The Value of Plantation-Era Archives in Today’s World
In a matinée encore presentation on Friday afternoon, September 2, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. at the Lyman Museum, John Cross of the Olson Trust Archive gives us a tantalizing peek at these relics of bygone days which are still in use today, and describes how we can tap these irreplaceable historic resources for our own purposes.
The sugar plantations dominated agricultural land use on Hawai‘i Island for more than 160 years, before that era ended in the 1990s. Many of the old maps, land records, and other documents of those times are unknown to current owners of former sugarcane lands, but may very well contain information of use or interest to such landowners. Could you be one of them?
The Edmund Olson Trust Archive is a remarkable repository of documents from Hawai‘i’s sugar plantations, tracing an important part of the Islands’ history from the 1850s through the 1990s.
The nationally accredited and Smithsonian-affiliated Lyman Museum showcases the natural and cultural history of Hawai‘i. Located in historic downtown Hilo at 276 Haili Street, the Museum is open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. For more information, call (808) 935-5021 or visit www.lymanmuseum.org.
