Lihue, Kauai-born Dr. Alsoberry Kaumu Hanchett (1885-1932) was the first person of Hawaiian ancestry to graduate from a medical school in the United States and practice medicine in Hawaii. His grandfather, Salem Hanchett of Massachusetts, went to sea as a
Lihue, Kauai-born Dr. Alsoberry Kaumu Hanchett (1885-1932) was the first person of Hawaiian ancestry to graduate from a medical school in the United States and practice medicine in Hawaii.
His grandfather, Salem Hanchett of Massachusetts, went to sea as a teenager aboard a Pacific whaler, settled on Kauai around 1815 during the reign of King Kaumualii, and in due course married Aluhua, a daughter of Kaumualii.
In 1848, he was granted citizenship in the Kingdom of Hawaii, and seven years afterward, in 1855, he obtained a license to operate a Wailua River ferry at a time when no bridges spanned the river.
For many years thereafter, he could be seen on horseback, his wooden leg strapped beside him, ferrying passengers across the river aboard his scow.
Salem Hanchett’s son, Salem Panole Hanchett, a skilled carpenter and cabinet maker, and Julia Malaea Palaile Hanchett were Dr. Alsoberry Hanchett’s parents.
Following his graduation from Kamehameha Schools in 1908, Dr. Hanchett was off to Harvard, where he received his A.B. degree in 1911 and his M.D. degree in 1914 — the first Hawaiian to do so.
After Harvard, he practiced medicine at Providence, Rhode Island before returning to Hawaii in 1916 to become the city and county physician of Honolulu, specializing in surgery.
During World War I, Major Hanchett served in the Medical Corps at Schofield Barracks and Fort Shafter, and later entered private practice with Dr. Pekelo in an office on the corner of Beretania and Punchbowl.
In 1929, he acquired a homestead on Molokai and became a full-time doctor and part-time farmer on the Friendly Isle — raising peanuts, tomatoes, asparagus and strawberries, while accepting chickens, pigs and bags of sweet potatoes in exchange for his medical services.
Dr. Alsoberry Hanchett and Mary Hazel McGuire — a nurse at Queens Hospital — were married in Honolulu in 1917 and had eight children.
