Honolulu Publisher Thomas G. Thrum

Honolulu publisher Thomas G. Thrum (1842-1932) spent five years working in the Hawaiian sugar industry during the 1860s, including a spell at Kauai’s Koloa Plantation, when Robert W. Wood, the first entrepreneur to succeed financially in the Hawaiian sugar industry, was its owner.  

Born in Australia, Thrum had immigrated to Hawaii with his parents in 1853 and had gone to sea on a whaler and clerked at stores in Honolulu and Hilo before taking over Black & Auld’s Honolulu stationary and news business in 1870.

Then in 1875, Thrum began publishing the “Hawaiian Almanac and Annual,” known also as “Thrum’s Hawaiian Annual,” a standard reference work he edited for the remainder of his life.

Packed with interesting information, the 1875 almanac, for example, lists Waimea, Kauai’s population as 1,269, with 1,220 being Native Hawaiians, while Kauai’s total population was 4,961.  

Mail left Lihue for Hanalei on Mondays, and departed Lihue for Koloa and Waimea on Thursdays. And, one of the holidays of the Hawaiian Kingdom was His Majesty’s Birthday, Nov. 16.

From 1881 to 1886, Thrum published the “Saturday Press,” and with J. J. Williams launched “Paradise of the Pacific” in 1888, which in 1966 became “Honolulu Magazine.”

Thrum also did extensive archaeological fieldwork on the Big Island, Maui, Oahu and Kauai, where he located and then listed over 500 heiau.

In his research of Hawaiian mythology, he recorded over 400 Hawaiian gods and goddesses.  

Thrum also translated into English, revised and edited the “Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folklore,” known as the single greatest source of Hawaiian folklore, published by Bishop Museum between 1916 and 1920.

Among his many other published works are: “Hawaiian Folk Tales: A Collection of Native Legends,” “Stories of the Menehunes,” and “More Hawaiian Folk Tales.”