A Short Account of 150 Years at Grove Farm
At the time that the Civil War was raging between the North and South in America, Judge Herman Widemann owned a struggling farm on the outskirts of Lihue on the island of Kauai in the kingdom of Hawaii. One of the earliest plantations in Hawaii, the farm had been chopped out of a large grove of kukui trees and came to be known as the Grove Farm. Judge Wid
emann placed an advertisement (in foreground of the cover photo) in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) To Let – “Grove Farm” on October 22, 1864, and again on November 5, 1864. Young George Wilcox acquired Grove Farm November 26, 1864. He took a 10 year lease-to-own arrangement for $12,000.00 and moved into the Hawaiian thatched grass roof house, (background of cover photo). He was soon joined by his brother Sam, and right-hand man and cook, Kaipu. George’s vision combined with his engineering education from Sheffield Scientific School (a school of Yale College) resulted in his ability to change this arid farm into a thriving sugar plantation. Realizing that his plantation lacked enough water, which is the key to successfully growing sugar, his first major effort was to undertake the engineering and digging of an extensive irrigation ditch to bring water from the mountains to his sugar fields. With that effort being a success, his plantation expanded, and soon George built and furnished the needed structures, including a camp for plantation
workers, all of which faced a large yard enclosed
by stone walls. Food needed to be grown to supply the table, so the farm also included animal pens, a large garden, a great variety of fruit trees, with cattle and horses being pastured in the big yard. In 1922, as sole owner of his Grove Farm Plantation, George transferred management to his newly created corporation, Grove Farm Company, Limited. The corporate structure divided about one-fourth of the shares of the new company among his nieces and nephews, and their children from Hawaii to California. He retained three-fourths of the stock to be voted in trust after his death by his brother, Sam’s children, Etta, Elsie, Ga***rd and Mabel. George Norton Wilcox died of throat cancer on January 21, 1933 in Honolulu at the age of 93 years. An Advertiser editorial stated, “A mighty tree has fallen”. Miss Mabel Wilcox applied to the other Grove Farm Company stockholders in 1968 to purchase the seventy five acre Grove Farm homestead site on Nawiliwili Road in order to preserve it to “represent a developing sugar plantation” museum. This meant it was no longer owned or supported by Grove Farm Company, Ltd. Today the museum has an affable business relationship with Grove Farm Company and appreciates their providing reasonable land leases to house and run our locomotive collection. Grove Farm museum, operated by the non-profit organization Waioli Corporation, opened to the public in October 1980. In 2000 Grove Farm Company, Ltd. was acquired by AOL founder Steve Case, whose
grandfather was a former Vice-President of the company. Today at Grove Farm museum, the presence of past familiar sugar plantation experiences and traditions in Hawaii are still strongly felt.
