“A Portal to the Past: What Hawaiian Kingdom Property Taxes Tell Us”

Program at Mission Houses Museum, Wednesday, November 9, 2011, 5:30 p.m.

News Release from www.MissionHouses.org

HONOLULU, HI – Dr. Tom Woods, executive director of Mission Houses Museum, will reveal some interesting information discovered in Hawaiian tax records of the 19th-century in a presentation at Mission Houses Museum on Wednesday, November 9, 2011, at 5:30 p.m.

During the program, entitled “A Portal to the Past: What Hawaiian Kingdom Property Taxes Tell Us” Dr. Woods will share the results of a project conducted with the Kona Historical Society on the Big Island that translated and created a database out of six years of property tax records from 1859 to 1890. Beginning in the 1850s, the Kingdom counted and taxed most possessions in the Kingdom. The database has revealed surprising information about life in Kona during the Kingdom-era: from the ethnic group that owned most of the grazing animals, to the most valuable crop, and the kinds of illnesses that laid tax payers so low, they could not pay their taxes.

The lecture will take place in the Chamberlain House on the grounds of Mission Houses Museum.

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Mission Houses Museum, located in Honolulu’s Historic Capitol District, is known worldwide as the place where the Hawaiian written language was developed in collaboration with the ali‘i. The museum preserves the oldest and second oldest documented houses in Hawai‘i and the largest collection of Hawaiian language books in the world. For more information: www.MissionHouses.org