Early Hanalei

Early Days in Kauai & Hanalei

Missionary Era

Abner's second son, attends school in Honolulu at Punahou. His missionary parents live on a very tight budget due to the Missionary Society cutting back and his having several brothers and more on the way. Fortunately, Abner is one of a deminishing number of teacher who speaks Hawaiian. But he has a desire to advance his son's education, as does his son. The catch is, higher education at that time is only available on the east coast of the US.

To earn money for college, George takes a job with the American Guano Company offered by Sam Wilder. His job is to work on the distant mid-Pacific island of Jarvis loading guano bird fertilizer. He sails on the brigatine "Josephine" six days to reach this island which is anything but a tropical paradise. He works with fellow missionary Charley Judd and is quickly given more and more responsiblity. After eight months of hard, dirty work he returns home to finish at Punahou with a tidy sum in his pocket for college expenses.

Off to College, 1860

George then sails to the east coast via Panama to attend Sheffield Scientific School in New Haven Conn. His parents worry since sailing from Panama to New England risks becoming involved with the Confederate Navy...The US Civil War has just commensed.

This school later becomes a part of Yale University. Here he takes a 2-year course in Civil Engineering. After graduating he works a bit in New England but quickly becomes homesick for his home and family in Hawaii.

First Jobs

After returning from college, he starts his Waioli career by rebuilding his father's school house which has just burned down days before his return. Then he experiments with agriculture in the Waiol-Hanalei area. Coffee is grown but not economically. Taro grows well but has no major market. Then he trys sugar cane which is just getting started in the islands. Unfortunately, Hanalei has so much rain that the seed rots and so little deep farming soil that sugar cane is not a natural crop for the area.

He obtains part time work with more southerly plantations near Lihue. He works for the leading Kauai planter W? Rice doing bookkeeping, works for the county as a tax collector and fianlly helps the owner of Grove Farm plantation, Judge Hermann Wideman, to survey and execute a construction of a vital grade-sensiirrigation ditch from the high wet part of the islands to the flat fertile area. This low area is not only much better horticulturaly, but economically as it is adjacent to Nawiliwili Harbor.

Business Beginnings

The Judge takes a liking to young engineer George and the rest is history. The judge has other interests and would like to have George take over his plantation. It is not a free ride as George has to lease the land and gradually, through careful business management, buy the whole plantation over time.

George then begins a very successful life married to his sugar business and stays active until his mid-90's and dies on a business trip to Honolulu. Meanwhile he has grown his operation dramatically so that by the 30's he has amassed a large conglomerate of new land and existing plantations and sugar mills plus major holding in other Hawaiian industries. He serves in various posts for Kauai and Hawaiian government positions and chairities.