Statewide County HI Archives News.....Important People - Part 6. July 30, 2008 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/hi/hifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 August 3, 2008, 7:28 pm Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands July 30, 2008 Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374. July 30, 2008. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Hawai'i Keepers of the Culture A study in time, of the Hawai'ian Islands Important People - Part 6. by Darlene E. Kelley ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Part 6 Important People ISABELLA BIRD BISHOP (1832-1904) A Scottish traveler and Writer, who became the first woman fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Mrs. Bishop arrived in Honolulu in January, 1873, and spent nearly seven months in the islands during that critical year of the reign of Lunalilo. She visited the town of Hilo, described the Kilauea district during a volcanic outburst, and rode astride to such almost inaccessible valleys as Waipio and Waimanu on the Hamakua Coast. In March she explored the crater of Haleakala on Mau'i and later spent month in the valleys of Kaua'i. All these things she thoroughly described in her books and has often been reprinted describing the coral reefs and volcanos. ++++++++++++++++++++ SERENO EDWARDS BISHOP (1827-1909) Bishop was born at Kaawaloa, Hawai'i, son of Rev. Artemus Bishop. Sereno was sent to the United States at the age of twelve and graduated from Amherst College in 1846 and Auburn Theological Seminary in 1851. Shortly after his marriage to Cornelia Ann Sessions and after serving as chaplain to seamen in New York City, he returned with his wife to Hawai'i and was seaman's chaplain at Lahaina, Mau'i, from 1853 to 1862. After three years at Hana, Mau'i, he joined the staff of Lahainaluna Seminary, first as a teacher, then as principal. Bishop moved to Honolulu in 1877 and worked as a land surveyor. He compiled the first detailed map of Kaua'i and mapped the complex water rights and land titles in O'ahu's Nuuanu Valley. From 1887 to 1902, he was editor of "The Friend." a monthly journal, and was a lively correspondent to the Washington D.C. " Evening Star." Bishop expained the halolike circles around the sun noted after the Krakatoa eruption of 1883; these were called " Bishop's Rings " in his honor. His recollection of early Hawai'i are a valuable source of Hawai'ian History. ++++++++++++++++ NEAL SHAW BLAISDELL (1902-1975) Neal was the son of William Wallace and Melia K. Merseberg Blaisedell. He was born in Honolulu and attended the Kamehameha School for Boys, St. Louis College, the University of Hawai'i, and Bucknell University, where he obtained a batchelor's degree in business administration in 1925. He married Lucy Thurston, a teacher, the following year; she was to bare him two daughters and to act as the first lady of Honolulu during the fourteen years wen Blaisdell was mayor of the city. Blaisdell began a career as a teacher and was an admired athletic director, first at McKinley High School and later at Punahou School, Roosevelt High School, and St.Louis College. From 1930 to 1935, he was with the land department of Bishop Trust Co., and was an executive with the Hawai'ian Pineapple Co, from 1937 to 1953. He begun his political career in 1944, serving in the Territorial House for three years and the Senate for five. He was director of the Department of Public Welfare from 1953 to 1954 and in 1955 became Mayor, a post he held until 1969. He was once president of the United States Conference of Mayors, and was director of several business organizations and presidential commissions. The Neal S. Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, consisting of a concert hall and arena, bears his name +++++++++++++++++ ABRAHAM BLATCHLEY (1787-1860 ) Born in Connecicut, Blatchley received a medical degree from Yale College. He married Jemima Narvin in 1821 and the couple arrived in 1823 with the Second Company of American Missionaries in Honolulu, where theu were stationed until 1826. Dr. Blatchley traveled among the islands to practice medicine among the Hawai'ians and others alike. At Lahaina, Mau'i, he attended the last illness of Keopuolani and was frequetly called to treat Kalanimoku. After four years as the only medical missonary in the islands, his own health failed. The Blatchleys were released from their post and returned to the United States in 1827. ++++++++++++++++++++ WILLIAM BLIGH (1754-1817 ) A sailing master with James Cook, Bligh made the first maps of any part of the Hawai'ian Islands and commanded a party on shore after Cook's death. He had a band of black slaves, which they and Bligh, was later famed as the deposed captain during the Mutiny of the Bounty, and finally became an admiral in the Royal Navy. +++++++++++++++++ JAMES HENDERSON BLOUNT ( 1837-1903 ) Colonel of a Georgia regiment during the Civil War, Congressman Blount arrived in Honolulu on March 29, 1893, as special commissioner of incoming President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, with a letter to Sanford B. Dole stating that " in all matters affecting relations with the government of the Hawai'ian Islands, his authority is paramount." Blount ordered Admiral J.S. Skerritt to haul down the American Flag in Honolulu, and withdraw the protectorate over the islands. " Paramount" Blount collected information on the change of government until he embarked in the autumn to write a report that led Cleveland to denounce the " lawless occupation of Honolulu under false pretexts by United States forces." ++++++++++++++++++ BOKI (POKI) ( ? --1830) Boki was the son of Kuamanoha, a chief of Mau'i, and was a younger brother of Kalanimoku, but it was rumored that he was the son of Kahekili. His original name was Kamauleule; his nickname came from a variation on Boss, the name of the favorite dog of Kamehameha I. Boki was appointed governor of O'ahu and confirmed in his post by Kamehameha II. He married Liliha and they shared many adventures. Boki agreed to the breaking of the tabus in 1819 and accepted the Protestant missionaries arriving in 1820, although he had been baptized as a Catholic aboard the French vessel of Louis de Freycinet, along with Kalanimoku, the previous year. Boki and Liliha were leading members of the expedition to Great Britain during which Kamehameha II and Kamamalu died of measles. Returning with Lord Byron on the Blonde, Boki brought to Hawai'i an English gardener, John Wilkinson, and with him began raising sugar cane and coffee beans in Monoa Valley. Boki also encouraged the Hawai'ians to gather sandlewood for trade, ran a mercantile and shipping business, and opened a liquor store called the Blonde Hotel. Boki became resentful of the power of Kaahumanu and her missionary advisors, and not surprisingly, allied himself with foreigners like Richard Charlton and John Percival, Captian of the first visiting American warship. Boki was also a protector of the French missionaries that began arriving in 1827. Kaahumanu and the council in May, 1827, charged Boki and Liliha with misconduct, intemperance, fornication, and adultry, and had them fined. In return, Boki and Liliha objected to the laws passed at the end of the year and made no effort to enforce them. This disturbing element was removed when, heavily in debt, Boki heard toward the end of 1829, from a visiting Australian ship, about a South Pacific Island covered with valuable Sandalwood trees. Boki fitted out two ships, the Kamehameha and the Becket, put on board some five hundred of his followers, and sailed south. Somewhere in the Fiji group the ships separated. Eight months later the Becket limped back to Honolulu with only twenty survivors aboard. A quarrel had arisen with the natives of an island in the New Hebrides group and a disease had broken out that killed almost two hundred of the crew. Boki and two hundred and fifty of his men apparently died at sea when the Kamehameha burned in 1830, possibly when gunpowder stored in the hold blew up as a result of careless smoking. +++++++++++++++++ ELIAS BOND (1813-1896 ) Born in Hallowell, Maine, Bond graduated from Bowdoin College in 1838 and Bangor Thological Seminery in 1840.He married Eleanor Mariner Howell in September, 1840, and the couple sailed in October with the Ninth Company of American missionaries. The pair were stationed at Kohala, Hawai'i, where Bond was to labor unremittingly for fifty-five years. He founded the Select Boys' Boarding School in 1842, which merged with the first government English school when it opened in 1854. He also founded the Kohala ( Mauna Oliva) Girls' School in 1874. In 1861, he started the Kohala Sugar Plantation to provide employment for his congregagtion; the first sugar was produced in 1865, when the reciprocity treaty with the United States began to bring dividends, Bond gave his to mission work. He also erected Kahahikiola Church. The Bonds had ten children. ++++++++++++++++ HYPOLITE BOUCHARD ( 1785-1843 ) Born in Marseilles, France, Bouchard was the young Captain of the Argentina, a forty-four-gun frigate from the United Provinces that arrived in Honolulu in September, 1818, to round up a gang of South American pirates that had sought refuge in the islands. He recaptured the corvette Santa Rosa, which was put in command of Peter Corney, when the two vessels sailed for California later in the autumn. In the opinion of some, Bouchard himself was a little better than a pirate. ++++++++++++++++++ CHARLES BREWER (1804-1885 ) Brewer was born in Boston, the son of a dry-goods merchant. He was appenticd at the age of fourteen to a shopkeeper, but t seventeen went to sea and made a voyage to Calcutta. He first visited Hawai'i on the return passage in 1823. By the age of twenty-five, Brewer was first officer on the brig Chinchilla, based in Honolulu. He returned to Boston in 1829, but in October sailed as mate of the brig Ivanhoe, plying between Canton and Mexico, via Honolulu, until 1831. He then became Captain of a small schooner sailing between Hawai'i and the West Coat from Alaska to Mexico. Captain Brewer in 1835 became a partner in the prosperous Honolulu Company, owned by Henry A. Pierce, which had its origins from the efforts of James Hunnewell, going back to 1817. Pierce and Brewer traded in cotton goods, rum, ad Yankee notions in return for Sandalwood and furs. Brewer was the largest contributor in July 1839, to the sum of $20,000 raised to ransom Honolulu from the cannon o Captain C.P.T. LaPlace. In the same year, while visiting Boston, Brewer married Martha Turner. In 1843, when Pierce returned to New England, Brewer took full control and continued the island enterprises under is own name. The firm merged in 1845 with the company established in 1841 by J.F.B. Marshall and Francis Johnson. Brewer disposed of most of his Hawai'i interests in 1845 and took his family to Boston. His business trip back to Hawai'i from 1847 to 1849 ended his years of seafaring, but after the Civil War, he established a fleet of barks, sailing between Hawai'i and ports of Manila and Hong Kong. He retired from an active career in 1884. A nephew, Charles Brewer II, had taken over the Honolulu business in 1858 and retired in 1861, but the firm continued under the Brewer name, and contributed greatly to the financing and operation of the sugar industry. The Company was rescued from embarrassment in 1879 by Peter Cushman Jones, and a decisive event was the entrance into the firm of Charles R. Bishop in 1880. The office of C. Brewer & Co., Ltd., are still to be seen on Fort Street, Honolulu, but the company is now part of the I U Internationl Corp. ++++++++++++++++ WILLIAM TUFTS BRIGHAM ( 1841-1926 ) Born in Boston, Brigham received a batchlor's degree from Harvard University in 1862 and a master's degree in1865. he first came to Hawai'i in 1864 with his companion, Horace Mann, exploring botany and geology and discovering forty new varieties of plants. He was appointed curator of the Bernice P. Bishop museum in 1890 and served to his retirement in 1920, at the age of seventy-nine. He published works on Hawai'ian worship, feather work, stone impliments, ancient houses, kapa, and volcanos; for the latter work he made an extensive survey of Kilauea. Brigham was a member of several international anthropological societies,and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Colunbia University in 1905 +++++++++++++++++ PETER ALLAN BRINSMADE. ( 1804-1859 ) Born in Connecticut, Brinsmade studied at Andover Theolgical Seminary and at Yale Divinity School, and hence was closer to the missionary group than were most island merchants. He arrived in 1833 with hs wife and partners, William Ladd and William Northey Hooper. The missionaries, in turn, helped the firm, founded as Ladd & Co., in 1835, to obtain from the crown a fifty year lease on lands of their choice. The three partners started in 1836 the Koloa Plantation on the island of Kaua'i, the first extensive sugar growing company to survive. Brimsmade was also principal editor from 1838 to 1840 of a quarterly literary journal, the Hawai'ian Spectator, one of the first periodicals published in the Pacific region. He was appointed by President Martin Van Buren as United States commercial agent in Hawai'i from 1838 to 1846, replacing John Coffin Jones. By 1840, Ladd & Co., added to their growing of sugar the production of silk and of Kukui and castor oils. The failure of world powers to recognize Hawai'ian independence imperiled the leasing of lands by foreigners, and Brinsmade agreed to go abroad to lobby for such recognition and to enlist foreign capital for the commercial develpments of the islands. He bore letters, written by himself and signed by Kamehameha III to the president of the United States, the queen of Great Britain, and the King of France. With the aid of William Richards and Timothy Haalilio, a tripartite agreement was signed in Brussels in 1843, called the " Belguim Contract." among Kamehameha III, Ladd & Co. and the Belgain Company of Colonization, which exchanged holdings in Ladd & Co for shares in the Belgain corporation. This corporation was never organized and Brimsmade, destitute, returned to the islands in 1846. Lacking finances, the company struggled on for some years without marked success until Dr. R.W. Wood took over the management in 1848. Koloa Plantation is still in operation today. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ to be continued in Part 7. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/hi/statewide/newspapers/importan27nnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/hifiles/ File size: 15.1 Kb