Manuel Aguiar Jr. 

Hanama‘ulu-born Manuel Aguiar Jr. (1892-1969) was elected to the Territorial Legislature in 1918, served 13 years on the Kaua‘i Board of Supervisors and won election to a 4-year term in the Territorial Senate in 1948, while earning his living as an independent sugar grower. 

As the eldest of eight brothers and six sisters, he was obliged to discontinue his schooling at age 14 in 1906 to work as a steam plowman for Makee Sugar Co. in Kealia to help support his family.  

Five years later, the self-educated and self-made popular legislator got his start as an independent grower by borrowing $150 for a down payment on the purchase price of $532.50 for Territorial Lot 76 — 35 1/2 acres at $15 per acre — and planted sweet potatoes. The following year, 1912, he cleared 18 acres and planted cane.  Harvested in 1914, the crop netted Aguiar $2,190, of which a half-share went to his father, who demanded payment in gold, but settled for saddlebags filled with 1,190 silver dollars instead.  

By purchasing and leasing additional land, Aguiar would eventually have as many as 150 acres in cane and employ several men who lived in Aguiar Camp alongside Kawaihau Road. 

Unlike most independent growers, Aguiar worked with his men in the fields, and at harvest time they’d cut the cane and “hapai ko” into cane cars on railroad tracks that Makee, and later, Lihue Plantation would haul by locomotive to their mills. 

His final crop was harvested in 1958, when Lihue Plantation quit buying cane from independent growers.  At that time, only three independents remained on Kaua‘i, down from over 200 in the Kapahi region alone when he started, and he turned to ranching.  

Manuel and Beatrice Aguiar Jr. had three daughters.