• Editor’s note: In response to last week’s fire at Kamalani Pavilion, Island History contributor Hank Soboleski decided to reflect on the namesake of Lydgate Park. Born in Canada in 1854, John Mortimer Lydgate moved to the Hawaiian Kingdom with
• Editor’s note: In response to last week’s fire at Kamalani Pavilion, Island History contributor Hank Soboleski decided to reflect on the namesake of Lydgate Park.
Born in Canada in 1854, John Mortimer Lydgate moved to the Hawaiian Kingdom with his parents in 1865, attended Punahou School and worked as a surveyor and plantation manager before heeding a call to the ministry.
After completing theological studies at Yale, he was ordained as a Congregational minister, and in 1896, he accepted the pastorship of the Congregational Church in Lihu‘e (now the Lihue United Church).
Two years later he married Helen Elwell, a teacher at the Malumalu School for Hawaiian boys and girls, located above the Huleia River, just east of where the Puhi and Hulemalu roads intersect.
The couple would have four sons.
Their home, the parsonage, with its spacious rooms and long, wide verandahs, stood next to the church, and on Saturdays, Lydgate would shut himself in his study to write the Sunday sermon.
Mrs. Lydgate would often entertain a tea party or a ladies luncheon at that time, but the boys, knowing their father needed quiet, would climb into their horse-drawn carriage and ride to the beach to swim and fish — one favorite spot being a rocky inlet off a dirt road called Marine Drive near what is now the Lihu‘e Airport.
Sunday, the Sabbath, the traditional day of rest, was a busy day for Rev. Lydgate, however.
In church, he would sit in a high-back chair behind the koa-wood pulpit.
As the organist would commence to play, one of his sons would stand in the vestibule, waiting for the signal from his father to pull the bell rope to announce the start of the 11 a.m. services.
When Lydgate preached, he did so quietly, with few gestures and much sincerity.
For a number of years, Lydgate would also drive to Koloa in his horse and buggy with his sons to preach on Sunday afternoon at the Koloa Hawaiian church in the Hawaiian language, which he’d learned at Punahou.
On the drive out, he’d either drop the boys off at Halfway Bridge to pass the time swimming and eating guavas and mountain apples or he’d take them all the way to Koloa to swim at Po‘ipu Beach.
From time to time on other Sundays, Lydgate would hold open-air services for the sick at the Mahelona Tuberculosis Hospital in Kapa‘a.
During the week, he would visit the sick of the parish or officiate at a baptism, wedding or funeral.
In his spare time, he earned extra cash by The Garden Island, then a weekly, and by surveying, an art he’d acquired at Punahou.
Plantation owners, land agents and others would call on his expertise, and he and his sons would set off with transit and tripod and chain and pins to battle scratchy lantana, insects and an occasional stray bull to complete the survey work.
Afterwards, Lydgate would spend hours at his drawing board making maps.
His biggest and toughest surveying job was laying out the route for the power line running from McBryde’s Wainiha power plant, across Kaua‘i, to the old McBryde mill at Numila.
This route covered some 34 miles of rugged, thickly forested mountain ridges and valleys.
Work was completed in 1906.
Today, a stretch of Lydgate’s route, the Powerline Trail, which runs between Hanalei and Wailua, is a popular challenge for hikers.
During work on the power line, Lydgate discovered a new species of violet that he named “viola helenae” in honor of his wife.
His fascination with plants had begun at Punahou and continued throughout his life, and over the years, he would discover several Hawaiian plant species in the Wahiawa Mountains, Olokele Valley and Kalihiwai on Kaua‘i, and on other Hawaiian islands as well.
On his surveying expeditions, he also uncovered ancient Hawaiian landmarks that had lain under vegetation for decades, or even centuries, and in his desire to preserve the ruins of a heiau and a place of refuge near the mouth of the Wailua River, he petitioned the territorial governor to set aside this area as a public park. After he passed on, it was officially named Lydgate Park.
Lydgate furthered his interest in history as a founding member, in 1914, of the Kauai Historical Society.
Since he could speak Hawaiian fluently, he collected legends that had been handed down through the generations, transcribed them into English and published several in island magazines; he also recorded and preserved the oral histories of local old timers. Three of his Kaua‘i stories are printed in “The Kauai Papers,” a charming book available in local libraries.
His most intriguing article, perhaps, which was published in “Thrum’s Hawaiian Annual” in 1913 tells of a census taken on Kaua‘i in the very early 1800s, where 65 people living in an upper section of Wainiha Valley reported their nationality as Menehune, not Hawaiian.
The sociable Lydgates entertained many guests throughout the years, including the famous writer Jack London, who stayed with them in 1915.
Lydgate wrote about London’s visit in the May 25, 1915, issue of The Garden Island, describing London as modest and direct in conversation, and noted that London wrote for two hours every morning.
The Rev. and Mrs. Lydgate also started circulating a collection of books in their church that eventually grew into the Kaua‘i Public Library.
When Lydgate retired from the ministry in 1919, he moved with his family to a new house on Rice Street — then a lovely residential area — across the street from where the Rice Shopping Center now stands.
The Rev. John Mortimer Lydgate passed away in 1922.
