Kainalu Elementary (my alma mater, grades K-2) recently held a community session where Dr Paul Brennan spoke of the history of Kailua, Oʻahu.
I taped the presentation and posted it on YouTube – Click HERE to seen the video.
He includes several old photos and maps to help tell the Kailua story.
Since I started these summary posts, I have received a variety of questions and comments (from many) asking about this or that.
One such included a call from someone at Punahou School who had received the stitching noted in the image; someone saw it for sale in a store on the continent, bought it and gave it to Punahou.
They felt there were Punahou ties. They asked me what I thought.
First, the center poem: “Friends are like melons; shall I tell you why? To find one good, you must one hundred try.”
I found it was written by Claude Mermet, a French poet who was born in Saint-Rambert-en-Bugey a little before 1550 and died in Saint-Rambert en Bugey in 1620. (Obviously this is about friends and friendship, but no obvious Hawaiʻi tie … but is there?)
Then, the names … who is listed, who put this together and why was it done?
Some obvious Hawaiʻi ties come up – and lots of association back to Kauai with the likes of Rice, Wilcox and Isenberg … including their connections to Punahou.
It is still an untold story.
So, through this, hopefully more can be known of the Who, Why and When of the piece. Let us know what you know about this.
It’s interesting … someone finds a piece of stitchery on the continent, sees connections to the Islands, but a mystery remains as to Who, Why and When ….
Here’s a summary and interconnecting linkages between the people noted on the stitchery we have seen thus far:
Wm H Rice
William Hyde Rice (born at Punahou,) son of William Harrison Rice (October 12, 1815-May 27, 1862) (business manager of Punahou School) and Mary Sophia Hyde Rice; husband of Mary Waterhouse Rice)
Mary W Rice
(Mary Waterhouse (July 26, 1846-June 28, 1933;) married William Hyde Rice; Punahou 1861 and 1862) John Thomas Waterhouse Sr., father of Mary.
Mary E Scott
(Mary Eleanor Rice (November 25, 1880-January 22, 1923;) daughter of William Hyde Rice and Mary Waterhouse Rice; married Walter Henry Scott
Anna C Wilcox
(Anna Charlotte Rice (1882- 😉 daughter of William Hyde Rice and Mary Waterhouse Rice; married Ralph Lyman Wilcox (son of Samuel Whitney Wilcox and Emma Washburn Lyman Wilcox))
Emily D Rice
(Emily Dole Rice (May 1844 – June 14, 1911;) daughter of William Harrison Rice (1813–1863), and Mary Sophia Hyde; married George De la Vergne) (Punahou 1863 and 1864)
R L Wilcox
(Ralph Lyman Wilcox (1876–1913;) son of Samuel Whitney Wilcox and Emma Washburn Lyman Wilcox;) married Anna Charlotte Rice)
Dora R Isenberg
(Mary Dorothea “Dora” Rice (1862-1949) Maria Rice, sister of William Hyde Rice married Paul Isenberg; Paul and Maria Isenberg had two children, Mary Dorothea Rice Isenberg and Daniel Paul Rice Isenberg (1866-1919).
Emma Wilcox
(Emma Washburn Lyman (September 16, 1849 – July 28, 1934;) daughter of David Belden Lyman (1803–1868) and Sarah Joiner (1806–1885;) married Samuel Whitney Wilcox) (her son, Ralph Lyman Wilcox, married Anna Charlotte Rice)
Susan S Fisher
Harry Fisher (1903-1905) (?)
Rebecca W Watt
Rebecca Waterhouse (?)
Rebecca Wilcox (?)
Rebecca Watt (1803-1915)
It’s ‘all in the family,’ kind of; and, it’s interesting how a piece of fabric can start to call attention to and remind us of stories about people and life in the Islands, especially on Kauai and at Punahou … but, there is still more to be known about the piece.
I have already done some posts on some of the people noted here, and will be doing some more in the future. There is an obvious link to Punahou and Kauaʻi.
Any help others can provide on Who, Why and When (or anything more) this was done is appreciated.
The image shows the stitching. In addition, I have added other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.
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Two mature brush-tailed rock wallabies escaped August 20, 1916 from the home of Richard H Trent; they came from Australia for Trent’s private zoo, which was “practically a public institution maintained at his personal, private expense for the public’s pleasure.”
“Dogs frightened the two animals brought from Australia for Trent’s private zoo and they jumped against their cage with enough force to break through it … A young one, thrown from its mother’s pouch, was killed by the dogs, but the pair of old ones managed to get away and have not been seen since.” (Star-Bulletin, August 21, 1916)
“Richard H. Trent, Honolulu’s animal impresario, issues a call to all citizens of Oahu today to join in a mammoth, personally conducted wallaby hunt, the first of its kind ever held in the Hawaiian archipelago.”
“Two of the three small kangaroos … escaped from the Trent zoological garden on ʻAlewa Height Saturday night and at latest reports last night were roaming at will in the Oahu forests.” (Hawaiian Gazette, August 22, 1916)
The paper had a premonition (or bachi;) “Unless the animals are caught they may become permanent denizens of the mountain districts and, like their distant cousins, the Australian rabbits, may propagate and produce eventually a breed of Hawaiian wallabies.” (Hawaiian Gazette, August 22, 1916)
The brush-tailed rock wallaby, native to Australia, was once common throughout that continent; now it’s confined to tiny parts of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. The Victoria population, in particular, is near extinction.
The shy animals have long, bushy tails and small ears; average-size adults weigh between 13 and 18-pounds. Its head and body measure just less than 2 feet long, and its tail is slightly longer. Its color is predominantly brown, with gray fur on its shoulders and reddish brown on its rump.
Richard Henderson Trent, born in Somerville, Fayette County, Tennessee, September 14, 1867, only attended public school until he was 12-years of age, and is a self-educated and self-made man. He began his career in Hawaiʻi as a printer for the Evening Bulletin in 1901, having learned the newspaper trade in Tennessee.
He later affiliated with Henry Waterhouse Trust Co., Ltd., until 1904, then headed one of the largest trust companies in Hawaiʻi that beared his name. He served as first treasurer of Oʻahu County from 1905 to 1910, being twice re-elected to this office.
Active in community welfare and church work, he served as president of the YMCA from 1908 to 1915 and was a member of the Territorial Board of Public Lands from 1910 to 1914.
Trent was a member of the Board of Regents, University of Hawaiʻi, for several years, as well as served as a trustee of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Estate and the Bishop Museum.
In 1928, while Trustee of the Kamehameha Schools (1917-1939,) a junior division was created for the Kamehameha School for Boys annual song contest; Trent donated the contest trophy. The original school for boys contest cup, the George A Andrus cup, was designated as the trophy for the senior division winner and the Richard H Trent Cup for the junior division winner.
While the wallabies once roamed from Nuʻuanu to Hālawa, they are now known to live in only one valley, the ʻEwa side of Kalihi Valley, which has a series of sheer cliffs and narrow rocky ledges. (earlham-edu)
The Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DLNR-DOFAW) no longer keeps track of the population, since they believe the animals are nonthreatening.
Wallabies are designated as protected game mammals by DLNR (§13-123-12,) which means no hunting, killing or possessing, unless authorized. (The same rule applies to wild cattle.) In 2002, a wallaby was captured in Foster Village; DLNR released it back into Kalihi Valley.
The last state survey of Kalihi wallabies was in the early-1990s; at the time, the estimated population was as high as 75-animals.
The image shows a brush-tailed rock wallaby (kristoforG.) In addition, I have added other related images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.
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Along the coastal area between Lēʻahi (Diamond Head) and Kūpikipikiʻō (Black Point) several small neighborhoods are sometimes identified by the names of the main roads in the area Kaikoo, Papu Circle and Kulamanu. However, the historic name for this area of Oʻahu’s is Kaʻalāwai.
Kaʻalāwai literally means ‘the water (basalt) rock’ and is probably named for the springs on the beach and among the rocks at the east end of the beach.
It is a narrow, white-sand beach with a shallow reef offshore, which generally has poor swimming conditions. There are only a few scattered pockets of sand on the nearshore ocean bottom. Lots go surfing outside.
At the east end of the beach near Black Point is a mansion turned museum, built by Doris Duke, the daughter of James Duke, the founder of the American Tobacco Company, and her husband, James Cromwell. (It’s their name that is attributed to the “Cromwell’s” Cove and Beach references.)
In the late-1930s, Doris Duke built her Honolulu home, Shangri La, on five acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Diamond Head. Shangri La incorporates architectural features from the Islamic world and houses Duke’s extensive collection of Islamic art, which she assembled for nearly 60 years.
Through an Exchange Deed dated December 8, 1938 between the Territorial Land Board of Hawai‘i and Ms Duke, two underwater parcels (totaling approximately 0.6-acres) were added to the Duke property.
At water’s edge below the estate, Duke then dynamited a small-boat harbor and a seventy-five-foot salt-water swimming pool into the rock. The harbor was built to protect Duke’s fleet of yachts, including Kailani Lahilahi, an ocean-going, 58-foot motor yacht and Kimo, the 26-foot mahogany runabout that Duke sometimes used to commute into Honolulu.
Part of the deal was that the transfer gave the Territory (now State) a perpetual easement of a four-foot right-of-way for a pedestrian causeway along the coastline. It’s a popular swimming area (ongoing media reports note the hazards here, so be careful.)
Today, Shangri La is open for guided, small group tours and educational programs. In partnership with the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art – which owns and supports Shangri La – the Honolulu Museum of Art serves as the orientation center for Shangri La tours.
Another stretch of beach here had some other interesting ownership/use issues.
In the old days, a Beach Road ran right next to the water at Kaʻalāwai. When some of the private property mauka of the road was subdivided into seven lots and conveyed in 1885, the makai boundaries of these seven lots were specified “along the road”.
However, in 1959, folks adjoining the then-abandoned road soon made claims to it – most extended their landscaping (and even put in improvements (patio, walls, etc)) out over the old beach road.
Some of the abutting owners succeeded in their title claims and subsequent legal battles, obtaining declaratory judgments in their favor and they gained title to the road remnant real estate. Subsequently, the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court ruled that the State owns the road.
The last property made application to the State to acquire the road remnant, however, after following discussions, they ended up seeking a long-term easement over the old roadway.
Oh, one more Kaʻalāwai story … following the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani in 1893, the Committee of Safety established the Provisional Government of Hawaiʻi as a temporary government until an assumed annexation by the United States.
The Provisional Government convened a constitutional convention and established the Republic of Hawaiʻi on July 4, 1894. The Republic continued to govern the Islands.
From January 6 to January 9, 1895, in a “Counter-Revolution,” patriots of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and the forces that had overthrown the constitutional Hawaiian monarchy were engaged in a war that consisted of battles on the island of Oʻahu.
It has been called the Second Wilcox Rebellion of 1895 (named after Robert William Wilcox.) In their attempt to return Queen Liliʻuokalani to the throne, it was the last major military operation by royalists who opposed the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.
Wilcox’s headquarters was at Kaʻalāwai. (Daily Bulletin, January 19, 1895) Shortly after the fighting began, losing the element of surprise and seeing no tactical importance in remaining at Diamond Head, Wilcox ordered his men to retreat to Waiʻalae.
Wilcox and his men then escaped to the Koʻolau up a trail on the precipice to the ridge separating Mānoa from Nuʻuanu. On that ridge his men dispersed into the mountain above; Wilcox and a few others crossed Nuʻuanu that night, eluding the guards. They were later captured.
Queen Liliʻuokalani was put under arrest on the 16th, and confined in a chamber of ʻIolani Palace. A tribunal was formed and evidence began to be taken on the 18th. Nowlein, Wilcox, Bertelmann and TB Walker all pleaded guilty, and subsequently gave evidence for the prosecution.
Wilcox was court-martialed and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to thirty-five years. In January, 1896, he was given a conditional pardon and became a free man; in 1898, President Dole gave him a full pardon. (Wilcox later served as the first delegate and representative of Hawaiʻi in the US Congress.)
Convicted of having knowledge of a royalist plot, Liliʻuokalani was fined $5,000 and sentenced to five-years in prison at hard labor. The sentence was commuted to imprisonment in an upstairs bedroom of ʻIolani Palace.
She spent 8 months in this room. After her release from ʻIolani Palace, the Queen remained under house arrest for five months at her private home, Washington Place. For another eight months she was forbidden to leave Oʻahu before all restrictions were lifted. Liliʻuokalani died of a stroke on November 11, 1917 in Honolulu at the age of 79.
The image shows Kaʻalāwai and Black Point area prior to development. In addition, I have added others similar images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.
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Education in the US at the beginning of the 19th-century was primarily triggered by the need to train the people to help grow the relatively new nation.
Back then, it was believed that women should be educated to understand domestic economy, because they were to play the major role in educating the young, primarily in their homes, and later (as the school population grew and there was a shortage of teachers) as school teachers. (Beyer)
Although schools for upper-class women were in existence prior to the 19th-century, the female seminary for middle-class women became the prevailing type of institution from 1820 until after the Civil War. The most prominent female seminaries were Troy Seminary (1821,) Hartford Seminary (1823,) Ipswich Seminary (1828,) Mount Holyoke Seminary (1837) and Oxford Seminary (1839.)
The seminary’s primary task was professional preparation: the male seminary prepared men for the ministry; the female seminary took as its earnest job the training of women for teaching and motherhood. (Horowitz, Beyer)
The founders of the female seminaries were at first men who were committed to providing education for women, but as time went by, more of the founders were women. The financial backing for these seminaries was typically from private sources and the tuition charged the students. Their enrollment varied between 50 to 100-students; they preferred girls between the ages of 12 and 16. (Beyer)
Western-style education did not begin in Hawai’i until after members of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) arrived in 1820.
Because the primary educators responsible for developing the education system of Hawai’i were Americans, the educational practices for Hawaiian girls tended to mirror, but not necessarily duplicate, what was taking place on the continent. (Beyer)
In 1835, at the general meeting of the Mission, a resolution was passed to promote boarding schools for Hawaiians; several male boarding schools and two female boarding schools were begun (Wailuku Female Seminary on the island of Maui and the Hilo School for Girls on the island of Hawai’i.) Before the 1850s, both of these schools had closed.
Wailuku Female Seminary (or the Central Female Seminary, as it was first called) was the first female school begun by the missionaries. It received support at a time when the missionaries were experimenting with both boarding schools and a manual labor system.
The first female seminary to be established on the island of Hawaiʻi was the Kaʻū Seminary. In 1862, Orramel Hinckley Gulick and his wife, Ann Eliza Clark Gulick (a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary,) began the school. Both were the children of missionaries (Peter Johnson Gulick and Fanny Hinckley Thomas Gulick; Ephraim Weston Clark and Mary Kittredge Clark.)
Due to the isolated location of the seminary, it was difficult to attract many students to the school. As a consequence, tuition and board were free, as long as the girls were placed under the parental care of the teachers of the school until the girls were married or obtained employment.
In 1865, after struggling to fill the school, it was decided to move the school to Waialua, Oʻahu, on the Anahulu Stream. It opened there on August 7 with 50-students, ranging in age from 11 to 15. As with other schools at the time, the students were instructed in the Hawaiian language.
The girls are selected by the pastors, from among the most promising girls of the parishes; and every major district in the islands had one or more representatives in the school. It was hoped that this institution would raise up a class of educated women, who might make teachers, and suitable partners for native Hawaiian ministers and missionaries. (The Missionary Herald)
The large two-story building, surrounded by a veranda, housed the girls, their four teachers, one temporary assistant and two children of the teachers. A second large building was the school-house, the lower floor of which was a spacious school-room, while the upper story was divided into recitation rooms. (The Missionary Herald)
The girls at Waialua Female Seminary came from families where the traditional Hawaiian culture was still practiced. However, at school the girls were dressed in calico, as opposed to their usual holoku; they slept in beds, rather than on mats on the floor; and they ate at a table with silverware, instead of on the floor using their fingers.
The schedule for the day began with breakfast, followed by each girl reading from the Hawaiian Bible; after the principal offered a prayer in Hawaiian, they were dismissed to begin the routine work, which included all the work necessary to maintain the school (except for carting and carrying firewood and baking and pounding the taro for poi.)
The older girls put the food away, washed the dishes and swept the floor. The younger girls did various tasks, which included sweeping and dusting the parlor, the sitting-room or the schoolroom, gathering up the litter of leaves and branches from the yard and garden paths, or putting the teachers’ rooms in order. Some of the girls were involved with preparing the meals; all the girls washed and ironed clothes once a week.
The academic work took place between 9 am and noon and 1 pm and 4 pm. The curriculum included geography, arithmetic, surveying, astronomy, singing, Bible history and the Bible in general. Manual training consisted of instruction in cutting and sewing dresses, in washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning house and painting; an hour and a half was spent on gardening and farming.
The school kept the girls until they graduated (40 percent of the enrollment,) married (34 percent of the enrollment,) were employed (4 percent of the enrollment,) left for health reasons (6 percent of the enrollment) or were dismissed for not applying themselves or for bad behavior (16 percent of the enrollment.)
In December of 1870, the school closed when the Mission sent the Gulicks to evangelize in Japan. Waialua Female Seminary reopened on April 3, 1871, under the direction of Miss Mary E Green (another missionary descendent and graduate of Punahou and Mount Holyoke Seminary.)
Miss Green ran the school until 1882, when she became ill and could no longer run the school. The property was sold and the money was given to the trustees of Kawaiahaʻo Seminary in Honolulu to make further improvements there. (Lots of information here from Beyer and Missionary Herald.)
The school was called ‘Hale Iwa’ by the girls (the first use of the name for this area.) Later, that name came back to this area when OR&L opened the Haleiwa Hotel (1899;) when the hotel closed (1943,) the name of the area remained as Haleiwa, and it continues to be called that today.
The image shows Waialua Female Seminary (1865.) In addition, I have added other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.
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