Koloa Plantation Sesquicentennial Memorial Monument & 1841 Mill Stack. July 1985. Karl H. Y. Lo Photo.
Aloha!
Welcome to the website on Koloa, the town Koloa Plantation built.
Koloa Town is alive and doing well; thank you!
The first sugar plantation town in the history of Hawai`i continues to be on the map 185 years after it was put on the map by Koloa Plantation. Century-old buildings, renovated and restored from 1982 to 1984 by Koloa Town Associates, continue to define Koloa Road, the main street of the town.
The town’s landmarks are the obvious legacies of Koloa Plantation, but the townspeople give meaning to the town. Prominent sons and daughters of Koloa representing various ethnicities — including adopted sons and daughters — who had a hand in building Koloa and Kaua`i, are important part of the legacy of Koloa Plantation. They rose to prominence by virtue of their service to Koloa, to the County of Kaua`i, and to the State of Hawai`i. Descendants perpetuate their elders’ legacy of service and aloha.
SOME HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
James Jackson Jarves (1818 – 1888), a historian, traveler, and newspaper editor from Boston, wrote of Koloa that the town was “a mere hamlet seldom visited by even a missionary.” The description, of course, was of Koloa before the Reverend Peter Gulick and his family moved from Waimea to start a Congregational mission in town, and before three visionary, enterprising young men from the East (New England, that is) came to the Sandwich Islands. They merit the name “Three Wise Men from the East!”
Peter Allan Brinsmade (1804 – 1859), 28, from Hollowell, Maine; William Ladd, (1807 – 1863), 26, also from Hallowell; and William Northey Hooper (1809 – 1878), 24, from Boston, Massachusetts, arrived in Honolulu in July 1833 and set up business under Brinsmade, Ladd, and Hooper.
The firm, as Ladd & Company, came to Koloa in 1835 and took steps to grow sugarcane commercially. Ladd & Company leased from 22-year-old King Kamehameha III (1813 – 1854) 980 acres of land in the east side of Koloa for 50 years at $300 a year. The agreement was signed by the King, by Kaua`i Governor Kaikio`ewa, and by the three partners on July 29, 1835. On that note, the planners of the seven-day (from Saturday, July 20, to Saturday, July 27) Sesquicentennial Celebration in 1985 chose July 27, the closest date to July 29, as the date for the finale of the celebration — the grand parade. Hence, the annual 10-day Koloa Plantation Days Celebration ends with a parade on the last Saturday of July.
Koloa Plantation Sesquicentennial Monument near the 1841 Koloa Mill stack on Maluhia Road. The bronze sculptures memorialize the eight major ethnic groups that made Koloa Plantation a success story. Left to right: Hawaiian in a malo (male’s loincloth) holding an oo hao (iron tool for digging, Caucasian (not installed), Puerto Rican carrying sugarcane, Chinese attired in laborer’s clothing of the Ming Dynasty squats to pick up his hoe, Korean woman carrying a large bundle of sugarcane, Japanese woman wearing Chika tabis, Portuguese woman standing, and Filipino man wearing the signature Filipino hat holding a cane knife with a rooster in front of him. Missing is what Jan Gordon Fisher, Brigham Young University professor and sculptor, envisioned as a Caucasian riding on a horse next to the Hawaiian, but the sculpture was not installed. Unveiled July 1986. May 5, 2014. Karl H. Y. Lo Photo.
History tells us that Koloa Plantation was the first successful sugar plantation in Hawai`i.
But the success of Ladd & Co. was short-lived. The company went into debt and finally into bankruptcy.
However, in 1847, Dr. Robert Wood, who came to Hawai`i in 1839 to take charge of the Hospital for American Seamen in Honolulu, bought Koloa Plantation. In 1872, Dr. Wood sold the plantation to Paul Isenberg, John Wright and Adolf Haneberg.
Paul Isenberg (1837-1903), born in Hanover, Germany, was half owner of Koloa Sugar Co. in December 1871 and became the president of the company in 1892, a post he held until 1902. The steam locomotive, The Paulo, used by Koloa Plantation from 1888 to 1925, which we see at the annual Koloa Plantation Days Parade, was named in his honor.
Koloa Sugar Company was incorporated in 1878, and the company owned and managed Koloa Plantation until January 1948, when Grove Farm Co. acquired Koloa Sugar Company’s sugarcane and pineapple lands, irrigation system, machinery, equipment and Koloa Mill and assumed the company’s debt of $1,000,000. “Merger” was the term used. To all intent and purposes, Grove Farm “bought” Koloa Plantation in January 1948.
KOLOA: A TOWN OF FIRSTS
Koloa is a town of firsts.
The town that Koloa Plantation built has the distinction of having the first public school on Kaua`i, established on November 22, 1877, with the authorization by the Board of Education of the Kingdom of Hawai`i. Four “common schools,” where Hawaiian was the medium of instruction, attended by Hawaiian children, and the English school for missionary children that the Reverend Daniel Dole, who was principal at Punahou School on O`ahu, started in Koloa in 1855, were consolidated. The first public school on Kaua`i, named Koloa Union School, was located where Koloa School is today.
Another first at Koloa is St. Raphael Church, the first Catholic Church on Kaua`i, founded in 1841 by Father Arsenius Robert Walsh (1804 -1869), 37. Those who attended the 2016 Koloa Plantation Days Parade saw the church’s float featuring a replica of the church in celebration of its 175th anniversary. The Filipinos of Koloa has a two-page spread on St. Raphael Church.
The most important first at Koloa, of course, was the founding of Koloa Plantation in 1835, when Ladd & Company leased from King Kamehameha III on July 29, 1835, the date the deed was signed, 980 acres of land in the east side of Koloa for 50 years.
Mahalo for visiting our website.
St. Raphael Church. January 16, 2017. Karl H. Y. Lo Photo.
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© 2020. COPYRIGHT Catherine Pascual Lo