Hawaiian suffragist Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann Dowsett (1861-1929) was born in Lihu‘e, Kaua‘i, to parents Hermann A. Widemann (1822-99) and Mary Kaumana Pilahiulani (1833-99). Her German-born…
Posts published in “Island History”
Kaua‘i’s Hamura Saimin restaurant was opened for business by Mr. &Mrs. Charles Susumu Hamura (1906-80) and Aiko Hamura (1910-2002) in a converted Army barracks on…
Dr. James W. Smith, Kaua‘i’s only medical doctor for much of the 19th century, was born in Connecticut in 1810, educated at the New York…
Eliza Sinclair (1800-1892) had prospered as a rancher in New Zealand after arriving there from Scotland in 1841, but she’d not been content there since…
Born in New Zealand, the son of William and Mary Brash, William Brash (1842-1929) arrived in Honolulu with his parents on the American whaler “Fame…
Francis Gay (1852-1928), Kaua‘i sugar planter, stock raiser and co-founder of Gay &Robinson, was born in New Zealand, the son of Thomas Gay and Jane…
Gov. Paul Kanoa (1802-1885) was born in 1802 in South Kona, Hawai‘i, and served as clerk to the governor of O‘ahu, Mataio Kekuanaoa, prior to…
When Lyle Guslander bought the Coco Palms Hotel and hired Grace Buscher as manager in 1953, the hotel contained only 24 rooms and employed a…
Missionary teacher William Harrison Rice and his wife, Mary Sophia Hyde Rice, were born in rural New York — he in 1813 at Oswego, and…
Norwegian Valdemar Knudsen (1819-1898) settled on Kaua‘i in 1856, and at one time held government leases to over 100,000 acres of western Kaua‘i that was…