Island History

The original forerunner of Lihu‘e’s Elsie H. Wilcox Elementary School was Lihu‘e English School, established in 1881 during the reign of King Kalakaua above the Lihu‘e Plantation sugar mill, where the Kaua‘i Economic Opportunity offices are located today along Wehe Road. Its first principal was John Moore, and students numbered 54 boys and 33 girls.    

In 1936, Henry Townsend, Lihu‘e English School’s second principal, recalled his days as principal during 1883 through 1886, over 50 years earlier.

“The school consisted of three teachers, one of whom was teaching in the Hawaiian language, while two were to use the English language exclusively.”

Townsend went on to explain that pupils taught in English were mostly Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian, and that the school’s enrollment of 98 students in 1883 also included Chinese, Japanese, Norwegian and German children.

Later in Townsend’s tenure a great number of immigrant Portuguese children entered the school, which caused problems since none of the teachers knew Portuguese and the pupils knew no English. “The difficulty of dealing with this problem was colossal — the new students were graded according to size only.”

Townsend also noted that “Certain pupils living near the heads of the water leads of Lihu‘e Plantation took off the major part of their clothing and floated down a good part of the distance, but complained that they had to walk the whole distance in the hot afternoons.”    

In 1921, some 15 years before Townsend’s recollections, Lihu‘e English School, by then called Lihu‘e School, had expanded onto 13 acres west of the original school site, an area that is nowadays occupied by a small central park, government buildings and grounds, and M. Kawamura Enterprises.  

Lihu‘e School moved to Hardy Street beginning in 1957, where it was renamed in 1959 after Kaua‘i educator Elsie Wilcox.