Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ka Haku O Hawaiʻi

The marriage of Alexander Liholiho and Emma was one of mutual love.  They had common interests in literature, music, opera, religion and theater.  According to Emma, “Our happiest hours were spent reading aloud to each other.”

On May 20, 1858, the king and queen were blessed with the birth of a son, Albert Edward Kauikeaouli Kaleiopapa a Kamehameha.

He was named Albert Edward, after the husband of Queen Victoria of England, and Kauikeaouli Kaleiopapa, after his hānai grandfather Kamehameha III.

However, the Hawaiian people called young Albert “Ka Haku O Hawaiʻi,” “The Lord of Hawaiʻi.”

His mother and father affectionately called him “Baby.”

He was an honorary member of the Fire Engine Company Number Four and was given his own red Company Number Four uniform.

In 1860, Robert Crichton Wyllie, hosted his friends King Kamehameha IV, Queen Emma and their two-year-old son, Prince Albert at his plantation estate for several weeks.

In honor of the child, Wyllie, founder of the plantation, named his estate the “Barony de Princeville,” the City of the Prince (Princeville on Kauaʻi.)

Alexander Liholiho and Emma had hoped to have Albert christened by a bishop of the Church of England.

The prince became ill.  As Albert became sick, and the bishop’s arrival was delayed; he was baptized on August 23, 1862 by Ephraim W. Clark, the American minister of Kawaiahaʻo Church.

Queen Victoria of England had previously sent a silver christening vessel used at his christening.  The British Queen and her husband, Prince Albert, were the godparents of the young prince.

On the 27th of August, 1862, Prince Albert, the four-year-old son of Alexander Liholiho and Emma died, “leaving his father and mother heartbroken and the native community in desolation”. (Daws)  

The actual cause of death is not known.

Initially thought to have been “brain fever,” now called meningitis, today, some believe the prince may have died from appendicitis.  Whatever the cause, the young prince suffered for ten days and the doctors could not help him.

The King then ordered the construction of the Royal Mausoleum, Mauna ʻAla, in Nuʻuanu Valley to house his son’s body, since Pohukaina had become too full.

After Prince Albert, no child was born to a reigning Hawaiian monarch.  “The last of the line of Kamehameha the Great is at rest with his fathers.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, March 17, 1903)

“The king and queen had the sympathy of all parties in their bereavement; but Kamehameha IV completely lost his interest in public life, living in the utmost possible retirement until his death.”  (Liliʻuokalani)

The king became a recluse, suffering from asthma and depression. He died on St. Andrew’s Day, November 30, 1863, two months’ short of his 30th birthday.

Following her son’s death and before her husband’s death, Emma was referred to as “Kaleleokalani”, or “flight of the heavenly one”.

After her husband also died, it was changed into the plural form as “Kaleleonālani”, or the “flight of the heavenly ones”.

Mauna ‘Ala (fragrant mountain) was completed in January 1864 and a State funeral was held for Kamehameha IV on February 3, 1864.

Mauna ‘Ala is the resting place for many of Hawai‘i’s royalty.  On October 19, 1865, the Royal Mausoleum chapel was completed.

Emma ran unsuccessfully for the throne in 1874, losing to David Kalākaua. In 1883, Emma suffered the first of several small strokes and died two years later on April 25, 1885 at the age of 49.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

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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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Alexander Young Hotel

Alexander Young was born in Blackburn, Scotland, December 14, 1833, the son of Robert and Agnes Young. His father was a contractor. When young, he apprenticed in a mechanical engineering and machinist department.

One of his first jobs included sailing around the Horn in 1860 to Vancouver Island with a shipload of machinery and a contract to build and operate a large sawmill at Alberni.

He left Vancouver Island for the distant “Sandwich Islands,” arriving in Honolulu February 5, 1865; he then formed a partnership with William Lidgate to operate a foundry and machine shop at Hilo, Hawaiʻi, continuing in this business for four years.

Moving to Honolulu, Young bought the interest of Thomas Hughes in the Honolulu Iron Works and continued in this business for 32 years. On his retirement from the iron works he invested in sugar plantation enterprises. He became president of the Waiakea Mill Co.

During the monarchy he served in the House of Nobles, 1889, was a member of the advisory council under the provisional Government and was a Minister of the Interior in President Dole’s cabinet.

With the new century he started a new career, when in 1900 he started construction of the Alexander Young Hotel, fronting Bishop Street and extending the full block between King and Hotel streets in downtown Honolulu.  The 192-room building was completed in 1903.

In 1905, Young acquired the Moana Hotel and later the Royal Hawaiian Hotel (the ‘old’ Royal Hawaiian in downtown Honolulu that was later (1917) purchased for the Army and Navy YMCA.)

The Honolulu businessman whose downtown hotel that bore his name helped him became known as the father of the hotel industry in Hawaiʻi.

“Mr. Young has sought the best money could buy, with the single purpose of attaining the beauty, comfort and convenience which modern architecture can supply, modern thought suggest and modern man can require.” (Evening Bulletin, August 3, 1900)

Extending a block in length and rising six stories in height, the Alexander Young Building was the largest edifice in Honolulu. It dominated the city-scape and was a major landmark in the downtown area.

At the time of its construction it was the foremost hotel in the Pacific and one of the major hotels in America.

The Advertiser noted, “San Francisco with its 400,000 people, has only one caravansary as good and is priding itself on the prospect of one more. Across the bay Oakland, with 100,000 people, has nothing to compare with it; and going East through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas and so on to the western limits of Chicago, no hotel of equal cost and splendor can be found.”

“Between Chicago and Honolulu is a distance of 4,000 miles and a population of over thirty million people, yet but one hotel can be found in all that region which equals in size, modern fittings, and general attractiveness the hotel which bears the name Alexander Young.” (Honolulu Advertiser 1903)

It was four stories in height, six at the two ends, and built of grey granite; there was a roof garden tent where refreshments were served and concerts given.  At either end of this roof garden is a dance pavilion.  (The only major addition to the building was the fifth story placed on the roof garden in 1955.)

The Young Hotel was used by the military in both World Wars. During WW I, the US Army used the second floor. During WW II, the military occupied most of the hotel.   Other notable occupants of the hotel include the 1929 legislature, which maintained its offices there while ʻIolani Palace was refurbished.

In 1964, the hotel was converted to stores and offices.  The landmark (on the National Register of Historic Places) Alexander Young Building was demolished in 1981.

At about the same time, Young formed the von Hamm-Young Company with his son-in-law, Conrad Carl von Hamm and others (an automobile sales, textiles, wholesale sales, machinery and a host of other businesses, and forerunner of The Hawaiʻi Corporation.)  He also started Young Laundry.

Alexander Young died July 2, 1910.  (I have no known genealogical relation to him.)

© 2023 Hoʻokuleana LLC

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

First Sugar Production

He keiki aloha nā mea kanu

Beloved children are the plants

(ʻŌlelo Noʻeau 684)

In the past two decades, significant advances in radiocarbon dating and the targeted re-dating of key Eastern Polynesian and Hawaiian sites has strongly supported a “short chronology” model of Eastern Polynesian settlement.

It is suggested that initial Polynesian discovery and colonization of the Hawaiian Islands occurred between approximately AD 1000 and 1200.  (Kirch)

Sugar was a canoe crop; the early Polynesian settlers to Hawaiʻi brought sugar cane with them and demonstrated that it could be grown successfully in the islands.

In pre-contact times, sugarcane was not processed as we know sugar today, but was used by chewing the juicy stalks.  Its leaves were used for inside house thatching, or for outside (if pili grass wasn’t available.) The flower stalks of sugar cane were used to make a dart, sometimes used during the Makahiki games. (Canoe Crops)

The first written record of sugarcane in Hawaiʻi came from Captain James Cook, at the time he made initial contact with the Islands.  On January 19, 1778, off Kauai, he notes, “We saw no wood, but what was up in the interior part of the island, except a few trees about the villages; near which, also, we could observe several plantations of plantains and sugar-canes.”  (Cook)

Cook notes that sugar was cultivated, “The potatoe fields, and spots of sugar-canes, or plantains, in the higher grounds, are planted with the same regularity; and always in some determinate figure; generally as a square or oblong”.  (Cook)

It appears Cook was the first outsider to put sugarcane to use.  One of his tools in his fight against scurvy (severe lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in your diet) was beer.

On December 7, 1778 he notes, “Having procured a quantity of sugar cane; and having, upon a trial, made but a few days before, found that a strong decoction of it produced a very palatable beer, I ordered some more to be brewed, for our general use.”

“A few hops, of which we had some on board, improved it much. It has the taste of new malt beer; and I believe no one will doubt of its being very wholesome. And yet my inconsiderate crew alleged that it was injurious to their health.”  (Cook)

While the crew “would (not) even so much as taste it”, he “gave orders that no grog should be served … (he) and the officers, continued to make use of this sugarcane beer, whenever (they) could get materials for brewing it.”  (Cook) Others later made rum from the sugarcane.

But beer and rum were not a typical sugar use; “in 1802 sugar was first made at these islands, by a native of China, on the island of Lanai.”

“He came here in one of the vessels trading for sandal wood, and brought a stone mill, and boilers, and after grinding off one small crop and making it into sugar, went back the next year with his fixtures, to China.”  (Torbert; Polynesian, January 31, 1852)

While HSPA – HARC states, “The first successful sugarcane plantation was started at Kōloa, Kauai in 1835. Its first harvest in 1837 produced 2 tons of raw sugar, which sold for $200”, others suggest the first commercial production actually started on Maui.  (Hawaii Agriculture Research Center (HARC) (successor entity to Hawaii Sugar Planters Association (HSPA))

A couple guys named Ah Hung and Ah Tai, who combined their names in order to identify their company – a 1939 news ‘Short’ says Hungtai “is said to have been one of the earliest manufacturers of sugar in the islands, at Wailuku, Maui in 1823.” (Star Bulletin, April 6, 1939) Others say Hungtai started commercial sales in 1828; still, seven years before Koloa.

Hungtai had a plantation and a water-powered mill in Wailuku, and sold the sugar in their store at Merchant and Fort Streets in Honolulu. They were still selling that sugar as late as 1841, when they were advertising in local newspapers.  (TenBruggencate)

Early plantations were small and didn’t fare too well.  Soon, most would come to realize that “sugar farming and sugar milling were essentially great-scale operations.”  (Garvin)

Then, King Kamehameha III sought to expand sugar cultivation and production, as well as expand other agricultural ventures to support commercial agriculture in the Islands.  In a speech to the Legislature in 1847, the King notes:

“I recommend to your most serious consideration, to devise means to promote the agriculture of the islands, and profitable industry among all classes of their inhabitants. It is my wish that my subjects should possess lands upon a secure title; enabling them to live in abundance and comfort, and to bring up their children free from the vices that prevail in the seaports.”

“What my native subjects are greatly in want of, to become farmers, is capital with which to buy cattle, fence in the land and cultivate it properly. I recommend you to consider the best means of inducing foreigners to furnish capital for carrying on agricultural operations, that thus the exports of the country may be increased …” (King Kamehameha III Speech to the Legislature, April 28, 1847; Archives)

Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880. These twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system. Basic features of rural factory life were established.

This was a period of rapid growth for the sugar industry, building upon the momentum triggered by the Māhele of 1848, the Kuleana Act of 1850, and the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875.  Likewise, the Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai‘i to compete with elevated prices for sugar.

A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the landscape.  Sugar‐cane farming proved to be the only available crop that could be grown.  However, a shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge.   The only answer was imported labor.

There were three big waves of workforce immigration: Chinese 1852; Japanese 1885 and Filipinos 1905.  Several smaller, but substantial, migrations also occurred: Portuguese 1877; Norwegians 1880; Germans 1881; Puerto Ricans 1900; Koreans 1902 and Spanish 1907.

It is not likely anyone then foresaw the impact this would have on the cultural and social structure of the islands; the sugar industry is at the center of Hawaiʻi’s modern diversity of races and ethnic cultures.

At the industry’s peak in the 1930s, Hawaii’s sugar plantations employed more than 50,000 workers and produced more than 1-million tons of sugar a year; over 254,500-acres were planted in sugar.  That plummeted to 492,000 tons in 1995.

With statehood in 1959 and the almost simultaneous introduction of passenger jet airplanes, the tourist industry began to grow rapidly.

A majority of the plantations closed in the 1990s.

As sugar declined, tourism took its place – and far surpassed it.  Like many other societies, Hawaii underwent a profound transformation from an agrarian to a service economy.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hale Pili

Traditional dwellings (hale pili) were constructed of native woods lashed together with cordage most often made from olonā. Pili grass was a preferred thatching that added a pleasant odor to a new hale. Lauhala (pandanus leaves) or ti leaf bundles called pe‘a, were other covering materials used.

There were many loina (rules) associated with the construction of hale. The kahuna ku‘iku‘i puʻuone, priest who chose the location for a hale, had the final word on the important decision of site selection. The building of a new house was marked with ritual and a feast of dedication.  (Bishop Museum)

The “birthing” ceremony of a new dwelling centered around the doorway of the house with the cutting of the piko (center, symbolizing the umbilical cord) of the house and offerings of fish. The kahuna o Lono recited a Pule Ho‘ola‘a Hale (House Dedication Prayer).   (Bishop Museum)

During a tour of the Island of Hawaiʻi in 1823, missionary William Ellis noted the following, “The houses of the natives whom he had visited today, like most in this part of the island [Hilo district], where the pandanus is abundant, were covered with the leaves of this plant, which, though it requires more labour in thatching, makes the most durable dwellings.”

There is also less variety in the form of the Sandwich Island dwellings, which are chiefly of two kinds, viz., the kale noho (dwelling house), or halau (a long building) nearly open at one end, and, though thatched with different materials, they are all framed in nearly the same way.”  (Ellis)

“The size and quality of a dwelling varies according to the rank and means of its possessor, those of the poor people being mere huts, eight or ten feet square, others twenty feet long, and ten or twelve feet wide, while the houses of the chiefs are from forty to seventy feet long.  (Ellis)

Unlike our housing today, the single ‘hale’ was not necessarily the ‘home.’ The traditional Hawaiian home was the kauhale (Lit., plural house;) this was a group of houses forming the homestead – spatially separated – each serving a specific purpose, but paired male and female activity areas.

“Their houses are generally separate from each other: even in their most populous villages, however near the houses may be, they are always distinct buildings.”  (Ellis)

A kauhale could consist of a cluster of dwellings in the mid-elevations for cultivating food, another cluster of dwellings on the shoreline for fishing, and perhaps even more higher up on the volcanic slopes for hunting and harvesting wood products.

For the fairly well-to-do family, these consisted of hale noa (house free from kapu) where all slept together, hale mua (men’s meeting/eating house, hale aina (women’s eating house,) hale pe‘a (menstruation house) and other needed dwellings (those for canoe makers and others used to house fishing gear.)

The two basic functional units were the common house or hale noa and the mua.   Apparently, only a few households ever exhibited the full complement of structures, although sleeping and cook houses were present within most household complexes. (Handy & Pukui)

The main structure within the kauhale household complex was the common house, or hale noa, in which all the family members slept at night. It was the largest building within a family compound and the most weatherproof.  (Loubser)

The house in which the men ate was called the mua; the sanctuary where they worshipped was called heiau, and it was a very tabu place. The house in which the women ate was called the hale aina.

These houses were the ones to which the restrictions and tabu applied, but in the common dwelling house, hale noa, the man and his wife met freely together.  (Malo)

In most cases, the hale noa was mauka of the hale mua.  Where this is not the case, the hale noa is nonetheless still on higher ground than the hale mua. This mauka-makai or high ground-low ground opposition might be significant in terms of the traditional Hawaiian divisions of space along gender lines.  (Loubser)

This arrangement, under the kapu system, was very burdensome on the husband and wife.  For instance, the husband was burdened and wearied with the preparation of two ovens of food, one for himself and a separate one for his wife.  (Malo)

He would first prepare an oven of food for his wife, and, when that was done, he went to the house mua and started an oven of food for himself.  He’s return to the wife’s oven peel the taro, pound it into poi, knead it and put it into the calabash for his wife. Then he’d return to do the same for himself.  (Malo)

A huge change that came with the end of the kapu system (in 1819) was the mixing of the previously separate places for eating and sleeping. The book Native Planters describes:

“The simplicity and orderliness of the hale noa, and with them the sound, normal living of families, were destroyed when the kapu requiring men and women to eat separately was abolished. This meant that food was brought into the living quarters.”

“What had been a clean and neat sanctum for man and wife and their offspring became a free-for-all gathering place for all ages of both sexes.”  (Handy & Pukui)

“The house was esteemed a possession of great value. It was the place where husband and wife slept, where their children and friends met, where the household goods of all sorts were stored.”  (Malo)

“To act justly without trespassing or deceiving, not frequenting another’s house, not gazing wistfully upon your neighbor’s goods nor begging for anything that belongs to him – that is the prudent course.”  (Malo)

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