Buried down towards the bottom of my post a few days ago about the box of old records was a story my mother told about her grandfather, Robert William Cathcart, and some of his encounters in the late 1800s at a spot known as the Sunny South.

Here’s a brief excerpt to set the scene:

There were quite a few British subjects living in Honolulu when Robert W. Cathcart arrived in 1881, so it didn’t take him long to meet others from the British Isles. One with whom he became friendly was Major Hills, a former British army officer who had lived in Tahiti where he married a Tahitian woman. The Hills lived in the Waikiki area where they operated a soft-drink bottling company on Kalakaua Avenue mauka of what is now Kapiolani Boulevard. They called their premises “Sunny South” where every Sunday a group of their associates gathered for a day of pleasant relaxation.

I was very surprised to then receive an email from a prominent local real estate lawyer.

He wrote:

Your mention of Sunny South in a recent blog rang a bell. I remembered an old map of Honolulu copyrighted in 1912 by Charles V. E. Dove. I have scanned a small portion of it and have attached the scan. Sunny South is located just mauka of the then-proposed Ala Wai Canal. The streets depicted as dashed lines didn’t get built quite where shown. The arc crossing King, Kalakaua and Ala Moana before ending at sea seems to be a measure of two miles from the main post office.

Thought you might be interested.

The map confirms my mom’s version of approximately where the Sunny South was located.

I thought this was very cool, and so decided to share it.

Here’s the scan of the old map (click to see a larger version):