Windward Branch of Hawaiʻi Pacific University.

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An aerial view of the Elks Lodge’s original Waikiki building.

James Castle estate built in 1899 and sold to the Elks Club in 1920. Torn down in 1951

Mrs. Castle, widow of businessman James B. Castle, sold their Waikiki home to the Elks after he died in 1918.

October 19, 2019 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Chen Fang

Zhongshan (historically known as Xiangshan), one of the few cities in China with an eponymous name (a person or thing, whether real or fictional, after which a particular place or other item is named,) is named after Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) who was also known as Sun Zhongshan. Xiangshan was renamed Zhongshan in 1925 following Sun Yat-sen’s death.

Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese revolutionary and first president and founding father of the Republic of China (“Nationalist China”). (Dr. Sun Yat-Sen spent four years in Hawaiʻi (1879-1883) and attended three Christian educational institutions: ʻIolani College, St. Louis College and Oʻahu College (Punahou School.))

But this story isn’t about Sun Yat-sen; it’s about someone from his hometown.

In 1849, Chen Fang left his Xiangshan village for Honolulu to profit from a business boom caused by the California Gold Rush (he left a wife and son behind.)

There were only about a hundred Chinese in the entire kingdom when he arrived. He was in his mid-twenties, of average height (about five and a half feet) and sparingly built; it was his piercing black eyes that people remembered.

At that time, there was no Chinatown in Honolulu. The Cantonese enterprises were scattered throughout the small business district at the harbor’s edge.

Over the years in Hawaiʻi, he was widely known as Chun Afong, a respected Cantonese merchant, who was proficient in the Hawaiian and English languages, and conversant with Western manners.

In 1852, the importing of contract labor from China began; these new Chinese to Hawaiʻi were from a different province and spoke a different dialect than their entrepreneurial predecessors – and the two groups of Chinese didn’t get along very well.

Hawaiians and Caucasians drew a distinction between resident Chinese merchants and the imported field laborers. “It is to be regretted that the Chinese coolie emigrants … have not realized the hopes of those who incurred the expense of their introduction,” said King Kamehameha IV in a major address on immigration. (Kuykendall)

“They are not so kind and tractable as it was anticipated they would be; and they seem to have no affinities, attractions or tendencies to blend with this, or any other race.” (Kuykendall)

By 1855, Afong had made his fortune in retailing, real estate, sugar and rice, and for a long time held the government’s opium license (he is Hawaiʻi’s first Chinese millionaire.)

Throughout the reign of Kamehameha IV, which was marked by good feelings among Honolulu’s racial groups, the public image of the Cantonese merchants remained generally favorable, in part because of their unfailing generosity to the throne and their commitment to civic betterment.

Chun Afong became the leader of the Chinese community and prospered in business. He married a hapa haole woman (Julia Fayerweather) and reared a large family.

Afong’s business was headquartered in Hawaiʻi, but with his two brothers, he also had stores in San Francisco and Hong Kong. Moreover, he reportedly had interests in mercantile businesses in Canton, Macau and Shanghai, and agricultural lands in Zhongshan.

He lived in the grand style mansion on Nuʻuanu Avenue and School Street in Honolulu, and a villa on Waikīkī Beach. His Waikīkī villa was on three acres of landscaped oceanfront property.

Here he gave grand parties for royalty, diplomats, military officers and other dignitaries. (In 1904 the US Army purchased the Waikīkī property to make way for the construction of Fort DeRussy.)

In 1873, Afong spent some time in China with his China wife and fathered another son. His Hawaiʻi enterprises continued to prosper and when Kaupakuea, a sugar plantation outside of Hilo he was leasing. It became available for purchase in October 1874; he bought it.

Chun Afong financially supported Kalākaua’s candidacy “in a quiet way;” Kalākaua won the legislative election. Chun Afong stepped out from behind the political scenes to accept appointments in 1879, first as a member of the Privy Council to Kalākaua and then as Chinese commercial agent (and de facto Chinese consulate.)

When the Hawaiian government adopted anti-Chinese policies following the rebellion of 1887, he removed himself and much of his capital to Hong Kong (here he made investments in real estate, shipping, banking and merchandising ventures.)

After three decades in Hawaiʻi, the “Merchant Prince of the Sandalwood Mountains” (as coined by historian Bob Dye) returned to China to get richer. His first fortune, made in Hawaiʻi as a planter and merchant, fueled his China enterprises and funded his philanthropic works.

For his philanthropy he was granted official rank by the Qing government, and to honor him memorials were erected in his home village of Meixi, located about nine miles north of Macau.

The memorials still stand on the entrance road to the small agricultural village, but the villagers who bicycle past them today have no knowledge of the man who, a century before, commanded a business empire that stretched from China’s Pearl River Delta across the Pacific to San Francisco.

Afong’s family life was fictionalized in a famous short story, “Chun Ah Chun,” by Jack London and in a Broadway musical comedy, Thirteen Daughters, by Eaton Magoon Jr., a great-grandson of Afong.

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Chun Afong's house in Honolulu built in the Western and Chinese styles in the 1850s and torn down in 1902_(WC)

Afong Villa Marker

Triumphal arch put up by the Chinese merchants of Honolulu at the intersection of King and Fort to celebrate Kalakaua's return for his world tour

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Julia_Fayerweather_Afong-(WC)-around-1860s-70s

Julia_Fayerweather_Afong-(WC)-before-1919

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October 13, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Claus Spreckels

Claus Spreckels (1828–1908) was perhaps the most successful German-American immigrant entrepreneur of the late-nineteenth century; he was one of the ten richest Americans of his time.

The career of the “sugar king” of California, Hawaiʻi and the American West consisted of building and breaking monopolies in sugar, transport, gas, electricity, real estate, newspapers, banks and breweries.

The first industry in which Spreckels succeeded was quite typical for German immigrants: beer brewing. In the spring of 1857, together with his brother Peter Spreckels and Claus Mangels, among others, he founded the Albany Brewery, the first large-scale producer of beer in San Francisco.

Though profitable, he sold his beer operation in 1863 and switched to a new field that would make him rich: sugar. That year, he started the Bay Sugar Refining Company, but sold it three years later.

He then constructed the California Sugar Refinery in 1867 to process sugar. While grocers, then, sold “sugar loaves,” Spreckels introduced the European process of packaging granulated sugar and sugar cubes (so customers could more easily divide the portions.)

In 1878, through his friendship with King Kalākaua, Claus Spreckels secured a lease of 40,000-acres of land on Maui and by 1882 he acquired the fee simple title to the Wailuku ahupuaʻa.

That same year, Spreckels founded the Hawaiian Commercial Company, which quickly became the largest and best-equipped sugar plantation in the islands.

The Spreckelsville Mill was actually four mills in one complex (it was located just to the northeast of the present Kahului Airport, near the intersection of Old Stable Road and Hana Highway.) The town of Spreckelsville built up around it.

Part of the production innovation was the use of electric lights; the first recorded onshore use of electric lighting in Hawaiʻi was at Mill Number One of the Spreckelsville Plantation on Maui on Aug. 21, 1881.

To satisfy the curiosity of people anxious to see the “concentrated daylight,” Capt. Coit Hobron ran a special train from Kahului, and King Kalākaua, Widow Queen Emma and Princess Ruth were among those who came to view the lights.

Spreckels modernized and mechanized the sugar production process, from hauling cane to the mill, to extracting the juice, reducing the juice to syrup and producing sugar grains. The raw sugar was then packed and shipped to his refinery in San Francisco. (Miller)

Sugar is a thirsty crop and Spreckels built the Haiku Ditch that spanned thirty miles and delivered fifty million gallons of water daily, irrigating twenty times as much land as had previously been irrigated.

Looking to upgrade from the mule and oxen means of moving sugar to the mill (as well as reduce costs,) Spreckels built a narrow-gauge railroad to haul the sugar from the plantation to the mill.

By 1881, twenty miles of iron track were completed. The rail line also transported the processed sugar to Maui’s major port, Kahului. By 1885, Spreckelsville had forty-three miles of railroad, four engines and 498 cars for hauling cane.

Needing transportation to move his Hawaiʻi sugar for refining on the continent, he formed JD Spreckels & Bros. shipping line in 1879, which was incorporated as the Oceanic Steamship Company in 1881.

It was the first line to offer regular service between Honolulu and San Francisco, and his sons managed to reduce travel time immensely. While the sailing ship Claus Spreckels made a record run of less than ten days in 1879, by 1883 the new steam vessel Mariposa needed less than six days.

Spreckels incorporated the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company in 1884; it included four sugar mills, thirty-five miles of railroad with equipment, a water reservoir and the most advanced ditch system in the Pacific region. (Spiekermann)

Spreckelsville was the largest sugar estate in the world by 1892.

The late-1890s saw internal family conflicts. Spreckels lost control of HC&S and in 1898; it became a part of Alexander & Baldwin Co. Following the 1948 merger of HC&S and Maui Agriculture Co., HC&S became a division of Alexander & Baldwin.

Claus Spreckels was a controversial figure. For friends, he was a man “with a fine presence, an open, pleasant countenance and a cheerful word for everybody.” Others, however, characterized him as impatient, implacable, and ruthless, driven by “Dutch obstinacy.” (Spiekermann)

Hawaiʻi served as only one of the venues for the Spreckels holdings. During the 1880s and early 1890s, he bought and built up several blocks of office buildings in San Francisco.

Claus Spreckels was a financial and an industrial capitalist. Obtaining, investing and multiplying money was his main business, and his role as a pioneer of Hawaiian sugar planting and Californian beet sugar production was merely an outgrowth of his desire to increase his fortune. (Spiekermann)

Although none of his firms survived, his name today is still mentioned in San Francisco and Hawaiian travel guides as an example of an exceptional self-made man: “The life of Claus Spreckels is one of the interesting and absorbing personal histories of which America is so proud.” (Spiekermann)

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October 10, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Mauna Loke

Called the “Prince of Entertainers” and the “Entertainer of Princes,” John Cummins was a prosperous businessman known for his generous and lavish hospitality to royalty and commoner alike and for his knowledge and love of Hawaiian traditions.

John Adams Kuakini Cummins was born on O’ahu on March 17, 1835, the son of High Chiefess Kaumakaokane Papali‘ai‘aina and Thomas Jefferson Cummins, Jr.

He was a namesake of island governor John Adams Kuakini (1789–1844,) who in turn took the name of John Quincy Adams.

His mother was a descendent of the Lonoikahapu‘u line and was a cousin of King Kamehameha I. His father was a wealthy and aristocratic Englishman, born in Lancashire and reared in Massachusetts, who came to the Islands in 1828.

Cummins married Rebecca Kahalewai (1830–1902) in 1861, also considered a high chiefess, and had six children: Matilda Kaumakaokane, Jane Pi‘ikea, Kaimilani, ‘Imilani, Thomas Puali‘i and May Ka‘aolani. When she died, her pallbearers included Princes David Kawānanakoa and Jonah Kalaniana‘ole. In 1903, he married his son-in-law’s sister, High Chiefess Elizabeth
Kapeka Merseberg.

Cummins was a staunch monarchist, who, in his later years, was arrested, tried, imprisoned and heavily fined by the new Republic of Hawaiʻi.

Thomas Cummins purchased or leased lands known as the Waimanalo Sugar Plantation; the first record of this was March 27, 1842, when High Chief Pākī leased Cummins a parcel of land on which to build a house.

This residence was later named Mauna Loke, or Rose Mont. (He had another home, Ahipu‘u, named after the hill and caves behind the house. Today it is the site of the O’ahu Country Club.)

However, it was Mauna Loke, the family home in Waimānalo that was the scene of lavish Hawaiian-style living and entertaining that was synonymous with Cummins’s name.

It was said that the food served there excelled that of the best in San Francisco, and the wines were of the choicest vintage. Although always offering plenty to drink, Cummins himself never touched a drop.

His guests included royalty, starting with Kamehameha V, as well as foreign visitors. This included German Princes and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1869.

“Cavalcades of horsemen and horsewomen braved the dangers of the steep pali and the rocky trail in order that they might reach the fertile valley and beach where John Cummins kept open house for all who came his way.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 21, 1913)

King Kalākaua often enjoyed Cummins’s hospitality at the spacious home. There were several grass houses scattered throughout the grounds, one for the exclusive use of Kalākaua and one exclusively for Princess Kaʻiulani.

As a child, Kaʻiulani helped “Uncle John” erect a flagpole nearby, then she raised the Hawaiian flag and christened it with a bottle of champagne.

King Kamehameha V also liked to visit Mauna Loke. In order to avoid the difficult trip over the Pali trail, the king purchased a small steamboat in which to ride around the island from town and had a short railway line installed from the boat landing to the house.

A huge celebration took place at Mauna Loke in November 1874, the first stop of a two-week “Grand Tour of O’ahu” by Queen Emma.

The queen stayed three days, by which time the number present – both invited and uninvited – was in the hundreds. Guests brought food by the wagon load: hogs, bullocks, ducks, turkeys and poi.

Three hundred torches burned throughout the night of the lū‘au. (By the way, Pukui notes, “lū‘au” is not an ancient name, but goes back at least to 1856, when so used by the Pacific Commercial Advertiser; formerly a feast was called pāʻina or ʻahaʻaina.)

There were fireworks, bonfires, swimming, surfing, stream fishing, lei making, horse racing, rifle shooting and hula troupes performing one after another until daylight the next day.

Cummins then escorted Emma on the rest of the tour around the island.

Cummins was elected representative for his Koʻolau district in 1873 and assisted in the election of King Lunalilo that same year. The following year, he aided in the election of King Kalākaua and eventually served as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Cummins was instrumental in helping King Kalākaua effect a reciprocity treaty with the United States in 1874, after which the sugar industry prospered and the value of Waimānalo Plantation was greatly enhanced.

John Adams Cummins died March 21, 1913, his obituary read, in part, “Being one of the last of the high chiefs, whose youth was spent in associating with the kings and princes of the realm, if he had no love for the Hawaiian flag and of the traditions of his country, then no one had. He had been dandled on the knee of Kauikeaouli, Kamehameha III.”

“Alexander Liholiho, Kamehameha IV, and his gentle Queen Emma were his most intimate friends and companions. Kalākaua owed his election largely to the instrumentality of Mr. Cummins, and would gladly have had him near him continually.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 21, 1913)

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