Daniel Dole

March 18, 2022 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Daniel Dole was born in Bloomfield (now Skowhegan,) Maine, September 9, 1808. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1836 and Bangor Theological Seminary in 1839, and then married Emily Hoyt Ballard (1807-1844,) October 2, 1840 in Gardiner, Maine.

The education of their children was a concern of missionaries. There were two major dilemmas, (1) there were a limited number of missionary children and (2) existing schools (which the missionaries taught) served adult Hawaiians (who were taught from a limited curriculum in the Hawaiian language.)

During the first 21-years of the missionary period (1820-1863,) no fewer than 33 children were either taken back to the continent by their parents. (Seven-year-old Sophia Bingham, the first Caucasian girl born on Oʻahu, daughter of Hiram and Sybil, was sent to the continent in 1828. She is my great-great-grandmother.)

On July 11, 1842, fifteen children met for the first time in Punahou’s original E-shaped building. The first Board of Trustees (1841) included Rev. Daniel Dole, Rev. Richard Armstrong, Levi Chamberlain, Rev. John S Emerson and Gerrit P Judd. (Hawaiian Gazette, June 17, 1916)

By the end of that first year, 34-children from Sandwich Islands and Oregon missions were enrolled, only one over 12-years old. Tuition was $12 per term, and the school year covered three terms. (Punahou)

By 1851, Punahou officially opened its doors to all races and religions. (Students from Oregon, California and Tahiti were welcomed from 1841 – 1849.)

December 15 of that year, Old School Hall, “the new spacious school house,” opened officially to receive its first students. The building is still there and in use by the school.

“The founding of Punahou as a school for missionary children not only provided means of instruction for the children, of the Mission, but also gave a trend to the education and history of the Islands.”

“In 1841, at Punahou the Mission established this school and built for it simple halls of adobe. From this unpretentious beginning, the school has grown to its present prosperous condition.” (Report of the Superintendent of Public Education, 1900)

The curriculum at Punahou under Dole combined the elements of a classical education with a strong emphasis on manual labor in the school’s fields for the boys, and in domestic matters for the girls. The school raised much of its own food. (Burlin)

Some of Punahou’s early buildings include, Old School Hall (1852,) music studios; Bingham Hall (1882,) Bishop Hall of Science (1884,) Pauahi Hall (1894,) Charles R. Bishop Hall (1902,) recitation halls; Dole Hall and Rice Hall (1906,) dormitories; Cooke Library (1908) and Castle Hall (1913,) dormitory.

Dole Street, laid out in 1880 and part of the development of the lower Punahou pasture was named after Daniel Dole (other nearby streets were named after other Punahou presidents.)

Emily died on April 27, 1844 in Honolulu; Daniel Dole married Charlotte Close Knapp (1813-1874) June 22, 1846 in Honolulu, Oʻahu.

Daniel Dole resigned from Punahou in 1855 to become the pastor and teacher at Kōloa, Kauai. There, he started the Dole School that later became Kōloa School, the first public school on Kauai. Like Punahou, it filled the need to educate mission children.

The first Kōloa school house was a single room, a clapboard building with bare timbers inside and a thatched roof. Both missionary children as well as part-Hawaiian children attended the school. (Joesting)

Due to growing demand, the school was enlarged and boarding students were admitted. Reverend Elias Bond in Kohala sent his three oldest children to the Kōloa School, as did others from across the islands. (Joesting)

Charlotte died on Kauai in 1874 and Daniel Dole died August 26, 1878 in Kapaʻa, Kauai. Dole’s sons include Sanford Ballard Dole (President of the Republic of Hawaiʻi and 1st Territorial Governor of Hawaiʻi.) Daniel Dole was great uncle to James Dole, the ‘Pineapple King.’

July 12, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Plain Living and High Thinking

“For while the pros and cons of a local school for mission children were still being eagerly discussed, the mission in general assembly that year, 1831, resolved prayerfully that the time was not yet ripe and that recourse must still be had for an indefinite period to the long separations and the generosity of friends on the other side of the world.”

“The first recorded hint of Punahou as a possibility is given in that same year in the name of Brother Tinker who, one day, when riding past the scene of Mrs (Sybil) Bingham’s activities, remarked to Brother Baldwin, ‘That, sir, is the site of the future college.’”

“The year 1840 … was the year of visible beginnings. At the General Meeting of the Mission it was voted to establish a school for boys and girls at Punahou …. A committee consisting of Brethren Judd, Castle and Powell Smith was appointed to execute the plans.”

“Three Armstrong children were waiting for that first class at Punahou, four Chamberlains, two Emersons, two Forbes, five Gulicks, one Hall, three Hitchcocks, three Judds, three Parkers and two Richards.”

“For lack of a teacher, no further step was taken until the spring of the following year when Mr and Mrs (Daniel) Dole arrived. Miss Marcia Smith was appointed to assist them”. (Damon, The Friend, March 1924)

Dole brought ‘plain living and high thinking’ as the rule of the school; and by common consent, in retrospect from the present time, the work of those early teachers was nobly done. (Portraits of Missionaries)

George Ripley, a Unitarian minister, conceived a plan of plain living and high thinking. He and his associates became the founders of what is known now as “The Great Experiment.”

He had as his associates such able men as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles A. Dana, who afterwards became Assistant Secretary of War in the Cabinet of the President of the United States. This “Great Experiment” came to an end in 1846. (McKay)

“The vital principle which ought to reside in the brain is called away … to assist in … digestion and no mental energy is apparent.”

“Let a mother send a child to school with a basket of food sufficient for a laborer’s dinner, and she must expect nothing else than the return of her child at night with no increase of intellectual wealth.” (Dole, Punahou)

“From a long and somewhat intimate acquaintance I can state that I have rarely met a minister who did not have the best interests of his profession first in his thoughts, and did not abhor necessity which forces him even to think of the material side.”

“’Plain living and high thinking’ is the rule amongst them: few care for more than the average comforts and conveniences of life, and these more for the sake of an often over-burdened wife than for themselves.” (Unitarian Register)

“On July 11, 1842 fifteen of the mission children took their seats in the first session of Kapunahou School. Before the end of the year thirty-four were in attendance, thus more than justifying the estimate for accommodations.”

“In 1844 four new rooms were added, and two much beloved teachers, Mr and Mrs Rice from the station at Hana, Maui, came to make their home at Punahou.”

“Many are the stories that are told, – of wearing three pairs of pants when a whipping was judged imminent; of the old green desks in the school room between the two courts …”

“… of the tamarind tree planted near the house in 1842, which is still standing near Bingham Hall; of Father Dole’s red ruler; of Father Damon spelling down the whole school in the annual “exhibition” on the word “separate” …”

“… of the love letters passed behind books; of secret expeditions to Rocky Hill caves … of the talks on stars; of the ‘little birds who can sing and won’t sing, but must be made to sing’ …”

“… of the intense joy over letters and bundles from homes on other islands, — stories which would take a lifetime to re-tell.”

“It was a happy, busy life, a ‘unique experiment in education,’ which drew to itself the notice of strangers in California and Oregon so that many a child was sent across the Pacific to Punahou from those pioneer settlements as yet touched by no railroad and dignified by no schools other than the few scattered ones for Indians.”

“The first decade of the school was, as well as many of the later ones, filled with ‘plain living and high thinking.’ The journals and letters of those early pupils throb with the eager endeavor to be worthy of all that was being done for them …”

“… some, showing the natural result of isolated and over-stimulated childhood, refer to the writers themselves, all under twelve years of age, as ‘vile worm and thrice black-hearted sinner.’”

“But all of them are wide awake, delighted in their work as a rule, and taking keen pleasure in the rare joy of a Saturday’s tramp among the hills.” (Damon, The Friend, March 1924)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Daniel_and_Charlotte_Dole,_circa_1853

Miss Marcia M. Smith, Teacher

Punahou-Lily-Pond-and-Tennis-Courts-1916

Punahou Omnibus-1890

Punahou Omnibus

Punahou School-(MasonArchitects)-1848

Puanhou_Gate

Pohakuloa-Entry

July 14, 2017 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Dole Street

The beginning of the original Dole Street was just below the Punahou School campus and was part of a small subdivision of lots the school developed to raise money for the school’s endowment.

“In 1880 the ‘lower pasture,’ containing 31.3 acres, was divided into building lots, and streets laid out in it. The sale of these lots has added twenty-one thousand four hundred ($21,400.00) to the endowment.” (Alexander, 1907)

The Punahou Lots development was surveyed in 1880 by SE Bishop (Reg 848) – streets within the subdivision were named for prior leaders of the school.

Dole, Beckwith, Alexander and Bingham Streets, were named for prominent men associated with Punahou School.

Rev. Daniel Dole (1841-1854), Rev. Edward Griffin Beckwith (1854-1859) and William DeWitt Alexander (1864-1871), were initial and early leaders of the school.

Another street within the Punahou Lots development, Bingham, was named for Rev. Hiram Bingham, the initial recipient of the land grant, on behalf of the American Protestant mission, that eventually became Punahou School.

Apparently, some at the University of Hawaiʻi are trying “to restore Dole Street to its Hawaiian name” – suggesting Dole Street was originally named Kapaʻakea Street. (HNN)

“University of Hawaiʻi graduate student Kepoo Keliipaakaua found it on an 1882 survey map of the Mānoa area. Kapaʻakea means coral bedrock or limestone.” (HNN) The students also suggest the street was named for Sanford Dole.

That is not true. The history is clear; Dole Street was formed in 1880 by Punahou School and was named for Rev. Daniel Dole, the first teacher/administrator of Punahou (it was not named for Dole’s son, Sanford).

Regional maps from 1887, 1893, 1912 and 1923 (and others) show Dole Street and its subsequent extensions in the direction of where the University of Hawaiʻi is presently situated.

None of those early maps show any roads around or below where the UH is today (keep in mind the University didn’t make it to Mānoa until 1912); and none of these maps show a Kapaʻakea Street at all.

There is a 1934 map noting a short street as part of the St Louis Heights that Dole Street was proposed to extend to – however, that street in St Louis Heights was not named Kapaʻakea Street.

The ‘1882’ map noted by the UH students shows a notation for a road segment noted as Kapaʻakea Street – suggesting the road was there in 1882 (although all other mapping clearly note otherwise).

In addition, that ‘1882’ map also includes references on it dated in 1927, 1928 and 1930, suggesting edits made to the map over time.

Those edits relate to executive orders and other actions for the University – again, the UH campus wasn’t built until 1912 (well after the ‘date’ of the map).

Even an untrained, casual observer will see that the delineation of the ‘Kapaʻakea Street’, the printing of its name and the surrounding notations are in a different style than most of the other writing on the map.

So that map, over time, was obviously updated, although some suggest it carries only the 1882 time-reference.

And, it’s not clear when that text and portion of the map were put on the map; it is also not clear if Kapaʻakea Street was ever built.

In the broader area, there is a short road segment below King Street, generally running mauka-makai, called Kapaʻakea Lane; it is well removed from the University campus area and is (was) not possibly interconnected with Dole Street.

Some of the old maps note wetland area identified as Kapaʻakea. Kapaʻakea Spring was originally known as Kumulae Spring (later Hausten Spring/Pond). In 1944, the Willows Restaurant opened there.

As noted, starting in 1880, Dole Street in Mānoa was named for Rev. Daniel Dole, the initial teacher/administrator at Punahou School – other nearby streets in the Punahou Lots subdivision (below the existing Punahou campus) are named for other early school leaders.

Suggestions that the ‘original’ name of Dole Street was Kapaʻakea Street are simply wrong and not consistent with the clear history of the road and its subsequent extensions.

The image is a portion of an 1892 map of the area. It notes Dole Street and the Punahou Lots subdivision (on the left); note that there are no roads on the right, and definitely nothing labeled Kapaʻakea, other than the wetland. Check out the full story and multiple maps that show the same – Dole Street, but no Kapaʻakea Street below UH.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger