Grove Farm Plantation: The Biography of a Hawaiian Sugar Plantation

German immigrant Hermann A. Widemann (1822-1899) in 1854 started one of the first sugar plantations in Hawaii, which was chopped out of a large grove of kukui trees and was therefore called the Grove Farm. During the American Civil War the demand for Hawaii sugar grew, but Widemann supported the Confederate States. After leasing Grove Farm to its manager George Norton Wilcox (1839-1933) in November 1864, Widemann moved to Honolulu to work in the capital as a Supreme Court judge. Wilcox would later buy the plantation, and it remained in the family for over 100 years. George's vision, combined with his education, resulted in his building an irrigation system to bring water from the mountains to the flatter lower elevations where the crops were grown changing his arid farm into a thriving sugar plantation. This idea was later copied by many other planters on the islands.