Interesting things keep turning up in my mother’s small stash of old papers inherited from Professor Carey D. Miller.

This time is a short history of the beginnings of the home economics department of the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts of Hawaii, soon to become the College of Hawaii, and later the University of Hawaii.

The author, Agnes Hunt, arrived in Honolulu in August 1908 on the S.S. China, along with John Gilmore, newly appointed president of the college, and Jerome John Morgan, who was to take charge of the college’s department of chemistry and physics.

Hunt, then a recent home economics graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had been recruited by Gilmore just a month earlier.

“There were only a couple of weeks to make preparations for such an extended journey, but my family ‘turned to’ and we were able to assemble a wardrobe, find out about transportation, etc.,” Hunt recalled. “It was really almost a community project to send one of its own so far away from home.”

Hunt was offered a salary of $1,200 a year, but Gilmore raised it to $1,500 “to help pay for transportation.”

Hunt’s brief history, written as she looked back over the experience at the age of 82, provides some of the flavor of the times.

This first cohort of faculty were starting quite literally at square one, having to drum up public interest in the idea of a college education.

“It was a very interesting experience as well as a challenging one to have to start from the very beginning, to get scholastic material together to present to people with varying degrees of education — very few had even a high school education,” Hunt wrote. “Our attempt through the president and members of the board of the new college was to create an interest in the possibilities that this institution might be able to offer, if there was a demand for such. This appeal was made to interest the adult community with lectures by all the departments–Dr. Herman Babson in the German and foreign language department, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Dillingham in chemistry.”

The newcomers found quarters at Gray’s Boarding House, across from McKinley High School between King Street and Beretania, the same area as the college’s temporary location.

A visitors guide from the period described the facility.

Mrs. Gray’s (The Gray), on King street, just above Thomas Square, caters to a select patronage of permanent guests. This home hotel is delightfully located in a tropical garden, within easy walking distance to the city. The King street cars to the city and to Waikiki pass the doors. Rates, $40 per month. Mrs. L.M. Gray, proprietor.

This photo shows boarders on the steps of the boarding house. Agnes Hunt is at the bottom of the stairs on the right in the photo. Mrs. Gray is at the top of the stairs. The man in a suit to the right in the photo is Arthur Keller, another of the earliest faculty.

“We had been able to live fairly comfortably at Mrs. Gray’s boarding house just across Beretania Street from the College building–Thomas Square was in the block nearest town,” Hunt wrote later. “Several members of the college faculty also lived there and it made more interesting living. Mrs. Gray made an effort to take parties by tallyho to very interesting areas around the islands, with picnic lunches included.”

Thomas Square, as it appeared at the time.

The first home of the College of Hawaii.

“Our first problem in the department, as I saw it, was to get together equipment for a laboratory in which we could have our students, if we had any,” Hunt wrote.

To that end, I made inquiries and found it would be six months at least before we could get the necessary, though meager, equipment for any kind of a workable laboratory. This photograph of the laboratory, taken in 1910, shows what we were able to assemble–a workable amount of equipment. I note the caption at the bottom of this picture is: “Domestic Science Kitchen.”

College of Hawaii faculty, 1908-09:

A typed note accompanied this photo:

Top row: Chapson, Green, Severance

Second row: Ross, Pope, Donoghho

Third row: Gilmore, Hunt

Bottom row: Porter, Babson, Morgan, Young

Hunt returned to East Lansing, Michigan, where she was named a Professor of Domestic Science in 1910. In 1915 she married C. Marshall Cade and, as she put it later, “my life became that of a wife and mother.”