Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Waikīkī Ranch and Dairy

Jay P Graves, son of John James Graves (who made his fortune in mining, streetcar and railroad on the continent) purchased about 1,000-acres of land in 1904 and started Waikīkī Ranch.

Like others with means in the day, he built a mansion; it was designed by architect Kirtland Cutter. The Olmstead Brothers of Boston designed the gardens and water system, and the interiors were done by Elsie de Wolfe, America’s first well-known decorator.

Graves wanted the mansion to have a joyous atmosphere, which significantly influenced the Cutter design. The house has beautiful oak and maple floors, and unique molded-plaster ceilings.

Newspaper accounts note that a construction camp had been established on the property for the 25-100 workmen who were engaged in construction of the mansion. The camp was complete with a bunkhouse, commissary and mess tent.

The 23-room mansion and a number of smaller buildings were constructed at a cost of approximately $175,000 for construction and furnishings in 1911-1913.

Waikīkī Ranch had its own water system, which included a storage system of 100,000-gallons, as well as its own hydro-electric system, which provided all of the electrical requirements.

The beautiful staircase featured rare tigerwood and benches to sit. The one-piece carved alabaster light fixture was of exceptional size and typical of Cutters details; leaded glass was throughout the home.

For nearly twenty-five years Graves continued to make additions and alterations to the property, often with Cutter designs.

The Graves entertained many of the nation’s financial leaders and even royalty. Prince Albert, later King Albert of Belgium, was a visitor.

Waikīkī Ranch was said to have had the largest herd of thoroughbred Jersey Cattle in the Pacific. The dairy was well known throughout the world with breeding stock shipped as far away as China.

The Jersey was bred on the British Channel Island of Jersey. It apparently descended from cattle stock brought over from the nearby Norman mainland, and was first recorded as a separate breed around 1700.

Adaptable to hot climates, these are smaller cows are a popular breed due to the ability to carry a larger number of effective milking cows per unit area due to lower body weight, hence lower maintenance requirements and superior grazing ability (also the high butterfat content of its milk.)

The Waikīkī Dairy, founded in 1914, had its own special bottling, with bottles printed with brilliant red lettering around the bottom: “For the exclusive use of Waikīkī Dairy”.

In 1936, the mansion and remaining ranch property was sold to Mr. & Mrs. Charles E. Marr for $175,000. The Graves moved to Pasadena, California.

OK, before you exhaust yourself racking your brain trying to figure out where this 1,000-acre dairy/ranch was in Waikīkī … it wasn’t in Hawaiʻi, it was in Spokane, Washington.

But there are Hawaiʻi ties to the place.

Obviously the name, Waikīkī Ranch, is one. Graves had visited Waikīkī and noted the meaning of its name, ‘spouting waters.’ Since the ranch had 24-natural springs, Graves thought it an appropriate name for his property.

There’s more.

Lots of Hawaiʻi students go to college on the former ranch property.

Gonzaga University purchased the Waikīkī Mansion and 9-acres of land in 1964 for $500,000 with the intention of using it for retreats and other events.

In 1983, the Waikīkī mansion was renamed the Bozarth Mansion and Retreat Center in honor of area wheat farmer, Horace and Christine Bozarth, who gave a substantial gift to renovate the mansion and pay off the remaining debt.

Gonzaga students formed the Hawaiʻi-Pacific Islanders Club and host an annual lūʻau for students and area residents. Another Spokane school has Waikīkī Ranch ties; the ranch originally included the land on which Whitworth University is presently located.

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Milk Bottle from the Waikiki Dairy
Milk Bottle from the Waikiki Dairy-Spokane
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Whitworth University-Hawaiian Club
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Gonzaga University-Hawaii Pacific Islanders Club-Luau

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

General Meeting

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863 – the “Missionary Period”,) about 184-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission (ABCFM) in the Hawaiian Islands.

One of the earliest efforts of the missionaries, who arrived in 1820, was the identification and selection of important communities (generally near ports and aliʻi residences) as “stations” for the regional church and school centers across the Hawaiian Islands.

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. Meeting houses were constructed at the stations, as well as throughout the district. Initially constructed as the traditional Hawaiian thatched structures; they were later made of wood or stone.

By 1850, eighteen mission stations had been established; six on Hawaiʻi, four on Maui, four on Oʻahu, three on Kauai and one on Molokai.

Very prominent in the old mission life was the annual “General Meeting” where all of the missionary families from across the Islands gathered at Honolulu from four to six weeks.

“The design of their coming together would naturally suggest itself to any reflecting mind. They are all engaged in one work, but are stationed at various and distant points on different portions of the group, hence they feel the necessity of occasionally coming together, reviewing the past, and concerting plans for future operations.”

“Were it not for these meetings, missionaries at extreme parts of the group might never see each other, and in some instances we know that persons connected with the Sandwich Island Mission, have never seen each other’s faces, although for years they have been laboring in the same work.” (The Friend, June 15, 1846)

The primary object of this gathering was to hold a business meeting for hearing reports of the year’s work and of the year’s experiences in more secular matters, and there from to formulate their annual report to the Board in Boston. Annual General Meetings of the mission fixed policy – “the majority ruled”.

The General Meeting was held in an adobe school house (constructed during the period 1833-1835) still standing south of the Kawaiaha‘o Church, on Kawaiaha‘o Street.

An important object of the General Meeting was a social one. The many stations away from Honolulu were more or less isolated – some of them extremely so. Perhaps a dominant influence in the consumption of so much time was the appreciation of the social opportunity, and the unwillingness to bring it unnecessarily to a speedy close. (Dole)

“Often some forty or more of the missionaries besides their wives were present, as well as many of the older children. … Much business was transacted relating to the multifarious work and business of the Mission. New missionaries were to be located, and older ones transferred.” (Bishop)

Mission Houses Annual Meetings

The annual gathering of the Cousins, descendants of the early missionaries, continues. Today, the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, a nonprofit educational institution and genealogical society, exists to promote an understanding of the social history of nineteenth-century Hawai‘i and its critical role in the formation of modern Hawai‘i.

The annual gathering of the Cousins, descendants of the early missionaries, continues. Hawaiian Mission Houses will be holding its annual meeting on April 25, 2020; however, due to present circumstances it will be held via video conference and not on the Mission Houses grounds, a stone’s throw from the old General Meeting house across Kawaiahaʻo Street.

The Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, a nonprofit educational institution and genealogical society, exists to promote an understanding of the social history of nineteenth-century Hawai‘i and its critical role in the formation of modern Hawai‘i.

The Society operates the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives, comprised of three historic buildings and a research archives with reading room. The Society also compiles the genealogical records of the American Protestant missionaries in Hawai‘i and promotes the participation of missionary descendants in the Society’s activities.

Through the Site and Archives, the Society collects and preserves the documents, artifacts and other records of the missionaries in Hawai‘i’s history; makes these collections available for research and educational purposes; and interprets the historic site and collections to reflect the social history of nineteenth century Hawai‘i and America. Lots of stuff is online – click HERE.

When we are allowed to reopen, we plan to continue the guided tours of the houses and other parts of the historic site, Tuesday through Saturday, starting on the hour every hour from 11 am with the last tour beginning at 3 pm.

Click HERE to view/download Background Information on General Meeting

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Poi Prohibited

“The sale of poi is now officially prohibited.”

Thus was the March 2, 1911 directive of Food Commissioner Blanchard (as noted in an announcement on the front page of the Hawaiian Gazette, March 3, 1911.)  (While not being sold, there was still plenty of poi available to consumption.)

“Over seventy-five hundred pounds of poi is being distributed free every day to Hawaiians in this city by the board of health under a resolution by the legislature appropriating $2000 out of the contingent fund for the expense subject to the approval of the Governor.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, March 10, 1911)

“About one ton of poi a day is given out at each of the four stations Kalihi, Palama, Mōʻiliʻili and Kawaiahaʻo Church.  At each place there is a health inspector representing the board of health who is in charge of the operation assisted by deputies of Mr Rath superintendent of the Palama settlement work, who is superintending the poi distribution.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, March 10, 1911)

“At first the distribution was in the shape of sacks of poi of about ten pounds each put up at the Kalihi factory but such a great demand was immediately developed that the factory had no time to sack the poi and now it is being sent to the distributing points in barrels.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, March 10, 1911)

“A number of bacteriological tests made with poi have convinced the health officers of the territorial and federal government that that staple can transmit and impart the germs of cholera and probably all other disease of similar nature.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, March 17, 1911)

“With but two exceptions every case of cholera in the two outbreaks during the past two months has been traced to one source of infection – the Manoa valley taro patches and the poi manufactured from this taro.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, April 18, 1911)

“In Manoa valley is a Chinese named Hong Fong who had a taro patch. He carried taro to a shop on Fort street near School. This was made into poi and each day he carried poi from this shop up to Manoa and delivered it to Manana and Mrs Gonsalves who were the first of the Manoa cases.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, April 18, 1911)

“Then comes the Perry family cases in Manoa where cholera wiped out almost an entire family. There were four cases of cholera.  They lived on the bank near this taro field.  They raised their own taro but sometimes bought poi from Hong Fong.”

“They filled their water barrels for drinking purposes from this stream which had been contaminated by Manana when he became sick.” (Hawaiian Gazette, April 18, 1911)

“In this stream Manana’s contaminated clothing was washed by members of his family and water from this polluted stream was used to mix with poi.  A Japanese dairyman nearby used this water to dilute the milk product and the children in the Perry family drank milk so diluted and contaminated.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, April 18, 1911)

“From February 25, when the first case was reported, to March 14, 1911, the date of the last case, there had been reported a total of 31-cases with 22 deaths.  Twenty four days having elapsed since the occurrence of the last case, Honolulu may properly be considered to no longer harbor the disease.”  (Public Health Reports)

The medical conditions led the territorial legislature to enact regulations on the processing of poi.  The “Poi Bill” gave the board of health the authority to close any poi shop which is found to be making poi under filthy and disease-breeding conditions (the first law to regulate poi factories.)

This is not the Islands’ last legislative fight over processing poi.

A hundred years later, in 2011, another “Poi Bill” (SB101) was enacted after it made its way through the legislature and onto the Governor’s desk.

It exempted paʻi ʻai (traditional “hand-pounded poi”) from certain food-processing requirements/permits under certain conditions.  (Up to that passage, the Department of Health deemed paʻi ʻai unsafe.)

(Cholera is an infection of the small intestine caused by the bacteria; the main symptoms are watery diarrhea and vomiting.  It is typically transmitted by either contaminated food or water.   Worldwide, there have been several cholera pandemics, killing millions of people.)

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Meyer Sugar

At the age of twenty-four, Rudolph Wilhelm Meyer emigrated from Germany to Hawaiʻi where he arrived on January 20, 1850. At the time, Meyer listed his occupation as a surveyor.

His main purpose in leaving Germany was to join the “Gold Rush” to California in 1848, but he was delayed on a stopover in Sidney, Australia, and again in Tahiti, after which he landed at Lāhaina, Maui.

Meyer spoke German, French and English when he arrived in Hawaiʻi, and soon wrote and spoke fluent Hawaiian.

Meyer settled on Molokai. There, he met the Reverend Harvey Rexford Hitchcock I, who accepted him as a house guest at Kaluaʻaha, Molokai.

While living with Reverend Hitchcock, he met High Chiefess Kalama Waha, who later became his wife. Sometime later, he moved his family to Honolulu where he worked for Austin and Becker at an office located on Maunakea Street.

The Meyer family later moved back to Molokai and made their permanent residence at Kalaʻe. They eventually had eleven children, six boys and five girls.

He supported his family, in part, by holding a number of local commissions from the Royal Hawaiian government, but primarily from his diverse agricultural activity.

Ranching began on Molokai in the first half of the 19th-century when Kamehameha V set up a country estate on the island, part of which is now the Molokai Ranch. Rudolph Meyer, one of the first western farmers on Molokai, served as ranch manager for King Kamehameha V. (DLNR)

He planted at various times coffee, corn, wheat, oats, taro, potatoes, beets, cassava, peaches, mangoes, bananas and grapes. He was the first on Molokai to grow, produce and mill sugar and coffee commercially and he exported these to Honolulu and California. He also operated a large dairy from which he produced butter.

Meyer started to grow sugar at the time when the 1876 Reciprocity Treaty between the United States and Hawaiʻi removed the tariff on Hawaiian sugar sold in the United States.

Rather than the expansion and innovation that followed the Treaty, Meyer scaled his mill to satisfy the modest 50- ton annual production from his family’s 30-acres of sugar cane.

Constructed in the 1870s the RW Meyer Sugar Mill is one of the only sites in Hawaiʻi with sufficient material remains intact to demonstrate, fairly completely, a nineteenth-century process of sugar manufacture. The equipment included a mule-driven cane crusher, redwood evaporating pans and some copper clarifiers.

In the early-1880s, when the average investment in Hawaiʻi’s fifth-six sugar plantations exceeded $280,000, the Meyer family investment of $10,000 made their mill one of the smallest in Hawaiʻi.

Meyer adopted and followed mill practices more representative of the 1850s and the 1860s than the 1870s and 1880s. In the 1850s, animals powered the mill equipment; while he stuck with this method into the future, others replaced the animal power with steam and water.

The Meyer Sugar Mill easily accommodated the milling requirements of the family’s sugar lands and repaid the investment within a few years; however, during the 1880s the price paid for sugar steadily declined.

The Planters’ Monthly reported in July, 1887, that “Low prices of sugar still prevail…and many a man who once thought himself assured of reasonable wealth through sugar, now finds that it will not even yield him a competence…only running the sugar business on a large scale can it be made to pay.”

In 1892, CM Hyde reported that the Meyer Mill stopped producing sugar cane when “The low price of the product for the last few years … made it more than unprofitable to engage in sugar manufactured in a small way. Now the lands are given up to grazing.”

Meyer also served as the Superintendent of the isolated Kalawao settlement (Kalaupapa) (serving with Father Damien and Mother Marianne Cope (now, both are Saints)) from 1866 till his death in 1897 (he continued to live with his family at the top of the cliffs, rather than on the Kalaupapa Peninsula.)

He also created one of the first trails used to travel between Kalaupapa Peninsula and the mauka lands. It was used to transport cattle and supplies down to Kalawao.

RW Meyer Ltd still owns property in the southwest corner of the Kalaupapa National Historical Park near the Kalaupapa Trailhead and maintains a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Park for trail access, maintenance and the planting of native plants. The Meyer Mill has been restored and is operating as a museum. Lots of information here is from NPS and rwmeyer-com.

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Meyer Sugar Mill Museum (Crusher)
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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Not Your Average Cup of Ti

Kī, the Ti plant, is a canoe crop, brought to the Islands by the early Polynesians. Kī was considered sacred to the Hawaiian god, Lono, and to the goddess of the hula, Laka. (ksbe)

It was also an emblem of high rank and divine power. The kahili, in its early form, was a kī stalk with its clustered foliage of glossy, green leaves at the top. The kahuna priests in their ancient religious ceremonial rituals used the leaves as protection. Ki planted around dwellings is thought to ward off evil. (ksbe)

Foreigners first fermented, and then distilled, the Kī root into an alcoholic beverage – due to the early means of making the drink, it took on the name ʻōkolehao (lit. iron bottom.)

“If people will drink, let us at least see, if possible, that they drink a fair article of poison. I hold that no man ever killed his wife when under the influence of good, generous liquor. It is the “tarantula juice,” the ʻōkolehao, that does most of the mischief.” (The Friend, October 1, 1879)

It is said to have started when Captain Nathaniel Portlock, part Captain Cook’s crew in 1779, baked roots in an imu (earthen oven) to convert its starches to sugars, added water and let it ferment with wild yeast into a mild beer.

Later, William Stevenson, an escaped convict from Australia, is credited to have taught the native Hawaiians how to distill the beer beverage into a higher alcoholic concoction. (Kepler)

Archibald Campbell, in Hawaiʻi in 1809-1810, traced the evolution of ʻōkolehao from root to toot: “(the root) is put into a pit, amongst heated stones, and covered with plantain and taro leaves; through these a small hole is made, and water poured in …”

“… after which the whole is closed up again, and allowed to remain twenty-four hours. When the root has undergone this process, the juice tastes as sweet as molasses. It is then taken out, bruised, and put into a canoe to ferment; and in five or six days is ready for distillation.”

“Their stills are formed out of iron pots, which they procure from American ships, and which they enlarge to any size, by fixing several tier of calabashes above them, with their bottoms sawed off, and the joints well luted.”

“From the uppermost, a wooden tube connects with a copper cone, round the inside of which is a ring with a pipe to carry off the spirit. The cone is fixed into a hole in the bottom of a tub filled with water, which serves as a condenser.”

“By this simple apparatus a spirit is produced, called lumi, or rum, and which is by no means harsh or unpalatable. Both whites and natives are unfortunately too much addicted to it. Almost every one of the chiefs has his own still.” (Greer)

“ʻŌkolehao still caresses island palates after nearly two hundred years of open or clandestine production.” (Greer)

ʻŌkolehao is a drink that has long been made illegally all over the islands. At frequent intervals Collector Chamberlain or deputies raid stills in mountain fastnesses, and usually the stuff they are found to be making is a kind of ʻōkolehao. (Hawaiian Star, September 12, 1906)

The secluded recesses of the mountain valleys furnish ti root in abundance, water and wood for distillation, and more important still, that immunity from arrest which assures the safety of the business. The manufacture is almost entirely in the hands of the Japanese, who find a ready market among the Hawaiians. (The Friend, October 1, 1903)

“Old-timers praise ʻōkolehao as smooth and seemingly mild – the kind of drink that sneaks up behind one with a sledgehammer. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, who in 1822 described in detail a big ʻōkolehao distillery, denounced the product as “a bad but very potent spirit, something like rum in flavor.’” (Greer)

“Since the perverted ingenuity of some early beachcomber first adjusted a twisted gun barrel to an iron pot, and distilled from the root of the ti this liquor to which the French Republic through the Paris Exposition of 1899 gave a blue ribbon. … ʻŌkolehao has been recognized as something in which Hawaiʻi might well have a proprietary pride, because of its surpassing excellence in its class.” (Hawaiian Star, September 20, 1906)

“So strong was this appeal to Hawaiian loyalty, that even the Provisional Government in 1893, and its successor the Republic of Hawaii, in 1899 winked at the violation of law necessary to make worthy and appropriate quantities of it for exhibition at the Expositions in Chicago and in Paris, and when it was triumphant in both places there was a thrill of Hawaiian pride even in the Missionary breast.” (Hawaiian Star, September 20, 1906)

The first ʻōkolehao ever made under legal authority and by scientific methods is being experimented with by Collector Chamberlain and others, for the purpose of ascertaining the value of the ti root as a producer of distilled liquors.

It is thought by some that the plant is a valuable one and, that there is money to be made in the distillation of liquor from it, though under the present laws of the Territory nothing can be done with it. (Hawaiian Star, May 16, 1903)

“ʻŌkolehao which is as Hawaiian as Vodka is Russian, as pulque is Mexican, as Bourbon is Kentuckian, and which is said by connoisseurs to excel them all in those fine points which go to make up a spirituous liquor, and to be freer from deleterious qualities than any other …”

“… is soon to be manufactured in full compliance with the law, to be put on the market on its merits, to be relieved of the stigma of … contraband, and to have its good qualities proclaimed. The still has already arrived; the “process of manufacture will shortly begin.” (Hawaiian Star, September 20, 1906)

The stuff was the Hawaiian version of bootleg moonshine. Today, DLNR’s Na Ala Hele program includes the ʻŌkolehao Trail on Kauai in its trail system. It follows a ridge top route established in the days of prohibition, when ʻŌkolehao was made from the Kī plants from the area, some of which still remain alongside the trail route.

Under the old laws of Hawaiʻi, mere possession of the stuff was an offense, and until recently the Territorial laws absolutely prohibited any distilling of intoxicating liquors on the islands at all. The passage of a law to license distilling was immediately followed by plans for starting stills of various kinds, and the ʻōkolehao still is the first. (Hawaiian Star, September 12, 1906)

The first distillery legally brought here under federal regulations has arrived and Internal Revenue Collector Chamberlain has received formal notice of its importation, In accordance with the requirements of the statutes, the still is now on the navy wharf, having been landed from the steamer Korea. (Hawaiian Star, September 12, 1906)

The still is to make ʻōkolehao. The beginning of its operations will be the first legal making of that drink. EH Edwards, of Kona, is the owner of the machinery, and intends to start a distillery as soon as possible, to make the genuine ʻōkolehao, from ti root, of which there is a great quantity ion Kona. (Hawaiian Star, September 12, 1906)

Later, Hilo Hattie, Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters sang about the cockeyed mayor of Kaunakakai, who “drank a gallon of oke to make life worthwhile.”