I’m still finding fragmentary notes of my mother’s efforts to trace her Hawaiian family history. She died in early 2013, just months before her 99th birthday.
Here’s a sample, three pages of her notes that start with a discussion of the problems tracing the descendants of her great-great-grandmother, Kapehe, who was born in Kaupo, Maui, in 1829.
My mother reports that Kapehe is believed to have had 12 children, one of which was my great-great-grandmother, Heleualani.
There’s repetitive information in the second two pages of my mom’s notes, and it looks like she tried to edit and rewrite one section. But I thought it would be worth posting all of it, just to catch the details, and the differences, that might be reflected there.
There are many little anecdotes here of interest, along with lots of family names that we haven’t maintained connections with over the years.
Vignettes. My great grandmother, according to family lore, was seduced and impregnated by one of the sons of the Brickwood family, who she was living with after being sent to St. Andrew’s Priory at about age 15. My grandmother’s search for information about her grandparents, which the family apparently never disclosed to her because it involved being sent to Kalaupapa. A family connection to Sam Apana, also known as Charley Chang the Steeple Jack, who was featured in a series of photos I posted here a year or so ago (a connection I didn’t know about, or perhaps didn’t remember, until reading these notes again yesterday). And my mom’s description of attending a relative’s funeral on Maui in the early 1970s, and extended family members lining up to give her information in hopes that she could untangle the details of how we are all connected.
These are my mother’s rough notes, descriptions relevant more to the process of piecing together a family’s history than to the facts of that history.
As a reporter, I find that process fascinating, with definite parallels in pursuing an investigation that starts with a tip, and has to be developed using all variety of sources, some good, some bad and unreliable, including public records, witness reports, focused interviews, but that together move the story forward in one way or another.
And for Throwback Thursday, here’s a photo of my maternal grandparents, Heleualani and Duke Yonge, taken at a luau in the late 1940s.
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Ian, I appreciate your closing paragraph about the difficulties, even for an experienced investigative reporter, of getting correct factual information about family history. I apply those observations to the alleged indisputable accuracy of Hawaiian genealogies. We know that there was no written Hawaiian language until the missionaries invented one around 1820. Hawaiians had a strong oral tradition, and some individuals were trained to be 100% accurate in reporting speeches made by others, or stories, or poems, or genealogies. On sacred ceremonial occasions there were prayers or chants which had to be spoken by kahunas with no errors, on pain of death.
However, as you note from your own experience and we have all experienced, families have secrets which they do not tell the children. And especially in ancient times, Hawaiians were known for having multiple ongoing sexual relationships, sometimes resulting in children who were po’olua — having “two fathers” because the mother could not be sure which man had impregnated her. And certainly if a child had a biological background that was dishonorable, such as a father who was kauwa, the child and family might be told a more honorable but false genealogy.
I have spent considerable effort over many years trying to track down the correct birthdate for my favorite king, Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III, and have encountered many different dates and theories. As an investigative reporter, you’ll enjoy reading the footnotes in my webpage on that topic at
http://tinyurl.com/58ft2