Editor’s note: On Dec. 3, the Kaua‘i Museum celebrates its 50th anniversary. Museum leaders have chosen 50 stories from exhibits, collections and the archives of the museum to share with the public. One story will run daily through Dec. 3.
Editor’s note: On Dec. 3, the Kaua‘i Museum celebrates its 50th anniversary. Museum leaders have chosen 50 stories from exhibits, collections and the archives of the museum to share with the public. One story will run daily through Dec. 3.
LIHU‘E — In 1879 Robert A. Macfie, Jr. bought shares in Kilauea Sugar and became manager. The British had long controlled the area as early as the 1830s when Richard Charlton leased a good area from Kilauea to Hanalei for cattle ranching. It was rumored that the elder Macfie, a successful sugar refiner with substantial financial interests in industrial Liverpool, England, shipped his son considered the black sheep of the family to Hawaii.
Because of the need for a great outlay of capital, Kilauea was incorporated on January 30, 1880 and initially offered 300 shares of stock at $1,000 per share to put in the water systems; Miriless, Tait, and Watson mill; steam plows; and rail system.
On Kamehameha Day 1881, Kilauea held a celebration when the water system was completed. The people of the village followed a marching band along the flume and ditch to the reservoir, which had been built across the Kilauea Stream. The sluice gates of the reservoir were opened following a hymn, the national anthems of Great Britain, the U.S., Germany, and Sweden, Chinese firecrackers, and a prayer.
A few months later, on 24 September 1881, the arrival of the locomotive, twenty four cane cars, and three miles of portable track. The Princess Regent, who would later became Queen Liliuokalani, who had landed at Hanalei the day before was asked to drive in the first spike. The future queen was met at the Kong Lung Store by plantation manager Robert A. Macfie who gave a short talk, as did Governor Paul P. Kanoa. The Princess drove the spike home with two blows and the railroad was in operation.
At Kilauea Macfie surrounded himself with Scotsmen and Englishmen in an attempt to keep the plantation British.
He brought Alexander Lindsay, along with his wife and seven children, from Scotland. Robert Purvis came from England and George Ewart from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The plantation engineer and two schoolteachers were also British.
Young Macfie’s career at Kilauea lasted until the end of August 1890, when his father, by then a major shareholder, decided his son was too extravagant and wrote him about the ever-increasing indebtedness “the magnitude of which appalls me.”
Macfie was followed by George P. Ewart. During the early years of the Republic, monarchist Ewart was angry with the Americans enough to deny them a post office station in his plantation town.
