Hawaii | Page 524 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

August 25, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Charles Hinckley Wetmore

Charles Hinckley Wetmore was born at Lebanon, Connecticut, on February 8, 1820. He was the son of Augustus Wetmore (1784-1887) and Emily T Hinckley Wetmore (1789-1825.)

By teaching school in the winter and studying in the summer, he attained his medical degree, graduating from the Berkshire Medical Institute in Massachusetts in 1846. After graduation he practiced in Lowell, Mass., continuing to teach in school to supplement his earnings.

Wetmore married Lucy Sheldon Taylor on September 25, 1848; three weeks after their wedding, they were off to Hawaiʻi under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission (ABCFM) as a missionary doctor.

They were not attached to any Missionary Company; the Wetmores sailed from Boston on October 16, 1848 on the Leland and landed in Honolulu on March 11, 1849 (a voyage of 146 days).

The Wetmores were assigned to Hilo on the Island of Hawaiʻi and were at their post by May 18. “This morning Hawaiʻi was in sight. It could be distinctly seen by the bright light of the moon but it remained for the sun to reveal in all its grandeur lofty Mauna Kea.”

“We gazed at it with feelings of deep interest. We know not but this very island is to become our future home. Our prayer is that we may be stationed where we shall do the most good.” (Lucy Wetmore’; The Friend, February 1920)

As missionary doctor, his first duty was to the care of the missionary families, then the natives and after that to the foreigners.

His patients were scattered over the entire island and he travelled by canoe or foot, and on many occasions, his wife accompanied him.

When smallpox broke out in the Islands in 1853, Wetmore was appointed by the King to serve as a Royal Commissioner of Public Health. As the outbreak spread to the neighbor Islands, Wetmore was down with varioloid (a mild form of smallpox affecting people who have already had the disease or have been vaccinated against it.)

The Commissioners decided to build a hospital to deal with the anticipated illness; Wetmore, the doctor from the region, was the first to occupy it. Wetmore recovered and was able to later assist in the efforts. (Greer)

In 1855 he severed relations with the ABCFM and continued in practice upon his own account. He was appointed to be in charge of the American Hospital, where sailors from American ships and ether Americans in need were cared for.

After the hospital was given up, the building was turned over to ‘The First Foreign Church of Hilo.’ A founding member of the church, Wetmore was closely identified with it and gave it great financial assistance and much personal work. (Evening Bulletin, May 18, 1898)

Later (December 2, 1886,) Wetmore purchased and presented to the Library Association the frame building formerly occupied by the First Foreign Church. In making the gift of the building with his ‘Aloha,’ Wetmore “‘hoped it would prove very useful to our Hilo community for many many years to come.’” They moved the building to the library site on Waiānuenue street. (Hilo Tribune, October 25, 1904)

The Protestant Wetmore also had ties with the nearby St Joseph Catholic Church. Wetmore and Father Charles Pouzot developed a lasting friendship. Father Charles was tutoring the Wetmore children and Wetmore gave medical basics of caring for diarrhea, dermatitis, respiratory illness and the like.

At one time, Father Charles shocked Father Damien (now St Damien) by revealing he also learned to treat the wounds and ulcers of leprosy. Damien was much surprised since he didn’t know the infection was present in Hawaiʻi. Father Charles promised to show him a case at the next opportunity. (Hilo Roman Catholic Community)

Dr. Wetmore’s family consisted of one son and three daughters. On February 16, 1850, Wetmore administered ether to his wife, Lucy, as she was giving birth to their first child. Dr Wetmore’s subsequent account of this delivery appears to be the earliest known reference to the use of general anesthesia in the Islands. (Schmitt)

Eldest son, Charlie, was an active boy who assisted in his father’s dispensing pharmacy, the first in Hilo. (Hilo Drug Store was reportedly founded by Wetmore; it was situated on ‘Front Street’ (Kamehameha Avenue.) (Valentine)

Charlie planned to follow his father into the profession of medicine. Their first daughter, Frances (Fannie), also worked and enjoyed learning science in the pharmacy.

When Charlie died suddenly at age 14, 12-year-old Fannie (the eldest daughter) stepped up to announce that she would become the next doctor of the family, taking her brother’s place.

She was sent away to school in Pennsylvania, returning to Hilo after graduation to help her father. She eventually returned to the mainland to get her MD, and was the first woman doctor in Hawaiʻi. Frances then practiced medicine in partnership with her father. (Burke)

In the early days of sugar, Wetmore was engaged with the Hitchcocks in the establishment and management of Papaikou plantation. Wetmore was also interested in Kohala and other sugar plantations. (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, May 19, 1898)

After the death of his wife in 1883, Wetmore, serving as a delegate from the Hawaiian Board, and his daughter, Lucy, spent the entire year of 1885 in the Marshall and Caroline Islands.

Dr. Wetmore died on May 13, 1898. “He was trusted by all. Whatever he said he meant, and his word in business was as good as his bond. He was to the front in every good work, and his gospel was one of action rather than of words.”

“His generosity was proverbial and his services as a physician were constantly given to those who were too poor to pay.” (Evening Bulletin, May 18, 1898)

Several years later, the Lydgate family from Kauaʻi donated a stained glass window at the First Foreign Church in Hilo. The image represents the good Samaritan as he bends solicitously over the almost lifeless body of the man who was the victim of thieves.

“The expression on the good Samaritan’s face is a beautiful one, and the picture is typical of the life of the friend in whose memory it was given.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, September 6, 1907)

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Hilo Drug Co., Ltd. near left started by Wetmore-Hilo-PP-29-3-049-1928

Hilo street scene-L Turner-later-Hilo Drug on left-PP-29-5-016

Envelope to CH Wetmore (aupostalhistory)

August 24, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The Islands in 1828

Paul-Emile Botta was born to Carlo Botta, an eminent historian and educator, and Antoinette de Vierville of Chambery, in Turin on December 6, 1802. His mother died when he was still a child. In 1815, he became naturalized as a Frenchman.

In 1826, the French prepared for a round-the-world voyage on Le Heros, On board regulations required that there be a surgeon; Botta, though not yet a full-fledged doctor, was appointed to that post. He was also charged with the duties of naturalist aboard, with the mission of collecting examples.

The Heros, a three-masted ship of 362 tons, with 32 men on board, left the port of Le Havre on April 9, 1826, circumnavigated the globe. The following, in Botta’s words, are his observations of the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaiʻi) when he and Le Heros visited the Islands from September 17, 1828 to November 15, 1828. (The quotation marks are dropped.)

The natives of the Sandwich Islands are for the most part large and well built. Among them are often found men who, in figure and proportion, recall the most beautiful statues of antiquity.

They vary a great deal in color. Sometimes it is a very dark brown, almost black, but at other times, to the contrary, it is a rather light brown, almost yellow. Their faces are pleasing, especially because of the expression of goodness and joviality always displayed on them … their hearts are full of goodness and friendliness.

The men are completely naked except for a type of belt of which one portion passes between their thighs, called by them maro. They have … a custom of knotting about the end of the prepuce a piece of reed, when they are not wearing the maro; this is the last bit of clothing that they are accustomed to take off.

The women … ordinarily wear a cloth skirt and a garment made of a fabric of the islands covering their thighs. Yet I saw some of them indoors having as their sole clothing a belt of leaves. This is the attire of the common people; the chiefs, however, as well as their women, at present dress in European fashion, some indeed with a studied affectation.

The Sandwich islanders, at least the common people, eat chiefly vegetables. Their principal food is taro, root of a type of arum which when raw is very bitter and even poisonous, but when cooked has an excellent flavor, superior to that of the potato.

They eat it either cooked in their underground ovens or pounded into a paste, often half fermented, which they call poi, and which is the basis of their meals.

Potatoes, carrots, and fish, which they eat raw most of the time, or else pounded with water and salt, are, after taro, their commonest foods.

Their customary drink is only water … very few islanders are to be seen giving themselves up to drunkenness. They still, however, make use of the infusion of ava to get intoxicated.

They also prepare a type of brandy with the root of a plant very common in the island, which they call lahi. The root is thick, fibrous, though rather tender and of a very sweet and sugary flavor when cooked. The brandy made of it through fermentation is very strong. This root is called ti.

The islanders’ homes are small houses made with a light scaffolding covered over by dry grasses. They are formed with a roof, the sides rising obliquely almost from the ground. They usually have two doors, set in accordance with the direction of the most frequent winds, providing for coolness inside.

The floor is formed by a layer of dry rushes covered over by a rather large number of mats. The floor usually serves as table and as bed, some chiefs’ homes excepted; the latter are sometimes furnished most elegantly in European style.

These very simple houses are cool and inexpensive and islanders as well as some Europeans prefer them to houses built of stone or wood, as some quite pretty ones transported from America are.

The chief occupation of the islanders is the cultivation of taro, which requires much toil and care. This plant grows well only in marshy terrain, and even in mud; therefore, all the upper valleys and terrain at the foot of the mountains are divided into small plots covered with water and separated by narrow embankments, which are the only paths.

Taro is planted in rows or in regular quincunxes in little ponds, into which the natives are often obliged to dive, either to harvest the roots, or to pull out the reeds and other grasses which might hinder their growth.

The water is brought there by means of little irrigation canals, made with great care, and which divide infinitely, passing from one taro field to another, so that a small stream can irrigate a great number of fields placed in terraces one above another on a hill slope. All this cultivation gives an impressive notion of the industriousness of these people.

Fishing is, next to taro, the principal resource of the Sandwich islanders; they now use European hooks. In order to catch great sea fish such as the bonitos or the dorados, however, they join them to bits of polished mother-of-pearl with bristles at one end, which, in the water, gives the appearance of a small fish, with sufficient exactness for the big fish to be deceived by them.

Their nets are very well made and they have some, I have been told, that are large and are the common property of several villages.

The dug-out canoes used by the islanders have the bottom made from a hollowed out tree, pointed at the two ends; it is raised by two boards joined to the two ends tapering; they are provided with a balance, formed by a piece of wood parallel to the dug-out canoe and sustained by two cross-bars. The paddles have rounded blades. When they desire, they add a mast and a trapezoidal sail to the canoes.

The recreation of the islanders consists only of lascivious dances, and I have always seen them performed by women and never by men. … The tunes have, properly speaking, no melody, for they are made of only one or two notes. To hear them sung, one would believe that they are rather being chanted. I have not seen any musical instrument except a small drum made out of coconut.

But their favorite pleasure is swimming. Men, women, and children all know how to swim and they are all constantly in the water.

Nothing is more interesting than to see them devoting themselves to the exercise they call henalou, that is, mounting the waves. In the places where the coral reef surrounding the island and stretching far out causes the water to have a depth of only between seven and eight feet, the sea rolls its waves in a frightening manner, sometimes for a distance of over a mile, until they come to break at the shore.

In these places the Sandwich islanders place themselves on their stomachs on a board oval in shape, elongated, somewhat convex on each side. They then swim with their hands and feet, passing over or under the waves constantly rolling over the reef, going out to sea where they wait for a wave which they think will inevitably reach the shore.

Then they place themselves in front of it, letting themselves be carried thus with incredible speed, without losing their balance, continually pushed forward by the wave the summit of which, towering above, seems destined to engulf them. This exercise which has always seemed terrifying to me is just a game for them.

The language of the Sandwich islanders is sweet and harmonious, because of the great number of vowels and few consonants found in it. …. The vowels are a, e, i, o, and u. The consonants are f, h, k, 1, m, n, p, r, t, and v. But the number of consonants should be reduced, for the inhabitants use some of them indifferently for others; thus r and l, k and t, p and f, are letters which seem for them to have the same sound.

Such are the observations which a stay of two months on Wahou has permitted me to make. They are most incomplete, and I greatly desire to be one day in a position to make a better study of these people, rendered so likeable by their goodness and sweetness …. (This summary is based on a translation and summary from Knowlton.)

The image shows the town of Honolulu as it looked when Botta arrived in the Islands. (Beechey)

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August 23, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Uldrick Thompson

Uldrick Thompson, Sr was orphaned at the age of 4 – his father, Ambrose Thompson, died of tuberculosis when he was 3 years old. While caring for her husband, his mother contracted the same disease, and died a year later.

His maternal uncle, Uldrick Reynolds and his wife Sarah Myners-Reynolds took him in as one of their own according to the wishes of Thompson’s mother. They farmed halfway between Glens Falls and Saratoga Springs in New York.

Thompson was raised in a Methodist community and in the Methodist church. Uncle Uldrick attended Church regularly, revival meetings occasionally and Camp meetings not at all. The family kept the Sabbath day by attending church, avoiding unnecessary work and reading the Bible and good literature.

But Uncle Uldrick’s personal conduct was more influential; he didn’t swear, drink or gamble and paid his debts, his word being as good as a bond. Thompson sought to do likewise throughout his life.

Thompson was encouraged to become a professional teacher and enrolled at Oswego Normal School. There he met Alice Haviland of Brooklyn, New York; they were married at her parents’ home on July 5, 1882.

On November 4, 1887, the Kamehameha School for Boys opened with 37 students and four teachers. A year later the Preparatory Department, for boys 6 to 12 years of age, opened in adjacent facilities. (Organization of the Kamehameha School for Girls was delayed until 1894.)

Then, Thompson received a letter from General Samuel C Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute and son of Hawaiʻi missionary Reverend Richard Armstrong. He was recommended to teach in Hawaiʻi. He met with Charles Reed Bishop and agreed to teach at the new Kamehameha School for Boys.

On August 23, 1889, Rev William Brewster Oleson, principal of the Kamehameha School for Boys (popularly called the Manual School or Department) and Mr Harry Townsend, the vice-principal, met the Thompsons on the dock; they stayed at the Oleson home for a few days.

Thompson (1849-1942) was a teacher at Kamehameha School for Boys (1889-1898 and 1901-1922) and served as the school principal (1898-1901.)

“You who come to Kamehameha and find it as it now is, cannot conceive the degree of barrenness that greeted us that day. No rain for two years! Not a blade of green grass or even a weed in sight!”

“The few algaroba trees scattered about were not taller than a man, and seemed as stunted and discouraged as the mesquite of Arizona. And rocks, rocks, rocks everywhere, with cracks in the clay between large enough to put your foot in.” (Thompson; KSBE)

“One and one half hours work, before breakfast was required of every boy, from the first day of organization. The rising bell sounded at 5:30 am; the Morning Work began at 5:45 and continued till 7 o’clock. Then breakfast.”

“This work consisted of care of the buildings, grounds; helping about the kitchen and dining room; cutting wood for the school fires and for the teachers; and in clearing the Campus of rocks and weeds.”

The core classes were arithmetic, algebra, geometry, English, geography, penmanship, business, health, book-keeping and mechanical drawing. “The curriculum emphasized industrial training considered necessary for a Hawaiian to achieve personal and social success.”

For the girls, along with the standard curriculum, there were sewing, cooking, laundering, nursing and hospital practice classes. Girls 13 and older learned how to be homemakers and mothers. (Ruidas)

“Mrs. Thompson and I and the children, had an ideal life on The Kamehameha Campus. We would not have exchanged our experiences there for anything that might have been offered on the mainland.”

A lasting legacy of Thompson is a clock he made when he was 80; in 1928 he donated it to Oswego Normal School, where Thompson first received his teacher training. (Charles King and Sam Keliinoi of the first graduating class at Kamehameha (1891) came to the Oswego Normal School.)

It took Thompson a year to complete the towering grandfather clock made of koa; “His friend, DH McConnell, donated the Oxford-Whittington-Westminster chimes and works.” Thompson “requested it be placed in Sheldon Hall when built.”

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The Dolphin Clock by Uldrick Thompson

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Early Teachers at Kamehameha Schools

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Downtown Honolulu-Uldrick Thompson-ksbe

Downtown Honolulu Landmarks-Uldrick Thompson-ksbe

August 22, 2015 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Makau

Ua Akamai kekahi poe kanaka Hawaii ia ka lawaia, no ia mea, ua kapa ia lakou, he poe lawaia. O ka makau kekahi mea e lawaia ai. O ka upena kekahi, a o ka hinai kekahi.

Some of the people of Hawaii were very knowledgeable about fishing, and they were called fisher-people. The hook was one thing used in fishing. The net was another, and the basket trap, another. (WE Kealakaʻi, Ka Hae Hawaii, 1861; Maly)

“This is how fishing was done with a hook. The cordage was first twined by the fisherman. The kind of cordage was a three-ply twine, a cord of three strands of olona. The line might be 720 feet long, or perhaps 960 feet long. Then the hooks were made and the fisherman was supplied with these things…” (WE Kealakaʻi, Ka Hae Hawaii, 1861; Maly)

Makau (fishhooks) of Hawai‘i took on many different shapes, each one specialized to catching different types of fish with a variety of fishing techniques.

Simple hooks were made from one piece of material, while composite hooks were made of more than one piece joined by lashing. (Bishop Museum)

“Their fishing-hooks are made of mother-of-pearl, bone, or wood, pointed and barbed with small bones, or tortoise-shell. They are of various sizes and forms”.

“(B)ut the most common are about two or three inches long, and made in the shape of a small fish, which serves as a bait, having a bunch of feathers tied to the head or tail. Those with which they fish for sharks, are of a very large size, being generally six or eight inches long.

“Considering the materials of which these hooks are made, their strength and neatness are really astonishing; and in fact we found them upon trial much superior to our own.” (Captain Cook’s Journal)

The use of human bone for fishhooks seems to have greatly increased in the late prehistoric period, and was relatively uncommon earlier in Hawaiian prehistory.” (Kirch)

The man who was skilled in the art of making fish-hooks (ka-makau) was regarded as fore-handed. (Malo)

The raw material was cut with a coral saw, and holes were drilled in the bone or shell blank with a shell-pointed pump drill. It was then shaped with coral files and finished with sea urchin spine files. (Young)

In helping to shape them, the hard wood of the pua and the rough pāhoehoe lava rock were used as rasps. (Malo)

The Hawaiian fisherman considered his fishhooks to be one of his most prized possessions, and they were carefully cleaned and stored in containers after use. (Young)

The names of the different kinds of hooks used in the ancient times would make a long list. The hoonoho was an arrangement of hooks made by lashing two bone hooks to one shank (they were sometimes placed facing each other and then again back to back.) (Malo)

Hook and line fishing was generally practiced in deep water, kawakawa and aku (bonito) and ula (lobster) are the usual bait; for lack of these any kind of fish is used with varying results.

For deep sea fishing the hook and line are used without rods, and fishermen sometimes use lines over a hundred fathoms (600-feet) in length. (Maly)

Paeaea is fishing with rod, hook and line. The bait most liked is shrimp. Earth worms are sometimes used and any obtainable fry or fish.

The fisherman takes a handful of shrimps, baits his hooks, and then, bruising the remainder and wrapping it up in cocoanut fiber, ties it with a pebble on the line and close to the hooks; the bruised matter spreads through the water when the line is dropped, and serves to attract fishes to the vicinity of the hooks. This bruised matter is called palu. (Maly)

Fishhook construction changed over time. “Hawaiian fishhooks exhibited sufficient temporal variation to render them a useful tool for seriation and relative dating, just as ceramics were used in other parts of the world.” (Kirch)

Catching fish with hook and fishing line was just one of many methods that were practiced in Hawaii. Bare hands, spears, slip nooses, nets, and traps were also used.

The fish supply remained constant, because the catching of a certain kind of fish was always restricted to a certain time of the year. Outside of this time it was declared kapu (prohibited.) (National Museum Australia)

“The fish eaten during the summer months of Kau were different as to kind from those eaten during the winter, Hooilo. During Kau the opelu was taken and used for food, during Hooilo the aku – bonito or albicore.” (Malo)

Fishing was the domain of specialists in Hawaiʻi. They were called poʻe lawaiʻa (fishermen), and were generally descended from families of fishermen. Certain religious ceremonies were associated with fishing. (National Museum Australia)

The reefs, lagoons and offshore waters around the Hawaiian Islands vary from place to place; fishing strategies that were successful in one place may not work in another – certain kinds of fishhooks and other gear were needed for particular situations. (Kirch)

The persistent use of shell fishhooks after contact (1778) was driven by cultural, political and economic factors that initially constrained access to – and limited desire for – iron hooks. Hawaiians manufactured shell fishhooks as late as 1850. (Bayman)

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Fishhook

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Composite fishhook of bone, fiber and wood-PeabodyMuseum

Fishhooks-(Young)

August 20, 2015 by Peter T Young 7 Comments

Kawaiahaʻo Female Seminary

“The inception of this school emanated from Mrs Halsey Gulick. In 1863, when living in the old mission premises on the mauka side of King street, she took several Hawaiian girls into her family to be brought up with her own children … The mother love was strong in that little group as some of us remember.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 23, 1897)

The usefulness of such a school became evident; as the enrollment grew, the need for a more permanent organization was required.

“It might be claimed that the real beginning was when Rev. Dr. Gulick and wife first occupied the Clark house, and on March 6, 1865, opened a family school for girls.” (The Friend, April 1, 1923)

In 1867, the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society (HMCS – an organization consisting of the children of the missionaries and adopted supporters) decided to support a girls’ boarding school. An early advertisement (April 13, 1867) notes it was called Honolulu Female Academy.

HMCS invited Miss Lydia Bingham (daughter of Reverend Hiram Bingham, leader of the Pioneer Company of missionaries to Hawaiʻi) to return to Honolulu to be a teacher in this family school; she was then principal of the Ohio Female College, at College Hill, Ohio.

“Her love for the land of her birth and Interest for the children of the people to whom her father and mother had given their early lives, led her to accept the position, and in March, 1867, she arrived on the Morning Star via Cape Horn.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 23, 1897)

HMCS appropriated funds for repairs and additions to the buildings; “(t)he old stone buildings which had formerly been used as printing office and bindery by the mission, with the house of Rev EW Clark, then occupied by Dr. H. Gulick, were repaired and remodelled, to enlarge and make more comfortable the necessary rooms for the school now successfully started.”

“It would be impossible to tell those of you who only know the present building, how crowded and uncomfortable some of those rooms were but we rejoiced, for it was improvement! Miss Bingham soon became principal of the school.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 23, 1897) It was later named Kawaiahaʻo Female Seminary.

It started with boarders and day students, but after 1871 it has been exclusively a boarding school. “Under her patient energy and tact, with the help of her assistants, it prospered greatly, and became a success.” (Coan)

At first the school was designed to prepare Hawaiian girls to become ‘suitable’ wives for men who were at the same time preparing to become missionaries and work in the South Seas.

This objective took the back seat to industrial education as new industrial departments were added. This included sewing, washing and ironing, dressmaking, domestic arts and nursing.

The mainstay of the curriculum involved furnishing complete elementary courses, including music, both vocal and instrumental, and training in the household arts. Concerts given by the girls helped the school to make money.

In January 1869, Miss Elizabeth Kaʻahumanu (Lizzie) Bingham arrived from the continent to be an assistant to her sister. Lizzie was a graduate of Mount Holyoke and, when she was recruited, was a teacher at Rockford Female Seminary. (Beyer)

“To those of us who were then watching the efforts of these Christian ladies the school became the centre of great interest. The excellent discipline, the loving care, the neatness and skill shown in all departments of domestic life, the thoroughness of the teaching and the high Christian spirit which pervaded it all caused rejoicing that such an impulse had been given to education for Hawaiian girls.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 23, 1897)

“Every Sunday one of the teachers accompanied the Girls to Kawaiahaʻo Church diagonally across the street to the morning service.” (Sutherland Journal)

“When Miss Bingham came to Hilo (on October 13, 1873 she married Titus Coan,) the seminary was committed to the charge of her sister, whose earnest labors for seven years in a task that is heavy and exhausting so reduced her strength, that in June, 1880 she was obliged to resign her post.” (Coan)

While Kawaiahaʻo was both growing and changing into an industrial school, two other female seminaries came into existence: Kohala Female Seminary and Maunaʻolu Seminary (East Maui Female Seminary.)

At the end of the century, all the female seminaries began to lose students to the newly founded Kamehameha School for Girls. This latter school was established in 1894.

It was not technically a seminary or founded by missionaries, but all the girls enrolled were Hawaiian, and its curriculum was very similar to what was used at the missionary sponsored seminaries.

Since Kawaiahaʻo Seminary was located only a few miles from this new female school, it experienced the biggest loss in enrollment and adjusted by enrolling more non-Hawaiian students.

In 1905, a merger with Mills Institute, a boys’ school, was discussed; the Hawaiian Board of Foreign Missions purchased the Kidwell estate, about 35-acres of land in Mānoa valley.

By 1908, the first building was completed and the school was officially operated as Mid-Pacific Institute, consisting of Kawaiahaʻo School for Girls and Damon School for Boys.

Finally, in the fall of 1922, a new coeducational plan went into effect – likewise, ‘Mills’ and ‘Kawaiahaʻo’ were dropped and by June 1923, Mid-Pacific became the common, shared name.

Kohala Female Seminary and Maunaʻolu Female Seminary continued to exist through the 1920s, offering a high school diploma to their graduates. (Hiram and Sybil Bingham, parents of Lydia and Lizzie, are my great-great-great grandparent.)

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