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Slaves in the Revolutionary War

In the 15th century, Portugal became the first European nation to take significant part in African slave trading.  By the 1480s, Portuguese ships were already transporting Africans for use as slaves on the sugar plantations in the Cape Verde and Madeira islands in the eastern Atlantic.  (Britannica)

By the 16th century, the Portuguese dominated the early trans-Atlantic slave trade on the African coast.  As a result, other European nations first gained access to enslaved Africans through privateering during wars with the Portuguese, rather than through direct trade.

When English, Dutch or French privateers captured Portuguese ships during Atlantic maritime conflicts, they often found enslaved Africans on these ships, as well as Atlantic trade goods, and they sent these captives to work in their own colonies. (LDHI, College of Charleston)

When Portuguese, and later their European competitors, found that peaceful commercial relations alone did not generate enough enslaved Africans to fill the growing demands of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, they formed military alliances with certain African groups against their enemies. This encouraged more extensive warfare to produce captives for trading.  (LDHI, College of Charleston)

The Portuguese developed a trading relationship with the Kingdom of Kongo, which existed from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries in what is now Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Civil War within Kongo during the trans-Atlantic slave trade would lead to many of its subjects becoming captives traded to the Portuguese. (LDHI, College of Charleston)

The first Africans in Virginia in the 17th century came from the Kongo/Angola regions of West Central Africa. They were part of a large system established by the Portuguese in Africa to capture and supply slaves to the Spanish colonies in Central and South America.  (Marks)

The first Africans in English North America were those pirated in 1619 by the White Lion and the Treasurer from the Spanish frigate San Juan Bautista in July, and delivered to Jamestown six weeks later at the latter end of August.

American Revolution

Slave resistance escalated along with colonial struggles for liberty.

In Georgia, a group of enslaved men, women and children took advantage of the confusion created by the Stamp Act by fleeing into the swamps and managed to elude capture for four years – prompting the Georgia assembly to send a detachment of militia after them.  (PBS)

By 1775 more than a half-million African Americans, most of them enslaved, were living in the 13 colonies.  Both the British and the colonists believed that slaves could serve an important role during the revolution.

African American soldiers served with valor at the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill.

In April 1775, Lord Dunmore (1732-1809), the royal governor of Virginia, threatened that he would proclaim liberty to the slaves and reduce Williamsburg to ashes if the colonists resorted to force against British authority.

In November, he promised freedom to all slaves belonging to rebels who would join “His Majesty’s Troops … for the more speedily reducing the Colony to a proper sense of their duty….”

Some eight hundred slaves joined British forces, some wearing the emblem “Liberty to the Slaves.”  (University of Houston)

In November 1775, the American Congress decided to exclude blacks from future enlistment out of a sensitivity to the opinion of southern slave holders.  But Lord Dunmore’s promise of freedom to slaves who enlisted in the British army led Congress reluctantly to reverse its decision, fearful that black soldiers might join the redcoats.  (University of Houston)

When the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, people of African descent made up approximately one-fifth of the population of the new United States of America.

The vast majority of them were enslaved, many by Revolutionaries. Other Revolutionaries, while not holding people as property themselves, profited indirectly from the system.  (Museum of the American Revolution)

African Americans played an important role in the revolution. They fought at Fort Ticonderoga and the Battle of Bunker Hill.

A slave helped row Washington across the Delaware.

Altogether, some 5,000 free blacks and slaves served in the Continental army during the Revolution. By 1778, many states, including Virginia, granted freedom to slaves who served in the Revolutionary war. (University of Houston)

Most black soldiers were scattered throughout the Continental Army in integrated infantry regiments, where they were often assigned to support roles as wagoners, cooks, waiters or artisans. Several all-black units, commanded by white officers, also were formed and saw action against the British. (Jamestown)

Unlike the Continental Army, the Navy recruited both free and enslaved blacks from the very start of the Revolutionary War – partly out of desperation for seamen of any color, and partly because many blacks were already experienced sailors, having served in British and state navies, as well as on merchant vessels in the North and the South.

Although Black seamen performed a range of duties, usually the most menial ones, they were particularly valued as pilots.  Others served as shipyard carpenters and laborers.

Both Maryland’s and Virginia’s navies made extensive use of blacks, even purchasing slaves specifically for wartime naval service. Virginia’s state commissioner noted that it was cheaper to hire blacks than whites, and that whites could get exemption from military service by substituting a slave.

Many royal naval vessels were piloted by blacks – some of them runaways, other enslaved to loyalist masters, and still others pressed into service.

During the Revolutionary War, most enslaved Africans believed that a British victory would bring them freedom.  An estimated 100,000 took advantage of the disruption caused by the war and escaped from bondage, many of them making their way to the British forces. Others fled to Canada, Florida, or Indian lands. Thomas Jefferson believed that Virginia lost 30,000 slaves in one year alone. (PBS)

Possibly a quarter of the slaves who escaped to the British made their way onto ships, some signing onto the ships’ crews or joining marauding expeditions of bandits commonly referred to as “Banditti.”  (PBS)

Others ran away to join the patriot militias or Continental army. Washington and other military officers received numerous requests to recover runways who had enlisted.

The American Revolution had profound effects on the institution of slavery.

Several thousand slaves won their freedom by serving on either side of the War of Independence. As a result of the Revolution, a surprising number of slaves were released from slavery, while thousands of others freed themselves by running away.

In the late 1770s, dwindling manpower forced George Washington to reconsider his original decision to ban Black people from the Continental Army. So in 1778, a Rhode Island legislature declared that both free and enslaved Black people could serve. To attract the latter, the Patriots promised freedom at the end of service.  (history-com)

In October 1781, as Patriot and French ground forces and the French fleet surrounded Cornwallis’ men at Yorktown, Virginia, the British sent their black allies to face death between the battle lines.

In November 1782, Britain and America signed a provisional treaty granting the former colonies their independence.

Although the rise of the free black population is one of the most notable achievements of the Revolutionary Era, it is important to note that the overall impact of the Revolution on slavery had negative consequences.

In rice-growing regions of South Carolina and Georgia, the patriot victory confirmed the power of the master class. Doubts about slavery and legal modifications that occurred in the North and Upper South never took serious hold among whites in the Lower South. Even in Virginia, the move toward freeing some slaves was made more difficult by new legal restrictions in 1792.

In the North, where slavery was on its way out, racism still persisted, as in a Massachusetts law of 1786 that prohibited whites from legally marrying African Americans, Indians, or people of mixed race.

The Revolution clearly had a mixed impact on slavery and contradictory meanings for African Americans.   It failed to reconcile slavery with these new egalitarian republican societies, a tension that eventually boiled over in the 1830s and 1840s and effectively tore the nation in two in the 1850s and 1860s. (Lumen Learning)

Click the following link to a general summary about Slaves in the Revolutionary War:

Click to access Slaves-in-the-Revolutionary-War.pdf

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Blacks in Hawaiʻi

The history of the Black presence in Hawaiʻi goes back to the first sailors; Blacks were crewmembers of Captain Cook’s second and third Pacific voyages.

Thirty years later, Cook’s Black cabin boy was given the opportunity to prove his navigational prowess to George Crowninshield, then captain of the famous Salem, MA built yacht ‘Cleopatra’s Barge,’ in Genoa, Italy. (McGhee) (Liholiho, King Kamehameha II, later bought Cleopatra’s Barge for over 1-million pounds of sandalwood and renamed the yacht “Haʻaheo O Hawai‘i” (Pride of Hawaiʻi.))

There is a “high likelihood” of the presence of Blacks on many of the early ships that crossed the Pacific.  Free and unfree Blacks had been serving onboard these ships in a variety of capacities.

Between about 1820 and 1880 hundreds of whaling ships annually pulled into (primarily) Honolulu and Lāhainā, and a significant number of Blacks stayed behind in the islands and became permanent residents, where they worked as cooks, barbers, tailors, sailors on interisland vessels and members of musical groups.

Work on sugar plantations was considered too close to slavery that Blacks were not considered for contract labor by the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Later, however, a significant influx of Blacks to Hawaiʻi involved the migration of the first Portuguese and Puerto Rican contract laborers to work on the sugar plantations (a significant portion of these were of African ancestry.)

Hawaiʻi experienced serious labor problems prior to 1900. Japanese and Chinese plantation laborers had sporadic strikes that began to present real problems for plantation owners.

“Paradise of the Pacific” quoted one sugar plantation owner as saying that his plantation could take 25-families.  He stated that “…interest has also been awakened among housewives as to the desirability of Negroes as cooks, nurses, etc and many think they might supplant the Japanese in household duties.” (September 1897)

Over the following decades more Blacks came to the islands.  The following is a sampling of some census data on African-Americans in Hawaiʻi:
1900 ……….233
1950 ……..2,651
1970 ……..7,517
1990 ……26,669
2000 ……22,003
2010 ……21,424
2020 ……23,417

A couple of the early, notable Blacks in Hawaiʻi include:

Anthony D Allen
The most notable among African Americans to settle in Hawaiʻi, Anthony Allen, arrived in 1810.  Called Alani by the Hawaiians, Allen was a former slave; arriving in Hawaiʻi he served as a steward to Kamehameha and went on to become a successful entrepreneur.

He acquired land from high priest Hewa Hewa in 1811, starting a farm, ‘resort’ (he reportedly had the first ‘hotel’ in Waikīkī,) a bowling alley and a hospital for ill and injured sailors.

Allen died of a stroke on December 31, 1835, leaving behind a considerable fortune to his children.  In tribute to Allen, Reverend John Diell noted, “The last sun of the departed year went down upon the dying bed of another man who has long resided upon the island. He was a colored man, but shared, to a large extent, in the respect of this whole community. …”

“He has been a pattern of industry and perseverance, and of care for the education of his children. … In justice to his memory, and to my own feelings, I must take this opportunity to acknowledge the many expressions of kindness which we received from him from the moment of our arrival.”

Click HERE for a link to a prior story on Anthony Allen.

Betsey Stockton
Another former slave on the continent, Betsey Stockton then belonged to Robert Stockton, a local attorney.  She was given to Stockton’s daughter and son-in-law, the Rev. Ashbel Green, then President of Princeton College (later known as Princeton University,) as a gift.

When Stockton expressed her interest in becoming a Christian missionary, she was granted her freedom and accepted into membership by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missionaries.  On November 20, 1822, Stockton and 20 other American Protestant missionaries in the 2nd Company set sail from New Haven, Connecticut for the Hawaiian Islands.  Upon her arrival Stockton became the first known African American woman in Hawaiʻi.  Stockton was assigned to a mission in Lāhainā, Maui, in 1823.

Up until that time, missionaries instructed Hawaiians in Christianity but had limited their teaching of reading, writing and math to their own children and the children of the Hawaiian chiefs.  Stockton learned the Hawaiian Language and established a school in Maui where she taught English, Latin, History and Algebra.

The site of her school is the location of the current Lahainaluna School.  Stockton left Hawaiʻi in 1825, returning to the mainland where she was assigned to teach Native American children in Canada.  She spent the final years of her life teaching black children in Philadelphia.  Betsy Stockton died in her hometown of Princeton, New Jersey in October 1865.

Click HERE for a link to a prior story on Betsey Stockton

Alice Augusta Ball
On June 1, 1915, Alice Ball was the first African American and the first woman to graduate with a Master of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Hawaiʻi. In the 1915-1916 academic year, she also became the first woman to teach chemistry at the institution.

But the significant contribution Ball made to medicine was a successful injectable treatment for those suffering from Hansen’s disease.  She isolated the ethyl ester of chaulmoogra oil (from the tree native to India) which, when injected, proved extremely effective in relieving some of the symptoms of Hansen’s disease.

Although not a full cure, Ball’s discovery was a significant victory in the fight against a disease that has plagued nations for thousands of years.  The discovery was coined, at least for the time being, the “Ball Method.”  A College of Hawaiʻi chemistry laboratory began producing large quantities of the new injectable chaulmoogra.

During the four years between 1919 and 1923, no patients were sent to Kalaupapa – and for the first time some Kalaupapa patients were released. Ball’s injectable compound seemed to provide effective treatment for the disease, and as a result the lab began to receive “requests for their chaulmoogra oil preparations from all over the world.”

Click HERE for a link to a prior story on Alice Ball.

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First Blacks at Plymouth

Black history in the continental US had its beginnings in Virginia, yet Plymouth appears to have been first in having blacks as freemen.  In 1622, Thomas Weston, a merchant capitalist who had led the Pilgrims’ Mayflower financial group, organized a group of adventurers and fortune seekers to create a startup settlement just north of Plymouth.

Juan (sometimes John) Pedro came to Plymouth Colony with this group. “Juan Pedro deserves the distinction of being Plymouth’s first black Pilgrim.” (Gauquier, Cad Cod Times)   Let’s look back …

Early African Slave Trade

In the 15th century, Portugal became the first European nation to take significant part in African slave trading.  (College of Charleston)  By the 1480s, Portuguese ships were already transporting Africans for use as slaves on the sugar plantations in the Cape Verde and Madeira islands in the eastern Atlantic.  (Britannica)

By the 16th century, the Portuguese dominated the early trans-Atlantic slave trade on the African coast.  As a result, other European nations first gained access to enslaved Africans through privateering during wars with the Portuguese, rather than through direct trade.

When English, Dutch or French privateers captured Portuguese ships during Atlantic maritime conflicts, they often found enslaved Africans on these ships, as well as Atlantic trade goods, and they sent these captives to work in their own colonies. (LDHI, College of Charleston)

The Portuguese developed a trading relationship with the Kingdom of Kongo, which existed from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries in what is now Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Civil War within Kongo during the trans-Atlantic slave trade would lead to many of its subjects becoming captives traded to the Portuguese. (LDHI, College of Charleston)

Angola is a country on the west coast of southern Africa.  Like other areas there, portions had been colonized by the Portuguese.  The Portuguese established several settlements, forts and trading posts along the coast.  Despite Portugal’s territorial claims in Angola, its control over much of the country’s vast interior was minimal. (Hashaw)

During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, Angola was the leading exporter of slaves.  Starting in the early 1500s to the mid-1800s, nearly six million captives were embarked for the Americas from West Central African ports.  (Slave Societies)

The Catholic Church has a long history in Angola.  Catholic missionaries had been active in Angola an entire century before 1619 and had won thousands of voluntary converts.

In 1621, the Portuguese campaigns went deep into Kongo, and thousands were captured at the battle of Mbumbi at the very end of the year. These would all have been Christian, indeed, probably third or fourth generation Christian.  (Hashaw)

Angolans Were the First Africans to English America

The first Africans in Virginia in the 17th century came from the Kongo/Angola regions of West Central Africa. They were part of a large system established by the Portuguese in Africa to capture and supply slaves to the Spanish colonies in Central and South America.  (Marks)

The Spanish slave frigate São João Bautista (‘Baptist’), captained by Manuel Mendes da Cunha, left Africa with 350 slaves.  At the end of June, one month into the voyage, they ‘had many sick aboard, and many had already died.’

Before the frigate crossed the Atlantic and reached the West Indies a few weeks later, more than one hundred Africans on the Bautista had died of sickness. And Vera Cruz, her intended destination, was still nearly one thousand miles away.

Fearing the entire shipment would be dead before reaching Mexico, they paused briefly in the Caribbean for medicine and supplies that he paid for with twenty-four ‘slave boys he was forced to sell in Jamaica where he had to refresh.’  (Hashaw)

Of the original 350 Angolans who crossed on the Bautista in the summer of 1619, only 147 would finish the voyage to Vera Cruz in August. However, not all of the slaver’s losses were due to sickness.

The Bautista was captured in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 1619 by two English pirate ships – the Treasurer (the same ship that in 1616 had delivered Pocahontas to England) and the White Lion.

The 140-ton White Lion, that sailed out of Plymouth, England, and Flushing, in the Netherlands, was captained by a Calvinist minister, thirty-nine-year-old Reverend John Colyn Jope.  The White Lion carried Dutch letters of marque (this paperwork allowed Jope, as a civilian, to attack and plunder Spanish ships). 

The Bautista was destroyed in that attack before she could reach her intended destination of Vera Cruz, Mexico.  Figuring ship capacity, food, water, and the distance to Jamestown, they selected sixty or so of the healthiest Bantu men, women, and children and transferred them to their vessels – about thirty or so for the White Lion and the same number for the Treasurer. (Hashaw)

The first Africans in English North America were those pirated in 1619 by the White Lion and the Treasurer from the Spanish frigate San Juan Bautista in July, and delivered to Jamestown six weeks later at the latter end of August. (NPS, Historic Jamestowne)

The Angolans arrived in Virginia in 1619 when Jamestown still teetered on the brink and seemed about to disappear like the many doomed Spanish and English colonies before it. Their arrival coincided with the Virginia Company’s decision to change its course from seeking treasure to building communities.

The White Lion did not stay long at Point Comfort (Virginia), probably sailing to Jamestown before the arrival of the Treasurer a few days later.

The colony’s officials saw the Africans as valuable commodities and their labor as profitable; food supplies were scarce in Virginia between 1618 and 1624, and the Africans from the White Lion were desirable enough that the Governor and Cape Merchant parted with the Company’s dwindling stores.

Three or four days later, the Treasurer arrived at Point Comfort with additional enslaved Africans from the San Juan Bautista. The Treasurer did not stay long, departing quickly to avoid an ensuing scandal and potential seizure. Before departing, “two or three negroes they caste at Virginia,” and the remaining 25-27 Africans were taken to Bermuda, where a friendly governor allowed the Treasurer to trade. (Austin, Hampton History Museum)

Juan Pedro

Juan Pedro was one of the Bautista slaves that landed in Bermuda. Born in Angola in 1593, Juan Pedro, the baptized son of Bantu Christians, was taken prisoner of war at the age of twenty-five when the Imbangala forces under Governor Vasconcelos overran the Ndongo army of soba Kaita ka Balanga in 1619.

Butler assigned Juan Pedro and the two dozen or so other Treasurer Africans to work on both his and Lord Rich’s plantations at Bermuda. Butler also seized an additional fourteen Africans that Kendall had recently acquired from the White Lion, claiming that Kendall had ”stolen” them. These he set to work on the company’s general lands.

Over the next four years, a half dozen of these Africans were sent back to Jamestown. Names of Bautista Africans first appear in the 1625 Jamestown census, and from the faceless anonymity of Rolfe’s 1619 general description of “Negroes” emerge John Pedro, Antonio and Maria Johnson, and Antonio and Isabell Tucker and their young child, William, along with John Graweere, Margaret Cornish, and others.  (Hashaw)

Bermuda’s Governor Butler acknowledged he had three Africans in his possession (Juan Pedro, Anthonio (Anthony) Johnson and Maria (Mary Johnson).  In 1621, Governor Butler put all three of them aboard the James, and they sailed to the port of Bristol to testify in cases related to the piracy of the Bautista – through that, the Treasurer was implicated.

John Pedro, also known as Juan Pedro, returned to Virginia in 1623 on the Swan with one of the Earl of Warwick’s allies, Francis West, and resided at West’s plantation.  (1619 Genealogy)

Pedro lived in Plymouth, and during his time there, he marched with Myles Standish to explore Massachusetts. Onboard the Sparrow, he fished along the New England coast. He met the famous Squanto. He was there during Plymouth’s own terrible ‘starving time’ and shared hardships with the Pilgrims. He joined the Pilgrims in cutting trees for pales (pickets) to ring the tiny Plymouth settlement in defense against hostile attack.  (Hashaw)

He would remain in Plymouth for about a year and a half. But the New England colony was not to be his home. Given the Pilgrims’ evangelistic urge, there is little reason to believe that the Catholic Juan Pedro in Plymouth was not once more targeted for Protestant conversion. Once again, he refused.

In 1623, Juan Pedro went on to the colony of Jamestown. The 1625 Jamestown census identified ‘John Pedro, a Neger aged 30’ in the muster of Captain Francis West at his plantation in Elizabeth City on the Hampton River but revealed little else than that he had arrived two years earlier on the Swan. Whether Juan Pedro was regarded as a temporary or permanent servant is not clear, since the unfinished contracts of indentured servants could be inherited, .bought, traded, and, turned over for debt. (Hashaw)

It would be decades before Jamestown forbade Africans from carrying guns. John Pedro, listed in West’s muster, served as a soldier at Fort Algernon. Since West, as both a Virginia captain and the New England admiral, seems to have paid more attention to military and civic duties than to raising tobacco, it is also probable that Pedro accompanied him on various military expeditions both at sea and on land.

Whether Juan Pedro was regarded as a slave, an indentured servant, or a professional soldier by Captain West, he was a free man by the early 1650s when he was clearing land for his own plantation and purchasing servants, white and black, to extend his holdings through headrights. Land records show him progressing from Isle of Wight County to adjoining Surry County and to Lancaster County as newer shires were carved from older counties.

Juan Pedro’s patent for land in the Lancaster, later Middlesex, area of Virginia places him on the Dragon Run Swamp just before he mysteriously disappeared from colonial records in 1653. Before this time he had reunited with fellow Angolans who had crossed the Atlantic with him on the Bautista, including John Graweere in Surry County, and Anthony and Mary Johnson at Bennett’s Welcome, which was next door to West’s plantation.

He also became reacquainted with Antonio and Isabel, living with their young son, William, at Captain William Tucker’s farm at Elizabeth City. They were all Angolan Christians like himself.

In 1648, there were three hundred Africans in Jamestown among the fifteen thousand European settlers; and by then the first  malungu communities of Angolan Christian free men, many of whom had arrived via the Black Mayflower, were beginning to pop up in half a dozen places in Tidewater Virginia.

But in addition to his community, Juan Pedro had another loyalty – to his faith. His business dealings as a freeman show him involved with an emigrant from the English country gentry named William Eltonhead who was a Catholic and a friend of Lord Calvert, Baron of Baltimore.

The Eltonheads had an enslaved Angolan man named Francisco, who would later become the freedman Francis Payne. By this time Juan Pedro had married a woman (not yet identified), and they had at least one child, Matthew, who married into the Mayo family and from whom many descendants survive in Virginia to this day, though the Pedro surname has now been anglicized in a variety of forms.

It should be noted that Juan Pedro, John Graweere, Francis Payne, and Anthony and Mary Johnson became the earliest, freed blacks in Jamestown and, with other Angolans then living in Dutch New York, also the earliest free black property owners in all of North America. (Hashaw)

Slavery was not the inevitable fate of all the Africans who arrived in Virginia in the 17th century. By the middle of the century about a third of all Africans in the colony were free persons.

Most had been either slaves or indentured servants at some time in their lives, although a few had come as free persons or had been born there to free parents. Until the late 17th century there were no restrictions on free Africans in Virginia, and they lived similar lives to those of their English neighbors. (Marks)

Click the following link to a general summary about the First Blacks at Plymouth:

https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/wp-content/uploads/Blacks-in-Plymouth.pdf

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‘Black George’

The history of the Black presence in Hawaiʻi goes back to the sailors; Blacks were crewmembers of Captain Cook’s second and third Pacific voyages.

There is a “high likelihood” for the presence of Blacks on many of the early ships that crossed the Pacific.  Free and unfree Blacks had been serving onboard these ships in a variety of capacities.

Between about 1820 and 1880 hundreds of whaling ships annually pulled into (primarily) Honolulu and Lāhainā, and a significant number of Blacks stayed behind in the islands and became permanent residents where they worked as cooks, barbers, tailors, sailors on interisland vessels and members of musical groups.

Work on sugar plantations was considered too close to slavery that Blacks were not considered for contract labor by the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Later, however, a significant influx of Blacks to Hawaiʻi involved the migration of the first Portuguese and Puerto Rican contract laborers to work on the sugar plantations (a significant portion of these were of African ancestry.)

One of the earliest blacks in Honolulu, who first arrived in Hawaii in 1810 was Anthony Allen, from Schenectady, New York.  He was keeper of a saloon, boarding house and practiced medicine (he may have been Waikīkī’s first hotel operator on his land near the intersection of King and Punahou.)

Another of the early African Americans to Hawaiʻi was George Washington Hyatt.

He was known as “Black George.”

Born in 1815 in Petersburg, Virginia, Hyatt was a former slave who had escaped and made his way to Hawaiʻi. He had been a member of the original King’s Band under Oliver (the original leader of the King’s Band, also an African-American,) playing both the flute and the clarinet.

Four Blacks formed a royal brass band for Kamehameha in 1834, and Hyatt, organized a larger band in 1845.

Not only did Hyatt play in the band, in 1845 he became the Bandmaster.

A “contract” dated May 26, 1845 states: Know all men by these presents, that we the undersigned do agree to appoint and we do hereby appoint George Hyatt to be leader of the Band, and Charles Johnson to be Captain. …

For our services we are each to be paid not to exceed $3 for a whole day, $2 for half a day and $1 for anytime less than half a day.  (Bandy)

Hyatt remained in Honolulu following his three-year tenure as Bandmaster and lived in Hawai’i for the final 40 years of his life until his death at Queen’s Hospital on March 13, 1870 at the age of 65.  (Bandy)

He was known to many within local society: “Everybody knew him as ‘Black George’ twenty years ago, and he was a general favorite, not only because he played on the flute and clarinet at social gatherings, but because of his amiability.”  (Bandy)

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Anthony Allen

The history of the Black presence in Hawaiʻi goes back to the early sailors; Blacks were crewmembers of Cook’s second and third Pacific voyages.

There is a “high likelihood” for the presence of Blacks on many of the ships that crossed the Pacific.  Free and unfree Blacks had been serving onboard these ships in a variety of capacities.

Between about 1820 and 1880, hundreds of whaling ships annually pulled into (primarily) Honolulu and Lāhainā, and a significant number of Blacks stayed behind in the islands and became permanent residents where they worked as cooks, barbers, tailors, sailors on interisland vessels and members of musical groups.

Discussion of early African-American presence in Hawaiʻi usually starts with Anthony D. Allen.  He was born a slave on the German Flats, in New York, in 1774.   At about the age of 24, fearing his old master’s widow (Dougal) might sell him and he would have to leave his mother, he arranged for a new slave master and he was bought for $300.

Shortly thereafter, in 1800, he made a flight for freedom from Schenectady, NY, and made his way to Boston.  He went to work at sea, sailing with the same sea captain for eight years, seven as steward and one as cook.

Many other African Americans worked in the maritime industry during this period as crew members, pilots, cooks, stewards, stevedores, builders and captains. In the coming decades, Americans with African lineage would account for up to 50 percent of the maritime forces. (Scruggs, HJH)

In 1806, he ran into his former slave master and was almost forced back into slavery.  Mr. Coolege, the ship owner on which he worked, agreed to pay the former owner $300; the former owner agreed.

In return, Allen gave Coolege a promissory note to pay him back.  In April 1807, Allen paid the note back.  He spent the next few years sailing across the globe – Boston, France, Haiti, Havana China, Northwest US and eventually, in 1811, Hawaiʻi.

Called Alani by the Native Hawaiians, Allen served as steward to Kamehameha the Great and he acquired a parcel of about six acres.  He married a Hawaiian woman and had three children who survived into adulthood.  (HHS)

He “resided at Waikiki, lived as comfortably, and treated us as courteously, as any who had adopted that country before our arrival.”  (Hiram Bingham)

John Papa ʻĪʻī, a neighbor of Allen, in his testimony confirming rights to the land, told how Allen acquired his land: “The Allens got this land from an old high Priest – Hewa hewa. … this land was given him in the time of ‘’Kamehameha I’.”  (HJH)

By 1820, Allen owned a dozen houses, “within the enclosure were his dwelling, eating and cooking houses, with many more for a numerous train of dependents. There was also a well, a garden containing principally squashes, and in one part, a sheepfold in which was one cow, several sheep, and three hundred goats.”  (Sybil Bingham Journal)

Allen’s land held a variety of business enterprises, including animal husbandry, farming, a boarding house, a hospital, a bowling alley and a grog shop. Besides keeping his own animals, Allen boarded cattle for others.  Allen may have operated the first commercial dairy in Hawaiʻi.

“Waikīkī” was once a vast marshland whose boundaries encompassed more than 2,000-acres (as compared to its present 500-acres below the Ala Wai Canal we call Waikīkī, today).

Allen’s six-acres and home were about two miles from downtown at Pawaʻa, between what we now call Waikīkī and Mānoa at what is now the corner of Punahou and King Streets.  This is where Washington Intermediate School is now situated.  (Washington was the first intermediate school built on Oʻahu; it opened in 1926.)

In addition to his farming, Allen provided overnight accommodations – one of the earliest known hotel uses in Waikīkī.  Several references note his property as a “resort.”  (Hawaiʻi’s first “hotel” may be attributed to Don Francisco de Paula Marin, sometime after 1810 on Marin’s property at Honolulu Harbor.)

Reverend Charles Stewart notes of Allen’s place in his journal, “… it is a favourite resort of the more respectable of the seamen who visit Honoruru. …” With it, he had a popular bowling alley.

He entertained often and made his property available for special occasions.  “King (Kauikeaouli – Kamehameha III) had a Grand Dinner at A. D. Allen’s. The company came up at sunset. Music played very late.”  (Reynolds – Scruggs, HJH)

He even operated a hospital where ill or injured seamen and sea captains were taken ashore to recuperate; however, it is not clear if he had medical training or who else there did.

It appears that Allen helped oversee the construction and maintenance of one of the first improved roads in Honolulu, probably what today is known as Punahou Street, which becomes Mānoa Road.

In the “… valley of Manoa … this afternoon Mr. Bingham drove me in a wagon to it. There is now a good carriage road … as far as the country house of Kaahumanu … five miles from Honolulu.” (Reynolds, Scruggs, HJH)

Allen, the former slave, died of a stroke on December 31, 1835, leaving behind a considerable fortune to his children.

In tribute to Allen, Reverend John Diell noted, “The last sun of the departed year went down upon the dying bed of another man who has long resided upon the island. He was a colored man, but shared, to a large extent, in the respect of this whole community. …”

“He has been a pattern of industry and perseverance, and of care for the education of his children. … In justice to his memory, and to my own feelings, I must take this opportunity to acknowledge the many expressions of kindness which we received from him from the moment of our arrival.”

The image shows an 1874 map (Waikiki DAGS Reg-797-(portion)) that notes the property owned by Anthony D Allen.

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