While on a winter business trip to chilly Tokyo, Jackson, then 38 years old, suffered a worrisome and debilitating case of nervous exhaustion compounded by overwork. In late 1897, doctors in Japan urged him to get to warmer climes as soon as possible, and they recommended Hawaii as the place to go.

And so it happened that Jackson, a distinguished-looking man with muttonchop sideburns, became one of hundreds of Americans who believed that a visit to Hawaii could save their lives.

Jackson’s end-of-life days in Hawaii is included in a batch of documents sent from what was then the Hawaiian Kingdom to the U.S. State Department when an American, who was then a foreigner in the islands, died in Hawaii in the 1800s. Labeled “Records of Deceased Americans,” a surprisingly large number of the often-fragmentary records reflect the final days of people who came to the islands hoping for a miracle cure.

Hawaii became the place of last refuge for many people, as the U.S. consular records show. Civil Beat also researched old newspaper archives, sites that track ancestry and burial records, court filings and other documents to find out more about the people whose last known possessions ended up in a dead letters file in the National Archives, many unopened for more than 100 years.

Jackson had been a somewhat sickly child who had post-nasal drip, then called a “catarrhal affection,” but had nevertheless been a dynamo for most of his life. The son of a financially struggling Baptist minister, Jackson had not been able to complete college.

But as a teenager, he went to work at a still-fledgling firm called Western Electric Co., a subsidiary of AT&T for most of its existence along with other communications companies like Bell Telephone that emerged in the late 1800s. The engineering entrepreneurs who ran Western Electric soon recognized that Jackson had a knack for numbers, and within a few years, by the time he was 24, he had worked his way up from head bookkeeper to the company’s secretary-treasurer.

“He was a wizard with figures,” Thomas W. Goodspeed wrote in a University of Chicago retrospective in 1922. “Accounting was as natural to him as breathing.”

Western Electric grew wildly, both in the United States and globally, and Jackson worked diligently, traveling the world promoting the company’s business and overseeing the firm’s increasingly complex financial affairs. Accompanied by a faithful male companion, D. H. Rosell, Jackson went to Japan in 1897. But he became ill, and the two men set off for Hawaii.

They checked into an upscale lodging establishment called the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, which no longer exists. It was located at 250 South Hotel St., according to the Historic Hawaii Foundation, now No. 1 Capitol Building, formerly called the Armed Services YMCA building. The original Royal Hawaiian Hotel downtown was the predecessor of the grand pink-colored resort in Waikiki, which was built in the 1920s.

Complete with all the amenities, it cost Jackson $3 a day to stay there, according to a receipt in the consular records.

Soon, his condition began to improve.

“The sea voyage and change of climate did much for him,” Rosell reported to the consul in an account of their time in the islands. The two men decided they would stay in Hawaii until Jackson completely regained his health.

But then the unexpected happened. Jackson came down with diphtheria, a bacteria-caused infection that has now been nearly eliminated through antibiotics and vaccination. But at the time it was often fatal and Jackson, already in a weakened condition, had little resistance to fight it.

To get round-the-clock medical supervision, he moved into the home of Dr. John S. McGrew, an American physician living in Hawaii. McGrew was known for providing care for other wealthy visitors who became ill. He had also housed a famous woman journalist, Kate Field, who died of pneumonia in his house two years earlier, in 1896.

Jackson followed the same path. His fever continued to grow and he died quietly on the morning of July 6, 1898. He had just turned 39.

The details of Jackson’s death were reported to the U.S. consul in Hawaii, who prepared a report that was sent to the State Department.

McGrew presented the consul with a bill for $477.90, which he said was the cost of destroying and replacing all the infected bedding Jackson had used. (That would have been $17,547 in today’s dollars.)

By the time Jackson’s debts in Hawaii were paid, the amount of money left in his possession in Hawaii was “nothing,” the consul reported.

There’s no mention as to what became of Rosell in the consul’s report.

“The great summons coming to him so suddenly and so far from home — albeit among newly made but kind and sympathetic friends.” – Rev. John Breckinridge Jackson, in a memoir of his son

Jackson’s grief-stricken family in Chicago learned of his death through an Associated Press news report. They consoled themselves with the thought that Jackson had been humanely treated while he was ill.

“The great summons coming to him so suddenly and so far from home — albeit among newly made but kind and sympathetic friends, on whom may Heaven’s benediction ever rest — and with no forerunning hint given to his family,” his despondent father, Rev. John Breckenridge Jackson, wrote in a book about his son published in 1908.

Jackson’s body was returned home to Chicago and buried there.

But his legacy endured. He had willed a big part of his estate, much of it in Western Electric stock, to a Baptist Missionary Society and the University of Chicago. That stock shot up in value over the decades as Western Electric gained prominence as an early electronics manufacturer and Jackson came to be seen as an important benefactor of the school, which he himself had never been able to attend.

Although Jackson’s journey to Hawaii and his life and death in the islands was perhaps the most written about, the consular records tell the stories of others who followed the same path in their search for a cure.

Samuel S. Boone, 56, was another prominent man who came to Hawaii on the advice of doctors. The great-grand-nephew of frontiersman Daniel Boone and the son of controversial former Chicago mayor Levi Boone, Boone had some complex lifelong ailments.

A grain broker, Boone had been ill before leaving Chicago and doctors advised him to go to Japan. But he got sicker during the sea voyage, and when he reached Hawaii, the ship’s surgeon suggested he change his plans once again.

“The surgeon advised Mr Boone to stop there, with the hope that the balmy climate of the islands would restore his health,” the Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper reported on March 9, 1892.

Twenty years earlier, when he was in his mid-30s, Boone had been badly injured when a frightened horse turned over a buggy and knocked Boone to the ground on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. Boone hit the ground and fell unconscious, badly bruised. A friend who had happened by discovered Boone and took him home.

The accident was bad enough that some news accounts reported that he had been killed, only to issue corrections the next day, saying that although he had suffered “a severe shock to the entire system,” he seemed not to have any lasting damage, the Inter Ocean reported in 1872.

Still, something seemed to be slightly off. Boone was one of 11 children, but he was the only one who remained at home as an adult, living with his parents, at the time of the 1880 Census.

Boone’s parent had died by the time he set off across the Pacific. His father, a larger-than-life character, had been a medical doctor who became a temperance supporter and then, briefly, mayor of Chicago in 1855 and 1856. He had so enraged immigrants by his proposals to boost taxes on liquor and restrict bar hours that it had sparked a mass protest called the Beer Riots, ending Boone’s political career. He died in 1882 and his wife, Samuel Boone’s mother, died in June 1891.

Arriving in Honolulu in 1892, Boone checked into the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, the same place Jackson would choose several years later, and stayed for 14 days, the U.S. consul reported.

He was traveling in considerable luxury, according to the consul’s inventory of his possessions, with all the accouterments of wealth. He had a gold watch, a gold chain, a silver tobacco box, two diamond studs, a solitaire diamond ring, a silver-headed cane and a letter of credit for 700 pounds.

But on Feb. 16, Dr. McGrew was called to the scene. He found Boone dead, clutching a 32-caliber revolver that he had used to shoot himself in the right temple.

News reports in Honolulu said that Boone had been suffering a chronic bowel complaint and had called for medical help. He was given medicine and some nutritional advice. Doctors told the Honolulu Advertiser that he had not seemed despondent and “gave no hint of his premeditated self-destruction.”

But he had clearly made a plan. He had written his sister telling her not to be surprised if something happened to him, leaving the letter where it would be found by authorities. His possessions made it back to his family and his body was shipped home for burial.

Slide 1

Enoch L. Hatch

Boone’s famous lineage made his death the subject of news coverage back in Chicago, including in the pages of the Inter Ocean, on March 8, 1898.

Source: Newspapers.com

Slide 1

Enoch L. Hatch

Boone was an affluent and well-connected man, and his possessions seem to have been treated with deference. His sister sent a receipt for his possessions back to the U.S. consul in Honolulu after she received them, a notice that was stored away in the consular records.

Photo: Kirstin Downey/Civil Beat/2024

Another well-heeled visitor was Emil Schneider, who had been living in San Francisco and also went to Hawaii “for his health,” as the U.S. consul reported.

Schneider, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Germany, was a dandy who owned 11 shirts at a time when most men owned only a few. He departed California in early March 1876. But by March 13, he had been admitted to The Queen’s Hospital.

Consular records suggest he kept his taste for the high life even as he contemplated the next life.

On March 14, he ordered oranges. On March 15, he asked for anchovies. On March 18, he ordered caviar, oysters and a pie. Four days later, it was oranges again and also cherry wine. On the 25th, he bought strawberries, cakes and another bottle of cherry wine.

It’s not quite clear who was enjoying some of the delicacies though, because Schneider had died on March 16, the U.S. consul informed the Imperial German consulate, according to the documents.

Thomas McCanna, 72, was described as troubled by the maladies of old age. He took a berth in steerage on the ship Alameda to get to the islands. He left his property in Yolo County, California, in the care of friends so he could travel to Hawaii for his health.

But he never made it to Hawaii. Instead, he died on the voyage on March 9, 1897, according to consular records.

Going to Hawaii may have actually made things worse for Florence Barbour, a 21-year-old woman from California.

The consular reports about her death are short and terse.

But news accounts tell a more turbulent tale. In 1886, she came to the islands “in search of health,” the Honolulu Advertiser reported on March 1.

She started to get better and decided to visit Kauai. But on her way back to Honolulu, her ship hit a reef and she died from the injuries she sustained in the accident.

Barbour had been a passenger on the steamship Planter. The weather was rough, with heavy mists and rain squalls, and the ship’s captain probably should have sat out the storm, waiting at anchor for better conditions. But a group of people anxious to get to Niihau showed up at the ship and offered the captain $150 to go there anyway. he agreed and they started off.

The steamship struck a reef near Niihau at about 1 a.m. on the morning of Feb. 10, 1886. The ship’s crew threw the engine into reverse but couldn’t get it off the reef. The crew and passengers began evacuating the ship. Capt. Cameron, the last to leave the wreck, was climbing into a boat and was swept overboard by the waves. He was rescued, unconscious, and badly bruised.

Barbour had been asleep aboard the ship before it struck the rocks. The shock caused her lungs to begin to hemorrhage, the newspaper reported at the time.

She was rescued but died two weeks later in Honolulu.

“Heartfelt sympathies go out to the friends across the ocean who hoped for so much from a sojourn in this sunny clime.” – Daily Honolulu Press

News reports said she was surrounded in death by many flower garlands prepared for the funeral by local women.

“Although a stranger in a strange land, Miss Barbour, during her brief stay here, had endeared herself to all with whom she came in contact, by her many lovable and amiable qualities, and strength of character,” the Daily Honolulu Press reported on March 2, 1886. “Heartfelt sympathies go out to the friends across the ocean who hoped for so much from a sojourn in this sunny clime.”

The U.S. consul auctioned off Barbour’s possessions for $300. But consular records report that the amount sent to her heir, her sister in Solano County, was only $6.