Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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Waialua High and Intermediate School

Waialua (two waters) may refer to the two large stream drainages (Anahulu and Helemano-Poamoho-Kaukonahua) that were once used to irrigate extensive taro fields in the ahupua‘a of Kamananui, Pa‘ala‘a and Kawailoa, the more populous ahupua‘a on the eastern side of the district.

The ahupua‘a of Keālia, Kawaihāpai, and Mokulē‘ia, on the western side of the district, were more arid, and were not as well-watered as the three eastern ahupua‘a. (Cultural Surveys)

In 1813, Waialua was described by John Whitman, an early missionary visitor, as: “…a large district on the NE extremity of the island, embracing a large quantity of taro land, many excellent fishing grounds and several large fish ponds one of which deserves particular notice for its size and the labour bestowed in building the wall which encloses it.”  (Cultural Surveys)

Later (1826,) Levi Chamberlain noted, “The whole district of Waialua is spread out before the eye with its cluster of settlements, straggling houses, scattering trees, cultivated plats & growing in broad perspectives the wide extending ocean tossing its restless waves and throwing in its white foaming billows fringing the shores all along the whole extent of the district.”  (Cultural Surveys)

In 1865, Levi and Warren Chamberlain started a sugar plantation in Waialua that ultimately failed, and Robert Halstead bought the Chamberlain plantation in 1874 under the partnership of Halstead & Gordon.

Gordon died in 1888, and the plantation was managed by the Halstead Brothers, Robert and his two sons, Edgar and Frank. In 1898, Castle & Cooke formed the Waialua Agricultural Company and purchased the plantation from the Halstead Brothers.  (The mill stayed in operation up until 1996.)

By 1898, the OR&L railroad was constructed along the coast through the Waialua District, with stations in both Kawaihāpai and Mokulēʻia.  By the early-1900s, sugarcane plantations and large ranches came to dominate the lands of western Waialua.

“Waialua is reached either by railroad, a distance from Honolulu of 58 miles, or wagon road, 28 miles. The plantation lands extend along the seacoast 15 miles and 10 miles back toward the mountains. The plantation has a good railway system.”  (Louisiana Planter, 1910)

To serve the growing population, in 1914, Waialua had a one room school known as Mokulēʻia School with Miss Eva Mitchell as principal. The school served students from Waialua, Haleiwa, Mokulēʻia, Pupukea and Kawailoa. Then, on May 1, 1924, Waialua Agricultural Co. donated five-acres of land where six new classrooms were built.

In 1927, the school was renamed the Andrew E Cox School (Intermediate) in memory of the benefactor who gave the 15-acre tract of land on which Waialua High and Intermediate now stands.

When the County governance structure was adopted in the Territory of Hawaiʻi (1905,) Cox was the first member of the County Board of Supervisors, representing Waialua.  He also served as Deputy Sheriff.  (Andrew Cox died January 29, 1921 after an illness of several years at the age of 53.)

For a while, Leilehua High School was the only high school in this part of the Island had.  Then, in 1936, the Cox Intermediate School was enlarged to include a high school division and the school was renamed Waialua High and Intermediate School.

Charles Nakamura attended Waialua Elementary, Andrew E. Cox Intermediate, and Waialua High Schools. He was Waialua High’s first student body president and member of its first graduating class in 1939.  (UH)

Waialua resident Charles Nakamura said high school graduation has been a major event in the Oʻahu community of fewer than 4,000 since the first commencement at the old Andrew E. Cox Auditorium on June 7, 1939.  (Honolulu Advertiser)

By 1950, the school enrollment reached 745 students, with a staff of 30 teachers.  Today, enrollment is approximately 600 (grades 7-12.)

Waialua High School is an accredited school and offers a curriculum comparable to any high school in the island. Students who are preparing for college have courses such as physics, chemistry, biology, plain and solid geometry, trigonometry, algebra and three language courses to choose from.

For students who are interested in entering the business field, the school offers courses such as shorthand, typing, business math, bookkeeping, office practice and general business. If a student is interested in the technical or vocational field, he/she has shop, agriculture and homemaking to help further his studies.

Waialua High and Intermediate is recognized nationally as one of 11-medal-winning schools from Hawaiʻi (recognized by US News, for performing well on state exit exams, based on students’ mastery of college-level material – all 11-schools received Bronze medals.)

Waialua has had an award winning robotics team (Na Keiki O Ka Wa Mahope (The Children of the Future) aka Hawaiian Kids; Team 359.)  The team motto is “It’s not about winning … It’s about teamwork, commitment and responsibility.” Team 359 was 7-0-0 in official play in 2026.

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Winne Units

OK, this one brings back some memories …

“These halls, this learning environment, launched the academic careers of tens of thousands of Punahou students.” (Punahou President Jim Scott – speaking at an event at the Mary Persis Winne Elementary Units)

The Mary Persis Winne Elementary Units, built between 1950 and 1955, were designed by the renowned architect Vladimir Ossipoff.

Ossipoff was a prominent architect in the Islands, working between the 1930s and 1990s. He was recognized locally, nationally and internationally for his designs. He is best known for his contribution to the development of the Hawaiian Modern movement.

This style is characterized by the work of architects who “subscribed to the general modernity of the International Style while attempting to integrate the cultural and topographical character of the (Hawaiian) region.” (Sakamoto)

This very frequently included an attempt to integrate the interior of buildings with the outdoors, and minimizing the dividing line between the building and the site.

In 1954, Ossipoff told the Star Bulletin, “Modern facilities comparable to contemporary Mainland school construction can be built for considerably less in Hawai‘i.” He was referring to the construction of the Winne Units.

Back then cost of construction averaged $15 per square foot nationally, the first phase of the Winne Units was built for $8.27 per square foot. In the article, Ossipoff credited the lack of heating and insulation as factors in the lower costs. (Leong, Punahou)

But, there were other cost savings.

According to Shaver F. “Jack” Stubbart who was a teacher of Mechanical Drawing, Industrial Arts (1948-1965) and the Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds (1965-1982), the Navy offered, and Punahou accepted, surplus heart redwood water tanks that were milled for use in the construction. (Gartley, Punahou74)

The first of three building phases originally contained Damon Library, with its own working fireplace that children could gather around for storytelling, replicating the fireside tales of centuries past. Then-Junior School Principal Donald Reber called it the “living room of the school.”

Reber and his faculty worked closely with Ossipoff to create a complex of elementary school buildings that departed sharply from the idea of the traditional school building (with its self-contained, enclosed environment where seats and desks were often fixed to the floor.)

Two design principles, “unity with the outdoors” and “adaptability to progress,” shaped what the elementary school became: a place that felt safe, where it was hard to say where the classroom stopped and the rest of the world began.

The first phase of this new elementary school inspired a new term: it wasn’t a building or a hall, but a “unit” – the Mary Persis Winne Elementary Units, a name that eventually extended to include the entire complex.

Phases two and three followed, incorporating improvements suggested by the faculty who had taught in the first wings (such as bug-proof lunchbox storage.)

The Winne Units housed 25-classrooms in 9-single story wings that radiate from the main entrance that accommodated 625 students (K through 5.) The units are structure by steel-pipe columns and steel I-beams. (Support facilities/offices were included.) (Sakamoto)

The office became a daily gathering place for teachers in the days before there were phones and computers in every classroom, and the intercom system meant that not only could every classroom hear a speaker in the office, but the office could hear what was going on in the classrooms.

Each class had reversible blackboards, its own lanai with a wall of sliding doors and its own garden. (Lanais were used as classroom extensions for messy or outdoor work, where students practiced art on easels.)

Born in 1876 in Carson City, Nevada, Miss Mary Persis Winne had ties to Punahou as the granddaughter of Reverend Asa and Lucy Goodale Thurston.

The Thurstons were in the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands, arriving in Kailua-Kona on the Thaddeus in 1820.

Winne came to Punahou as a second grade teacher in 1898, and rose to become the principal of the then newly formed Punahou Elementary School in 1918.

The Winnes lived in the old Mcintosh house on Nuʻuanu near Judd Street. Miss Jane Winne has charge of the chorus singing at Punahou, and Mr. James Winne is with Alexander & Baldwin. (HMCS, 1917)

Miss Winne was the first Punahou faculty member to serve 25 years. By the time she retired in 1941 she had served generations of Punahou students for 42 years.

“At no time did I ever see her overlook the emotional, spiritual or academic needs of individual children. She embraced the best in modern philosophies and practices, giving freely of herself ….”

“Hours meant nothing to her when dealing with both parents and children. In return she received the greatest loyalty from people of all ages or races that I have ever witnessed.”

During her tenure Miss Winne was instrumental in introducing the best of new educational methods. Of particular interest was the implementation of new practices for teaching children to read and write.

Miss Anna Gillingham and Miss Bessie Stillman, recognized experts from New York, were brought to the school to train teachers and provide remedial tutoring to students. It was from these efforts that pioneering contributions were made in the treatment of dyslexia.

Punahou replaced the Winne Units with new facilities for grades 2-5. (Lots of information here is from Punahou, Leong and Gartley.)

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Junior … Intermediate … Middle

The arrival of the first company of American Protestant missionaries in Hawaiʻi in 1820 marked the beginning of Hawaiʻi’s phenomenal rise to literacy.

The missionaries were scattered across the Islands, each home was usually in a thickly inhabited village, so that the missionary and his wife could be close to their work among the people. The missionaries established schools associated with their missions .

On July 14, 1826, the American missionaries finalized a 12-letter alphabet for the written Hawaiian language, using five vowels (a, e, i, o and u) and seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p and w.) That alphabet continues today.

Planning for the written Hawaiian language and development by the missionaries was modeled after the spoken language, attempting to represent the spoken Hawaiian sounds with English letters.

Interestingly, these same early missionaries taught their lessons in Hawaiian to the Hawaiians, rather than English. The missionaries learned the Hawaiian language, and then taught the Hawaiians in their language. In part, the mission did not want to create a separate caste and portion of the community as English-speaking Hawaiians.

Common schools (where the 3 Rs were taught) sprang up in villages all over the Islands. In these common schools, classes and attendance were quite irregular, but nevertheless basic reading and writing skills (in Hawaiian) and fundamental Christian doctrine were taught to large numbers of people. (Canevali)

The chiefs became proponents for education and edicts were enacted by the King and the council of chiefs to stimulate the people to reading and writing.

“Statute for the Regulation of Schools” passed by the King and chiefs on October 15, 1840. Its preamble stated, “The basis on which the Kingdom rests is wisdom and knowledge.”

“Peace and prosperity cannot prevail in the land, unless the people are taught in letters and in that which constitutes prosperity. If the children are not taught, ignorance must be perpetual, and children of the chiefs cannot prosper, nor any other children”.

The 1840 educational law mandated compulsory attendance for children ages four to fourteen. Any village that had fifteen or more school-age children was required to provide a school for their students.

William Richards, a missionary, was appointed Minister of Public Instruction and helped develop a highly-organized educational system. He was later replaced by missionary Richard Armstrong. Richard Armstrong is known as the “the father of American education in Hawaiʻi.”

In 1855 the office of Minister was replaced by the Board of Education, whose members were appointed by the King, and the department was named the Department of Public Instruction.

The educational system and means of instruction evolved over time, in the Islands and across the continent. Younger learners were first in ‘preparatory’ or ‘grammar’ schools in the Islands (we now generally refer to these as elementary schools.)

Older learners were in ‘colleges’ (i.e. Oahu College (Punahou,) St Louis College;) these are now typically called high schools.

Historically, grades K-8 were considered ‘elementary.’ In 1888 on the continent, Charles Eliot launched an effort to reorganize schooling, arguing that the last years of elementary school was a waste and students should be working on college preparatory courses instead. Rather than grades 7 and 8 as part of elementary, the push was to put them in the high school.

Then, on July 6, 1909, the Columbus, Ohio, Board of Education authorized the creation of the first junior high school in the US. (Ohio History Central)

In the Islands, between 1909 and 1920 the education system underwent a series of changes. In 1909, school agents were replaced by supervising principals; in 1913 the building and maintenance responsibilities of the school agents were transferred out of the department to the Counties. (State Archives)

In 1920, a report was published on the survey of schools conducted by the Bureau of Education of the Federal Department of the Interior.

The report noted that on the continent typical middle-class families in America were sending their children to public secondary schools, but in Hawai‘i, public schools were so few and geographically isolated, that many had to go to private schools or were forced to drop out.

Therefore, the commission recommended the establishment of secondary or Junior high schools which should offer more academic and vocational choices to feed various high schools. (NPS) There was a rapid increase in the establishment of Junior high schools.

By 1922, there were six in the rural parts of the state. In 1928, Central Grammar School became Central Junior High School with an enrollment of approximately 1,200 students and 47 teachers. It was one of 5 Junior high schools in Honolulu (with Lincoln, Washington, Kalākaua and Lili‘uokalani.) (NPS)

Then, in 1932, the board of education changed all formerly-named Junior High Schools to Intermediate Schools. (NPS) The education department continued to maintain a policy of naming Intermediate schools after American Presidents or members of the Hawaiian Royal family.

Then, a new reform movement took place with the Junior/Intermediate-aged students (~11-13;) rather than have a focus on college preparatory, school reformers were looking for an educational program to meet the intellectual, emotional, and the interpersonal needs of young adolescents. (Jadallah)

In 1963, William Alexander first used the expression middle school to describe the schools between elementary and high school. Alexander, regarded as the ‘father of the middle-school,’ led the movement to create middle-schools and a middle-level curriculum that would meet the unique needs of young adolescents. (McFarland)

The Carnegie Corporation (1989) issued a report that profoundly affected the education of young adolescents. ‘Turning Points’ advocated reforms intended to make their education more personalized, supportive, and active: interdisciplinary teams, cooperative learning, involvement with families and community, mentoring, and active teaching. (Daniels)

With a new program, school names started to change again. While no wholesale change took place (as happened with the Junior High to Intermediate,) Intermediate schools in the Islands started adopting the ‘Middle School’ philosophy and label.

Today, while the Junior High School reference is long gone, there are many Intermediate and Middle Schools across the Islands.

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by Peter T Young 4 Comments

Carlotta

In 1898, Carlotta Stewart, at eighteen years of age, came to Hawai‘i with her father (probably at his urging,) to continue her education and to begin planning her future. (Guttman)

The third child of Thomas McCants Stewart and Charlotte Pearl Harris, Carlotta was born in 1881 in Brooklyn, New York, where she attended public schools during her formative years.

Although her father had spent several years in Liberia, Africa, Carlotta had never traveled outside of the continental United States before coming to Hawai‘i.

Her father – a noted black lawyer, civil rights leader and friend of Booker T Washington – was the first African American to be admitted to practice law in Hawaiʻi (1898.) (jtb-org)

She attended Oʻahu College (Punahou,) where she played on the girls’ basketball team. After she graduated from there, she continued with basketball, playing for the YWCA and serving as timekeeper for the local games.

Her brothers McCants and Gilchrist had attended Tuskegee Institute, the Southern vocational school established by Booker T
Washington (1881,) Carlotta lived with her father following a bitter divorce from his first wife. (Broussard)

She graduated from Oʻahu College in 1902, one of eight members in the senior class. The course of study there included classes in philosophy, religion, English, Latin, Greek, French or German, history, economics, mathematics and science.

After graduation, Carlotta completed the requirements for a Normal School certificate (later known as the Teachers’ College,) which she received in 1902, and she promptly accepted a teaching position in the Practice Department of the Normal School.

She had converted to Catholicism during the early-1900s, despite the fact that her father was an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and that she visited the Priory (an Episcopal school) often as a young teacher to pray, study and dine with other females. (Broussard)

Stewart remained at the Normal School for several years, where she taught English; she is listed in the Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to the Governor of the Territory of Hawaii between 1902 and 1924.

Her father and stepmother left the Islands in 1905; Carlotta later noted “Sometimes I get quite blue not having a single relative in the Islands. … I soon get over it, for I have such good friends. I want for nothing.”

In 1906, in addition to teaching, she was busy with classes, vacations, camping, surfing and frequent parties. “We took in two dances a week at the Seaside Hotel and played cards at home the other evenings or made up moonlight bathing parties.” (Stewart; Broussard)

In 1909, Carlota was noted as a teacher assigned to Koʻolau Elementary School (Kauai,) a later newspaper story noted that she was identified as principal there. “This school (is) situated on the government road near the north side of Moloa‘a Valley, between Anahola and Kilauea”.

Initially, total enrollment for the school was 61, average attendance 59; Japanese 31, Part Hawaiian 19, Hawaiian 7 and Portuguese 4.

“The majority of the children here come from the homes of the small tillers of the soil in the Moloa‘a Valley and thereabouts, especially the rice fields of the Japanese and the kuleanas of the Hawaiians.” (Evening Bulletin, October 14, 1909)

Her rapid advancement in the space of seven years was an impressive achievement, although many black women had established teaching careers and a handful were school administrators by 1909, it was unusual for a black woman at the age of 28 to serve as principal of a multi-racial school.

This achievement was particularly striking in a society in which few black people lived and, therefore, had no political influence to request a job of this magnitude. Her pupils reflected a true cross section of Hawaii’s school-aged population, which grew rapidly between 1900 and 1940.

Conditions were neither difficult nor racially oppressive for a black professional woman, in Hawai‘i, there was no substantial black community before World War II, and Carlotta saw few black people either in classrooms or outside.

Most of her socializing took place in groups, relieving her of the pressure to find a companion with a comparable racial and social background.

She met and married her husband, Yun Tim Lai of Chinese ancestry at Anahola. He was sales manager of the Garden Island Motors, Ltd, an automobile dealership in Lihue, when the couple wed in 1916. (The 19-year marriage ended, however, in 1935, when Lai died suddenly in Hong Kong while visiting his parents.) (Broussard)

Carlotta Stewart Lai never remarried but remained in Hawai’i for the next 17 years, serving as principal and English teacher until her retirement in 1944.

By 1951 Lai’s health grew increasingly more fragile, and, unable to provide for herself without fear of bodily injury, she entered the Manoa Convalescent Home in 1952 and died there on July 6, 1952.

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Foreign Mission School

On October 29, 1816, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) established the Foreign Mission School as a seminary.

Classes began in 1817 “for the purpose of educating youths of Heathen nations, with a view to their being useful in their respective countries.”

Its object was to educate the youth of promising talent and of hopeful demeanor to return, in due time, to their respective lands in the character of husbandmen, school-masters, or preachers of the gospel.

The first four destinations chosen were (1) the Bombay region of India (1813,) (2) Ceylon (1816,) (3) the Cherokee Indian Nation in the State of Tennessee (1817) and (4) Hawai‘i (1820). (Brumaghim)

The Foreign Mission School connects the town of Cornwall, Connecticut to a larger, national religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening.

The Second Great Awakening spread from its origins in Connecticut to Williamstown, Massachusetts; enlightenment ideals from France were gradually being countered by an increase in religious fervor, first in the town, and then in Williams College.

In the summer of 1806, in a grove of trees, in what was then known as Sloan’s Meadow, Samuel John Mills, James Richards, Francis L Robbins, Harvey Loomis and Byram Green debated the theology of missionary service. Their meeting was interrupted by a thunderstorm and they took shelter under a haystack until the sky cleared.

That event has since been referred to as the “Haystack Prayer Meeting” and is viewed by many scholars as the pivotal event for the development of Protestant missions in the subsequent decades and century.

The first American student missionary society began in September 1808, when Mills and others called themselves “The Brethren,” whose object was “to effect, in the person of its members, a mission or missions to the heathen.” (Smith) Milla graduated Williams College in 1809 and later Andover Theological Seminary.

In June 1810, Mills and James Richards petitioned the General Association of the Congregational Church to establish the foreign missions. American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was formed with a Board of members from Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Cornwall’s Foreign Mission School exemplified evangelical efforts to recruit young men from indigenous cultures around the world, convert them to Christianity, educate them and train them to become preachers, health workers, translators and teachers back in their native lands.

Initially lacking a principal, Edwin Welles Dwight filled that role from May 1817 to May 1818; he was replaced the next year by the Reverend Herman Daggett. In its first year, the Foreign Mission School had 12 students, seven Hawaiians, one Hindu, one Bengalese, an Indian and two Anglo-Americans.

The school’s first student was Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia (Obookiah,) a native Hawaiian from the Island of Hawaiʻi who in 1807 (after his parents had been killed) boarded a sailing ship anchored in Kealakekua Bay and sailed to the continent. In its first year, the Foreign Mission School had 12 students, more than half of whom were Hawaiian.

The school increased its number of pupils the second year to twenty-four; four Cherokee, two Choctaw, one Abenaki, two Chinese, two Malays, a Bengalese, one Hindu, six Hawaiians and two Marquesans as well as three American. By 1820, Native Americans from six different tribes made up half of the school’s students.

Once enrolled, students spent seven hours a day in study. Subjects included chemistry, geography, calculus and theology, as well as Greek, French and Latin.

They were also taught special skills like coopering (the making of barrels and other storage casks), blacksmithing, navigation and surveying. When not in class, students attended mandatory church and prayer sessions and also worked on making improvements to the school’s lands. (Cornwall)

In due time, Reverend Hiram Bingham visited the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall but that wasn’t until May 1819, one year after ʻŌpūkahaʻia died.

Then, from Andover Theological Seminary, Bingham wrote in a letter dated July 18, 1819, to Reverend Samuel Worcester that “the unexpected and afflictive death of Obookiah, roused my attention to the subject, & perhaps by writing and delivering some thoughts occasioned by his death I became more deeply interested than before in that cause for which he desired to live …”

“… & from that time it seemed by no means impossible that I should be employed in the field which Henry had intended to occupy…the possibility that this little field in the vast Pacific would be mine, was the greatest, in my own view.” (Brumaghim)

Subsequently, in the summer of 1819, Bingham and his classmate at Andover Theological Seminary, Reverend Asa Thurston, volunteered to go with the first group of missionaries to Hawai‘i.

On October 23, 1819, a group of northeast missionaries, led by Hiram Bingham, set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.) With the missionaries were four Hawaiian students from the Foreign Mission School, Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, John Honoliʻi and Prince Humehume (son of Kauaʻi’s King Kaumuali‘i.)

The Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in giving instructions to the pioneers of 1819 said:

“Your mission is a mission of mercy, and your work is to be wholly a labor of love. … Your views are not to be limited to a low, narrow scale, but you are to open your hearts wide, and set your marks high.”

“You are to aim at nothing short of covering these islands with fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches, and of Christian civilization.” (The Friend)

The points of special and essential importance to all missionaries, and all persons engaged in the missionary work are four:
• Devotedness to Christ;
• Subordination to rightful direction;
• Unity one with another; and
• Benevolence towards the objects of their mission

Between 1820 and 1848, the ABCFM sent “eighty-four men and one hundred women to Hawai‘i to preach and teach, to translate and publish, to advise and counsel – and win the hearts of the Hawaiian people.” (Dwight; Brumaghim)

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