Something about sugar : $b Its history, growth, manufacture and distributionRolph, George M. (George Morrison)
History
Something about sugar : $b Its history, growth, manufacture and distribution
Rolph, George M. (George Morrison)
Sugar
Cleveland[37] says that upon his first visit to the Sandwich group in
1799 the natives came alongside the ship in canoes bringing many fruits
and vegetables, among which was sugar cane.
L. L. Torbert, one of the early planters, in a paper read before the
Royal Agricultural Society in January, 1852, claims that the earliest
sugar factory was put up on the island of Lanai in 1802 by a Chinaman
who came to the islands in one of the vessels trading for sandalwood.
He brought with him a stone mill and boilers, and after grinding one
small crop and making it into sugar, went away the next year taking his
apparatus with him.
Anderson[38] makes a statement that 257 tons of sugar were exported
from the islands in 1814, but cites no authority upon which to base his
assertion.
According to Jarves[39] the first instance of the manufacture of sugar
goes back beyond 1820, but the name of the pioneer planter is unknown. It
is certain that at first molasses was manufactured and then sugar some
time before 1820.
Don Francisco de Paula Marin made sugar in Honolulu in 1819, the year
before the arrival of the first missionaries. Lavinia, an Italian, did
the same thing in 1823. His method was to pound the cane with stone
pestles on huge wooden trays (poi boards) by native labor, collecting the
juice and boiling it in a small copper kettle.
Accounts from various sources agree that the making of sugar and molasses
was general in 1823-24. This undoubtedly had direct connection with the
manufacture of rum, which was extensively carried on at that time.
In 1828 a considerable amount of cane was raised in the neighborhood of
Honolulu and mills were built in the Nuuanu valley and Waikapu, Maui. A
pioneer cane grower, Antonio Silva by name, lived at the latter place,
and some Chinamen had a sugar mill near Hilo. In those days mills were
made of wood, very crudely put together and worked by oxen.
The first attempt at sugar cultivation on a large scale was made at
Koloa, Kauai, by Ladd & company, a Honolulu merchant firm, in 1835. This
was the beginning of what is now known as the Koloa plantation, and the
first breaking of the soil for planting cane was done with a plough
drawn by natives. A mill was established here at the same time, and the
enterprise was managed by a Mr. Hooper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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