Kakaako | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

August 22, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Salt

Within ten years after Captain Cook’s 1778 contact with Hawai‘i, the islands became a favorite port of call in the trade with China. The fur traders and merchant ships crossing the Pacific needed to replenish food supplies and water.

The maritime fur trade focused on acquiring furs of sea otters, seals and other animals from the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska. The furs were mostly sold in China in exchange for tea, silks, porcelain and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the United States.

Needing supplies in their journey, the traders soon realized they could economically barter for provisions in Hawai‘i; for instance any type of iron, a common nail, chisel or knife could fetch far more fresh fruit meat and water than a large sum of money would in other ports.

A triangular trade network emerged linking the Pacific Northwest coast, China and the Hawaiian Islands to Britain and the United States (especially New England).

Foreign vessels had long recognized the ability of the Hawaiian Islands to provision their ships with food (meat and vegetables,) water, salt and firewood.

Salt was Hawaiʻi’s first export, carried by some of the early ships in the fur trade back to the Pacific Northwest for curing furs. Another early market was provided by the Russian settlements in Alaska.

Salt Exports ran to around 2,000 to 3,000 barrels a year in the 1830s, reached 15,000-barrels in 1847 and thereafter declined gradually until exports ceased in the 1880s. (Hitch)

But salt in Hawaiʻi was not just for export.

Salt “has ever been an essential article with the Sandwich Islanders, who eat it very freely with their food, and use much in preserving their fish.” (Ellis, 1826)

During Cook’s visits to the Islands, King’s journal noted “the great quantity of salt they eat with their flesh and fish. … almost every native of these islands carried about with him, either in his calibash, or wrapped up in a piece of cloth, and tied about his waist, a small piece of raw pork, highly salted, which they considered as a great delicacy, and used now and then to taste of.”

“Their fish they salt, and preserve in gourd-shells; not, as we at first imagined, for the purpose of providing against any temporary scarcity, but from the preference they give to salted meats.” (King, 1779)

“(T)he Sandwich Islanders eat (salt) very freely with their food, and use much in preserving their fish. … The surplus … they dispose of to vessels touching at the islands, or export to the Russian settlements on the north-west coast of America, where it is in great demand for curing fish, &c.” (Ellis, 1826)

Early salt production was made by natural evaporation of seawater in tidal ponds. (Hitch) “Amongst their arts, we must not forget that of making salt, with which we were amply supplied, during our stay at these islands, and which was perfectly good of its kind.”

“Their salt pans are made of earth, lined with clay; being generally six or eight feet square, and about eight inches deep. They are raised upon a bank of stones near the high water mark, from whence the salt water is conducted to the foot of them, in small trenches, out of which they are filled, and the sun quickly performs the necessary process of evaporation.” (King, 1779)

The Hawaiians “manufacture large quantities of salt, by evaporating the sea water. We saw a number of their pans, in the disposition of which they display great ingenuity. They have generally one large pond near the sea, into which the water flows by a channel cut through the rocks, or is carried thither by the natives in large calabashes.”

“After remaining there some time, it is conducted into a number of smaller pans about six or eight inches in depth, which are made with great care, and frequently lined with large evergreen leaves, in order to prevent absorption.”

“Along the narrow banks or partitions between the different pans, we saw a number of large evergreen leaves placed. They were tied up at each end, so as to resemble a shallow dish, and filled with sea water, in which the crystals of salt were abundant.” (Ellis, 1826)

Early export users were the Russians, who first made contact in the Islands in 1804. A year or two later, Kamehameha made known to them that he would “gladly send a ship every year with swine, salt, batatas (sweet potatoes,) and other articles of food, if (the Russians) would in exchange let him have sea-otter skins at a fair price.” The following year, they came to the islands for more salt. (Kuykendall)

Later, in the early-1820s, the Russians could get most provisions cheaper from Boston or New York than from the Hawaiian Islands, but the salt trade between the North Pacific and Hawaiʻi continued.

On September 5, 1820, Petr Ivanovich Rikord, governor of Kamchatka, wrote to Liholiho (Kamehameha II) requesting salt be traded for furs. In 1821, Captain William Sumner sailed the Thaddeus (the same ship that carried the Protestant missionaries to Hawaiʻi in 1820) from Hawaiʻi to Kamchatka with a load of salt and other supplies. (Mills) (Check out the letter from Rikord to Liholiho in the album.)

Another trading concern was the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC,) a fur trading company that started in Canada in 1670; its first century of operation found HBC firmly focused in a few forts and posts around the shores of James and Hudson Bays, Central Canada.

The Company was attracted to Hawaiʻi not for furs but as a potential market for the products of the Company’s posts in the Pacific Northwest. That first trip (1829) was intended to test the market for HBC’s primary products, salmon and lumber. (By then, Honolulu had already become a significant Pacific port of call and major provisioning station for trans-Pacific travelers.)

Back then, salmon was a one of the most valuable commercial fisheries in the world (behind the oyster and herring fisheries.) (Cobb) Just as salt was used for curing furs, HBC used Hawaiian salt in preserving salmon.

Hawaiian salt used in preserving the salmon made its way back to Hawaiʻi for Hawaiian consumption. During the 1830s, HBC sold several hundred barrels of salmon a year in Honolulu. The 1840s saw a major increase in sales; in 1846, 1,530 barrels were shipped to Hawaiʻi and HBC tried to increase salmon exports to 2,000 barrels annually. (Thus, the creation of lomi lomi salmon.)

The salt also came in handy with the region’s supplying whalers with fresh and salt beef that called to the Islands, as well as the later Gold Rushers of America. Here is where Samuel Parker (of the later Parker Ranch fame) started out as a cattle hunter to fill those needs.

February 23, 2025 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

J Alfred Magoon

“A half-dozen mixed in a free-for-all fight, that originated between two lawyers, was the scene witnessed yesterday morning in the judiciary building close to the doors of the Circuit Court.”

“The principal combatants were Hon. Cecil Brown, lawyer, Senator of the Territory and president of the First National Bank of Hawaiʻi, and J Alfred Magoon, lawyer, owner of the Magoon block.” (San Francisco Call, December 21, 1905)

“The trouble arose through the affairs of the American Savings and Trust Company, a branch of the First National Bank of Hawaii, of which Cecil Brown is president. A meeting of stockholders of the trust company was held last week, Magoon being attorney for the majority.”

“Brown as president ruled out some of their stock … As the Magoon faction was five shares short of a majority, President Brown declared that the old board of directors remained in office.”

“The differences between the stockholders have existed for nearly a year, and the courts will now be called upon to decide them if the Treasury Department at Washington does not step in.” (San Francisco Call, December 21, 1905)

Whoa … let’s step back and get some perspective here.

John Alfred (J Alfred) Magoon was the son of John C and Maria Sophia Eaton Magoon.

John C Magoon was born on December 9, 1830, at Litchfield, Maine. In 1857, he married Maria Sophia Eaton; the newly married couple started west and settled in Kossuth, Iowa, where their son and only child, J Alfred Magoon, was born on July 22, 1858.

After suffering intensely from fever they made their way back to Maine, having endured the greatest hardships in the journey owing to the primitive mode of travel. In 1863, Mr Magoon went to California, where in 1869 his wife and son joined him.

J Alfred enrolled in Heald’s Business College remaining there until he graduated. He entered mercantile life immediately, filling the position of bookkeeper with several well-known firms. He was engaged for a time in the office of the Santa Rosa Democrat.

His father bought a ranch near Lower Lake in Lake County and was afterward engaged in quicksilver mining until he and his wife came to the Hawaiian Islands in 1876. Being a farmer he located at Wahiawa, Oʻahu, but a drought destroyed his crops and he moved to Honolulu.

J Alfred joined them shortly afterward and secured a position as bookkeeper on the Halstead plantation at Waialua. It was during this engagement that he decided to adopt law as a profession, and spent what spare time he had reading his law books.

He remained on the plantation for a year and then entered the office of Benjamin H Austin, where he remained for a year, when his straitened finances compelled him to abandon it for the more lucrative position of deputy sheriff at Makawao, Maui.

He afterward resigned and took the position of bookkeeper at Paia Mill and pursued his study of the law as the opportunity was offered. In 1883 he resigned and went to Ann Arbor University, where he took a law course. Upon his graduation two years later he returned to Honolulu and was admitted to the bar.

“He has, perhaps, the largest practice of any of the members of the Honolulu bar, and it was this fact that compelled him to refuse the judgeship when he was first called upon to take it.”

J Alfred Magoon has been selected by the Executive to fill the position of Circuit Court Judge caused by the appointment of Judge HE Cooper to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. Judge Magoon is one of the best young men practicing at the bar. (Hawaiian Gazette, November 5, 1895)

J Alfred married Emmeline Marie Afong and had 7 children: Julia H S Kamakea Magoon (1887-1933) – Harmon Anderson Kipling of California; John Henry N “Lani” Magoon (1889-1975) – Juliet Carrol; Chun Alfred Kapala Magoon (1890-1972) – Ruth L; Eaton Harry Magoon (1891-1970) – Genevieve Burrall Sicotte (teacher in Makaweli;) Mary “Catherine” Kekulani Magoon (1892-1996;) Marmion Mahinulani Magoon (1896-1969) and Emeleen Marie Magoon (1898-1974) – Orville Norris Tyler.

Oh, the earlier fight … “The pugilistic encounter of the two competing leaders will pass into history. It has been ignored by the local press.” (San Francisco Call, December 21, 1905)

OK – here are some connections, if you haven’t already seen them (there are more.)

J Alfred’s wife Emmeline was daughter to Chun Afong and Julia Fayerweather Afong. Afong made his fortune in retailing, real estate, sugar and rice, and for a long time held the government’s opium license. He was later dubbed, “Merchant Prince of the Sandalwood Mountains” and is Hawaiʻi’s first Chinese millionaire.

Mary Catherine, the second daughter of Emmeline and J Alfred Magoon, married Frank Ward Hustace, becoming step-mother to seven Hustace children. (Kauai Historical Society) Hustace was the first son of Frank and Mary Elizabeth “Mellie” Ward Hustace, the eldest of seven daughters of Victoria Robinson Ward. Victoria’s sister, Mary Robinson, married a Foster.

Here are some prior stories on those families:

That’s enough for now.

No wait, back to the Magoons …

Like many businessmen, Magoon bought properties as investments, for development or for sale for a profit at a later date. By 1914, he built on the Queen Street lot a two-story structure with shops on the ground floor and residential apartments on the top floor, described as “Hawaii’s First Apartment House.”

Additional structures were built in the early twentieth century in a parcel called the “Magoon Block” on the eastern side of Kakaʻako. The apartments were generally low-rent and inhabited by bachelors, although some poorer families crowded into the larger apartments. (Cultural Surveys)

As the population of Honolulu swelled, tenement buildings were quickly constructed to meet the rapidly growing demand for housing. Hawaiians congregated in the Chinatown and the Kakaʻako districts, both of which were near the waterfront and the center of town. (McGregor)

Magoon Block had a meat market, a grocery store, an ice cream parlor, a furniture store, a little restaurant, and a barber shop on the ground floor, all in one big building. Above the storefronts were rooms with a common kitchen, bath and toilet facilities. It was a little shopping center for the district. (McGregor)

J Alfred Magoon helped found the Sanitary Steam Laundry, invested in Consolidated Amusement Co and the Honolulu Dairy. He died and Emmeline took over leadership of his business interests. In her 70s, she moved to South Kona and managed the Magoon Ranch at Pāhoehoe – riding horseback and overseeing the cattle ranch. She died in 1946 at age 88.

J Alfred Magoon, prominent Honolulu lawyer and promoter of the Honolulu Consolidated Amusement Co. (which controlled the Bijou, Hawaii, Ye Liberty and Empire theatres at Honolulu), died July 26, 1916 at Baltimore, following a fall from a bridge. (Variety, 1916)

The family formed Magoon Estate, Ltd t. In additions to land holdings in Hawaiʻi, the estate owned the 21,000-acre Guenoc Ranch; and also owned and operated Guenoc Winery, a producer of premium California wines. (The winery was sold to Foley Family Wines in 2012, and then to Langtry Farms LLC in 2021. The winery is now known as Langtry Farms Vineyard and Winery.)

OK, that’s enough, for now … by now, you should get the sense that there are more stories on this and related families, properties and businesses.

July 23, 2024 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Camp Very

“The Hawaiian Islands are to be created into a military department headquarters as soon as the new plans of the war department are carried into effect for the concentration of troops in the city of Honolulu.”

“(T)he District of Hawaiʻi is to have twelve thousand men stationed on the Island of Oʻahu and with a third of that number of troops here Hawaiʻi would have a right to the designation of a department headquarters.” (Hawaiian Gazette, May 23, 1911)

After Hawaiʻi became a territory of the United States, the first Naval Station in the islands was established in 1899 at Honolulu Harbor, as there were no facilities and no navigable channel at Pearl Harbor.

The property was transferred to the US by the Republic of Hawaiʻi under the joint resolution of annexation and, to protect the mouth of Honolulu Harbor, the US Army filled a submerged coral reef on the ‘Ewa side of Kaʻākaukukui for a gun emplacement.

The first permanent Marines arrived at Honolulu on board the Army transport Sheridan on February 9, 1904. For four years, the Marines lived in an empty coal shed at the Honolulu Naval Station. (PACNAVFACENGCOM)

In January 1905, President Teddy Roosevelt instructed Secretary of War William H Taft to convene the National Coast Defense Board (Taft Board) “to consider and report upon the coast defenses of the United States and the insular possessions (including Hawai‘i.)”

In 1906 the Taft Board recommended a system of Coast Artillery batteries to protect Pearl Harbor and Honolulu. Between 1909-1921, the Hawaiian Coast Artillery Command had its headquarters at Fort Ruger and defenses included artillery regiments stationed at Fort Armstrong, Fort Barrette, Fort DeRussy, Diamond Head, Fort Kamehameha, Kuwa‘aohe Military Reservation (Fort Hase – later known as Marine Corps Base Hawaiʻi) and Fort Weaver.

Fort Armstrong, built in 1907, was named for Brigadier General Samuel C Armstrong. His father, Reverend Richard Armstrong (1805-1860,) had arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1832 and later replaced Hiram Bingham as pastor at Kawaiahaʻo Church (1840-1843.) In 1848, Armstrong (the father) left the mission and became Hawaiʻi’s minister of public education.

From 1908 until about 1913, the Marines lived in tents at nearby Camp Very (named in honor of Captain Samuel W Very, Commandant of the Naval Station) “a site which was later known as Fort Armstrong”. (PACNAVFACENGCOM)

The complement of Marines in Hawaiʻi comprised some 2,000-men who are distributed between Honolulu and Pearl Harbor.

Training facilities at Camp Very included a small-arms practice range consisting of 6 targets with the ranges from 200 to 500-yards, and at the Army ranges. (Navy Department, 1913)

“The sea-soldiers are well taken care of, they have their own rending and billiard rooms and at the post exchange, formerly called the canteen, they can buy almost anything the heart of man could wish.” (Evening Bulletin, May 6, 1911)

The original garrison at Fort Armstrong was the 1st Coast Artillery Company, followed by the 104th Mine Co. operating the harbor mines. Also stationed there was the 185th Coast Artillery Company.

In 1914, temporary barracks were built – wooden structures that were continually occupied since January, 1914. Buildings are constructed of 1 x 12 rough boards, with tar-paper roofs.

The facility later had a barracks, 4 officers’ quarters, 3 noncommissioned officers’ quarters, administration building and post exchange, guardhouse, fire apparatus house, quartermaster storehouse, gymnasium and related infrastructure; the standard strength was 109 men.

Battery Tiernon at Fort Armstrong was armed with two pedestal mounted 3-inch Guns from 1911 to 1943.

The Army mission in Hawaiʻi was defined in 1920 as “the defense of Pearl Harbor Naval Base against damage from naval or aerial bombardment or by enemy sympathizers and attack by enemy expeditionary force or forces, supported or unsupported by an enemy fleet or fleets.”

Fort Armstrong continued under the Coast Artillery program until September 15, 1922. It was reserved for military purposes by a series of Executive Orders in 1930 and was described as the Fort Armstrong Military Reservation.

The present seawall was constructed 500-feet out from the original shoreline in 1948, and the area was backfilled. The Army Corps of Engineers took over the post in 1949. Kakaʻako Park was created over the landfill area.

On December 13, 1951, because the site was no longer needed by the military and was needed by the Territory of Hawaiʻi for harbor improvements, President Truman transferred the land to the Territory of Hawaiʻi.

Camp_Very-Fort_Armstrong-(Hammatt)-1911-1920

July 8, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kaʻākaukukui, Kukuluāeʻo and Kewalo

Ka‘ākaukukui, Kukuluāe‘o and Kewalo were once the ‘ili (sub-sections of ahupuaʻa) that is now generally referred to as “Kakaʻako,” whose shoreline portions became Kakaʻako Makai.

Until fairly recently, Kaka‘ako and the surrounding area were sometimes referred to as something of a wasteland, or empty space, between the better-known locations of Kou (stretching from Nuʻuanu to Alakea Streets and from Hotel Street to the sea and now referred to as Honolulu) and Waikīkī.

Kaka‘ako and surrounding lands remained outside these two intensely populated and cultivated areas on southeastern O‘ahu, yet Hawaiians used Kakaʻako’s lowland marshes, wetlands, salt pans and coral reef flats for salt making and farming of fishponds along with some limited wetland taro agriculture, and this supported habitation sites clustered around the mauka (inland) boundary of the Kaka‘ako area near Queen and King Streets.

Salt ponds near the shore filled with salt water at high tide (ālia) then drained to smaller clay-lined or leaf-lined channels (ho‘oliu) to natural depressions in the rocks along the shore where salt formed naturally (poho kai.)

The land could probably not be used for agriculture as it was impregnated with salt. The abundance of salt led to the Kaka‘ako Salt Works in the late-nineteenth century.

The salt marshes were also excellent places to gather pili grass for the thatching of houses, which may have led to the name Kaka‘ako (prepare the thatching.)

Mo‘olelo point to the coastal marshes as the habitat of the original pueo (owl) that became one of the Hawaiians’ ‘aumākua (deified ancestors.) The mo‘olelo of Kawaiaha‘o follows a trail between Waikīkī and Honolulu to locate two freshwater springs – Kewalo Spring and Kawaiaha‘o (The Waters of Ha‘o,) which highlights its location between the two main population centers.

Kekahuna notes, Kaʻākaukukui was “a beautiful sand beach that formerly extended along Ala Moana Park to Kewalo Basin, a quarter mile long reef extended along the shore.” Kaʻākaukukui means “the right (or north) light,” and it may have previously been a maritime navigation landmark.

Kukuluāe‘o, translates literally as the “Hawaiian stilt (bird)” and means “to walk on stilts.” This helps describe the area as “formerly fronting Kewalo Basin” and “containing marshes, salt ponds and small fishponds,” an environment well suited for this type of bird.

Kewalo (the calling (as an echo)) was once associated with a spring called Kawailumalumai (drowning waters) that was used to sacrifice kauwā, or members of a lowest caste, designed for the heiau of Kānelā‘au on the slopes of Pūowaina (Punchbowl) as the first step in a drowning ritual known as Kānāwai Kaihehe‘e or Ke-kaihe‘ehe‘e (sea sliding along.)

The Kaka‘ako area continued to remain outside Waikīkī and Honolulu during the post-Contact era. It served as a place of the dying and the dead, of isolation and quarantine, of trash and wastelands, and the poor and the immigrant; however, it also represents the birth of modern Waikīkī and Honolulu.

Specifically in this area: victims of the 1853 smallpox epidemic were quarantined in a camp and those that did not survive were buried at Honuakaha Cemetery; Hansen’s Disease patients were treated in the Kaka‘ako Leper Branch Hospital; victims of the 1895 cholera epidemic were treated at the Kaka‘ako Hospital; infected patients of the 1899 bubonic plague were moved to a quarantine camp; animals were quarantined in a station in 1905; and the city’s garbage was burned in an incinerator adjoining Kewalo.

The Kaka‘ako area has been heavily modified over the last 150 years due to historic filling of the area for land reclamation and to accommodate the expanding urbanization of Honolulu. A number of land reclamation projects dredged offshore areas to deepen and create boat harbors, and used the dredged material to fill in the former swampy land.

The original foot path at the edge of the former coastline has been transformed through time to a horse path, then buggy and cart path, and finally to the widened Ala Moana Boulevard.

After the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands by the United States in 1898, the US Congress began to plan for the coastal defenses of their new islands, which included Fort Armstrong on the Ka‘ākaukukui Reef as a station for the storage of underwater mines.

In 1911, the Honolulu Rifle Association, and possibly other groups, used the flat, uninhabited Kaka‘ako land and wetlands near the coast as a rifle range.

Kewalo Basin harbor was formerly a shallow reef that enclosed a deep section of water that had been used as a canoe landing since pre-Contact times and probably was used since the early historic period as an anchorage

Dredging of the Kewalo Channel began in 1924, but by the time the concrete wharf was completed in 1926, the lumber import business had faded, so the harbor was used mainly by commercial fishermen. In 1941, the government dredged and expanded the basin to its current 22 acres. In 1955, workers placed the dredged material along the makai (seaward) side to form an eight-acre land section protected by a revetment – now the Kewalo Basin Park.

As late as 1940, Kaka‘ako’s population numbered more than 5,000-residents. But after World War II, community buildings, wood-frame camp houses, language schools, temples and churches were removed to make way for auto-body repair shops, warehouses and other small industrial businesses.

Few traces of its former residential existence remain. In the early 1950s, rezoning led to the conversion of the primarily residential and small business district into an urban industrial area.

Decades after the transition from residential to industrial, Kaka‘ako is now slated for redevelopment. Plans call for the re-establishment of a mixed residential and business community – although recent development and present plans include several high-rise developments.

It looks like the residential use is destined to return. As noted in a recent Star-Advertiser piece, resident growth in Kakaʻako is expected to more than triple, from 10,400 to 37,300, by 2035; the prediction was based on “the general consensus that Kakaʻako is ripe for development.” (Lots of information here is from reports from Cultural Surveys.)

April 29, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Seven Sisters

Nā-Huihui-O-Makaliʻi, “Cluster of Little Eyes” (Makaliʻi) (a faint group of blue-white stars) marks the shoulder of the Taurus (Bull) constellation. Though small and dipper-shaped, it is not the Little Dipper.

Traditionally, the rising of Makaliʻi at sunset following the new moon (about the middle of October) marked the beginning of a four-month Makahiki season in ancient Hawaiʻi (a sign of the change of the season to winter.)

In Hawaiʻi, the Makahiki is a form of the “first fruits” festivals following the harvest season common to many cultures throughout the world. It is similar in timing and purpose to Thanksgiving, Oktoberfest and other harvest celebrations.

Something similar was observed throughout Polynesia, but it was in pre-contact Hawaiʻi that the festival reached its greatest elaboration. As the year’s harvest was gathered, tributes in the form of goods and produce were given to the chiefs from November through December.

Various rites of purification and celebration in December and January closed the observance of the Makahiki season. During the special holiday the success of the harvest was commemorated with prayers of praise made to the Creator, ancestral guardians, caretakers of the elements and various deities – particularly Lono.

Makaliʻi is also known as the Pleiades; its common name is the Seven Sisters.

But it is not these seven sisters that is the subject of this summary; this story is about Mellie, Kulamanu, May, Einei, Lucy, Kathleen and Lani – the seven daughters of Curtis and Victoria Ward.

Curtis Perry Ward was born in Kentucky and arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1853, when whaling in the Pacific was at its peak. Curtis worked at the Royal Custom House, which monitored commercial activity at Honolulu Harbor for the kingdom.

Victoria Robinson was born in Nuʻuanu in 1846, the daughter of English shipbuilder, James Robinson and his wife Rebecca, a woman of Hawaiian ancestry whose chiefly lineage had roots in Kaʻū, Hilo and Honokōwai, Maui.

Ward started a livery with headquarters on Queen Street and expanded into the business of transporting cargo on horse-pulled wagons. The size of Ward’s work force became just as big as the harbor’s other major player, James Robinson & Co. (Victoria’s father.)

Curtis and Victoria married in 1865 and for many years they made their home near Honolulu Harbor on property presently occupied by the Davies Pacific Center.

The Wards bought land on what was then the outskirts of Honolulu, eventually acquiring over 100-acres of land running from Thomas Square on King Street down to the ocean.

They built the “Old Plantation” in 1882, a stately, Southern-style home on the mauka portion of the property. It featured an artesian well, vegetable and flower gardens, a large pond stocked with fish, and extensive pasturage for horses and cattle. Self-sufficient as a working farm, Old Plantation was surrounded by a vast coconut grove.

Here’s a link to a video of “Old Plantation” with Anna Machado Cazimero, Kanoe Cazimero, Rodney Cazimero, Melveen Leed and Tito Berinobis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtPTv1QENC0

That year, Curtis Ward died (at age 53,) leaving Victoria to raise seven daughters and manage the estate. Here’s a little bit about the girls.

Mary Elizabeth “Mellie” Ward (February 16, 1867 to July 26, 1956) – married Frank Hustace September 30, 1886; Frank worked with, then succeeded his father-in-law in the draying business.

May Augusta Ward (May 10, 1871 to January 6, 1938) – married Ernest Hay Wodehouse in 1893; he was a prominent figure in the business world of Hawaiʻi; former president of Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association and the Sugar Factors Co, Ltd.

Annie Eva Theresa “Einei” Ward (March 13, 1873 to July 19, 1934) – married Wade Armstrong (Einei was the first of the Ward sisters to die, living to the age of 61.)

Keakealani Perry “Lani” Ward (May 27, 1881, December 31, 1961) – married Robert Booth; in 1966, Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children completed a new four-story Lani Ward Booth wing on Punahou Street.

Three sisters never married, and Lucy and Kathleen lived their lives at Old Plantation:
Hattie Kulamanu Ward (March 26, 1869 to March 2, 1959)
Lucy Kaiaka Ward (August 27, 1874 to March 20, 1954) (one of the founding members of the Hawaiian Humane Society)
Victoria Kathleen Ward (February 27, 1878 September 12, 1958)

Victoria Ward established Victoria Ward Ltd. in 1930 to manage the family’s property, primarily the remaining 65-acres of Old Plantation, now part of the core of Kakaʻako real estate adjoining downtown Honolulu. Victoria Ward died April 11, 1935.

Victoria Ward was loyal to the Kingdom (Queen Liliʻuokalani was her personal friend) and she died under the flag much in the same way her husband passed under the Confederate flag more than 50 years before. (Command)

Three sisters, Lucy Kathleen and Kulamanu, took control of the Victoria Ward Estate, with Kathleen becoming president and Lucy the secretary.

All was not always happy in the family.

In 1951, sisters Lucy and Kathleen sued to establish guardianship for sister Kulamanu. At the hearing, evidence of insanity was undisputed and proved to the judge’s satisfaction that Kulamanu was mentally incapable of managing her estate. On evidence of suitability the probate judge found that Hawaiian Trust Company, Limited, is “a fit and proper person to be appointed” as guardian of her estate. (Circuit Court Records)

Later (1957,) the Supreme Court decided on sisters Lani and Mellie (and nephew Cenric Wodehouse) petition for the appointment of a guardian for their sister, Kathleen, alleging that Kathleen was seventy-seven years of age, mentally infirm and unable to manage her business affairs.

The court found Victoria Kathleen Ward was incompetent to manage her business affairs (but not insane) and appointed Chinn Ho, Mark Norman Olds and George H Vicars, Jr guardians of the property. (Supreme Court Records)

In 1958, the city bought the mauka portion of the Old Plantation Estate and tore it down to build the Honolulu International Center (later re-named Neal S. Blaisdell Center (after Honolulu’s former Mayor.))

The Blaisdell Center has been in operation since 1964 and in 1994 was remodeled and expanded. The Blaisdell Center complex includes a multi-purpose Arena, Exhibition Hall, Galleria, Concert Hall, meeting rooms and parking structure.

On April 8, 2002, General Growth Properties, Inc announced the acquisition of Victoria Ward, Limited; this included 65-fee simple acres in Kakaʻako, with improvements of over one-million square feet of leasable area (Ward Entertainment Center, Ward Warehouse, Ward Village and Village Shops.)

General Growth later (2004) acquired the Howard Hughes Corporation. With excessive debt, General Growth was pushed into bankruptcy in 2009; then, in 2010, it spun off the Ward assets into the Hughes entity (General Growth was out of bankruptcy by the end of that year.)

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