WHERE IS GEORGE?
By Bonnie Stevens
George Galbraith died at Queen’s Hospital in Honolulu on 5 November 1904. He was buried shortly thereafter at Loch View Cemetery in Pearl City.
The fact of his burial is reported by Galbraith’s attorney, Cecil Brown, in testimony given 23 March 1905. Brown acknowledges that he took Galbraith to Queens Hospital in October, 1904; that he last visited Galbraith on November 4; that as he arrived to visit Galbraith on Saturday, November 5 the doctor was leaving the room and told Brown that Galbraith had died; that Brown made arrangements with Williams Mortuary for undertaking services; that he viewed the body at the mortuary on Sunday; made all the arrangements for the funeral; and on Monday “…we took his body down on the afternoon train to Pearl City and buried him there.”
Estate records show that in 1905 the trustee authorized a $250 expenditure to purchase a tombstone for George Galbraith’s grave.
In 1900 the City and County of Honolulu passed legislation that no further burials would take place within the City limits. In response, a group affiliated with the Dillingham Corporation appears to have formed the Hawaiian Cemetery Association and received for a nominal sum a deed to use some 17 acres of land adjacent to the Dillingham’s OR&L railroad tracks in Pearl City for a cemetery. One of the conditions of the deed was if the land ceased to be used as a cemetery, it would revert back to the original grantor. The new cemetery was called Loch View because from its location it commanded a view of Pearl Harbor’s Middle Loch. Through common usage it is also known as Lockview Cemetery.
Land records at the State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) show that in 1930 most of the 17 acres that had been Loch View Cemetery reverted back to the Dillingham Corporation. The City of Honolulu had lifted their ban on burials within the City limits. There had been no burials at Loch View in nearly 10 years. The grantor claimed back the property under the terms of the deed. Interestingly, the same parties signed for Hawaiian Cemetery Association releasing the property as signed for the Dillingham Corporation receiving it.
In the 1980’s the Hawaiian Historical Society commissioned a survey of cemeteries, especially small, older cemeteries falling into disrepair. The Cemetery Survey Report on Oahu includes Lockview Cemetery (sic). It specifically states that there are only a handful of stones on site. Most of those are broken. A few have readable inscriptions.
No record of George Galbraith’s burial appears in the Oahu Cemetery Survey completed on behalf of the Hawaiian Historical Society by Nanette Napoleon Purnel et al.
See: Where’s George Galbraith Now? Part 1, iLind.net, June 14, 2023.
Bonnie Stevens (1943-2016) was a graduate of University High School in Honolulu and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Although born and raised in Hawaii, she lived much of her life in the small town of Groveland, California, located just north of Yosemite National Park, and worked for the City of San Francisco at the Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite National Park. She was a skilled genealogist and amateur historian and, after moving back to the islands in 2007, served historian for the Daughters of Hawaii. She was the sister of investigative reporter and blogger, Ian Lind, who has published this blog for more than 20 years.
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Dillingham Corporation was formed in 1961 with the merger of Oahu Railway & Land Co. and Hawaiian Dredging & Construction, both Dillingham ventures. OR&L was the Dillingham outfit responsible for the original Pearl City development.
Technically it would have been Dillingham’s Oahu Railway & Land Co. since it wasn’t until 1961 when OR&L and Hawaiian Dredging merged, both Dillingham ventures.