What's New

September 2008

Little bits of history that may have escaped attention—just sharing!

A SPECIAL VISITOR TO SYRACUSE IN 1875—
KING KALAKAUA OF HAWAII

           A number of years ago, 1994, in picking up a copy of the Onondaga County Bicentennial Book, it was rather startling to read in paging through it, this particular historical item listed under facts about the city of Syracuse:
                                      
1875. January 10--- King Kalakaua of Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands stopped here.

Ohh!!!   Where was Mother Marianne in January 1875--- in charge at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, of course, and what was the newly elected King doing here— his business was in Washington negotiating a Reciprocity Treaty (re: sugar tariff) as well as making some other stops of interests.

    This surprise fact of a stop in Syracuse sent us to the city newspaper files to search for more local information, the result being that we have an article verifying that sure enough the train carrying King Kalakaua did stop at our Central Depot, if not for long, and the King had or took time to eat breakfast at the station restaurant.  Being that the Syracuse stop-to-eat was not on the schedule, this clearly was the reason he was not given the royal treatment he clearly received in all other places. 

    We will include here a copy of the article to read (see left) to allow you to figure out your own conclusions to ideas that could meander through our minds such as:

Did Mother Marianne see the article?  This is possible.  The King's trip to Washington received much P.R.  A better question is whether or not she remembered anything about his journey here eight years later at the time she heard of an appeal from the Hawaiian Islands.  She never said.

Did King Kalakaua remember he stopped in Syracuse when he heard from his Prime Minister that the nuns who responded to his plea to help his stricken people were from this central New York locale.   Is it likely he would recall the locale where he said he received his “first square meal” since he came to our shores--- hmm, maybe the delicious meal but how about the place he ate it.  He never said.

    The article tells us that his expected stop for breakfast was in Rochester but the writer does say that the unscheduled stop here is “an important epoch in our local history, his Majesty’s being the only royal feet that trod our soil.” … 
(Obviously there is no mention of any problem besetting Hawaii in any account of his trip).

    We are sure that the new King could not have realized that a woman probably arising from sleep at the time of his early morning visit in order for her to run the first hospital in Syracuse, one located near the depot, would be the one who responded to a heartfelt plea to come to the aid of his people less than a decade later.