From May 30 to June 15, 1861, Englishwomen Lady Jane Franklin (1791-1875) and her deceased husband’s niece, Sophia Cracroft (1816-1892), visited Kaua‘i during their tour of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The women were guests of Minister of Foreign Affairs and Princeville
From May 30 to June 15, 1861, Englishwomen Lady Jane Franklin (1791-1875) and her deceased husband’s niece, Sophia Cracroft (1816-1892), visited Kaua‘i during their tour of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
The women were guests of Minister of Foreign Affairs and Princeville Plantation owner Robert Crichton Wyllie at Kikiula, his home once located on the hillside just east of the Hanalei Bridge, which was not erected until 1912.
After arriving at Hanalei aboard the schooner “Odd Fellow,” Wyllie’s manager, Godfrey Wundenberg, welcomed them aboard his whaleboat at the anchorage and steered them into the Hanalei River.
Upriver on their port side they passed Wyllie’s sugar mill, and after landing below Kikiula, they walked uphill to his whitewashed and red-roofed house.
Sophia Cracroft wrote, “We passed here twelve delightful days of unbroken repose, free from bustle, interruption, and fatigue.”
But not without some excitement, for among their experiences they observed an argument between missionaries Mrs. Lois Johnson and Mrs. Lucy Wilcox following Sunday services held by missionary Rev. Edward Johnson at the Waioli church — a quarrel about which woman’s home Lady Franklin should visit first.
Later, while touring Kaua‘i on horseback and by horse-drawn carriage, the women stayed overnight in dairy farmer Ernest Krull’s thatched-grass home at Kumukumu above Kealia Beach.
They were also impressed by the machinery of the Lihu‘e Plantation mill — then managed by former missionary William Harrison Rice — and Rice’s teakwood-panelled home at Koamalu, which stood in the area of today’s Aloha Church.
Later, the Englishwomen met gentlemanly, gray-haired Gov. Paul Kanoa at Herman Widemann’s thatched-grass Grove Farm residence.
Following a trip to Wailua Falls, they also visited future sugar planter Paul Isenberg’s residence, the Thomas Brown mansion situated on the high pali above the juncture of the north and south forks of the Wailua River.
On June 15, Lady Jane Franklin and Miss Cracroft departed Nawiliwili by steamer for Honolulu.
