The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-05-11
TALE Of RIOT
AND LITIGATION
History of a kona Episode That
Involved Name Famous
in Honolulu.

The controversy concerning the right
to the possession of the property in use
by the School Board at Holualoa, the
most populous village of the Konas-
which sits on the slope Of Hualalal,
some 1900 feet above and overlooking
the ancient capital OF Kailua-has al
last been settled. The inception of the
controversy was the famous school riot
which ensued upon the forcible taking
possession of the premises by Mrs,
Atcherley and her cohorts during the
Christmas holidays of 1866, when the
Davis forces. marshaIel and led by Mrs.
Atcherley and acting under the legal
advice of Harry T. Mills, with a dis
play of noise and physical power that
haole and other citizens, invaded and
Ito purloin, a military term,) invested
the location.
AS later events disclosed, the most
serious of the evoIutions performed by
the invaders, after gaining possession Of
the fortress, were the holding OF luau
and the twangIng OF the seductive
ukulele strings, to whose accompani-
ment there We're such fetching postum
ings of the festive hula kui, as are
blamed, in the aggregate, for the loos-
ening of the moral moorings of more
than one domestic craft, speaking i'm
personally, of course, and with refer
ence to the compelling gyrations of the
festive hula wherever INDUCED in.
A hurry-up trip to Kona by the High
Sheriff, a Deputy Attorney-GeneraI,
and other officials followed, and the en-
tire crowd of alleged rioters were lured
off the premises by the means of a Sc
ries of faxed judicial summonses to ap-
pear before the District Magistrate at
kailua, as also an attachment suit
begun by the deputy of the Attorney
General i the Circuit Court.
Prosecutions for riot rapidly follow
ed, and Mrs. Atcherley, Mills, Coerper,
the Davis claimants, and many of their
followers, soon found themselves COM
mitted for trial, with indictments close
in the rear. When the indictments
came to trial at Kohala, in August,
1906. the Davis Mils-Coerper end of the
show found themselves deserted by
Mrs Atcherley, who, with many other
participants, had taken to the tall
timber, or, in legal parlance, had turn
ed States evidence.
Mills and Coerper were convicted and
fined $3.50 On their motion for a new
trial, it was granted as to Coerper and
denied as to Mills, who was obliged TO
pungle, while Coerper, at the term of
the Circuit Court just closed at Kai-
lua, was nol-prosseu.
In the meantime, Mrs. Atcherley
flashed in the face of the community a
deed from the ola woman Mrs. Davis)
who previously owned the premises,
purporting to convey to Mrs. Atcherley
two acres of the land on which is To-
Gated the NJ. f. Scott homestead-one
of the most desirable residences in
Kona. Also, in the meantime, came a
split in the friendly relations between
the Davis and the Atcherley families.
The real owner o. the premises, a
daughter of old Mrs. Davis, to whom
the latter had previously conveyed the
premises, brought suit against the
Scots. husband and wife, the Board of
Education, and Mrs Atcherley to quiet
the title to the property.
That suit has Just been tried at the
Kailua term of the Third Circuit
Court, with the result (the effect of
compromise in this particularly that the
lost leases upon which Mrs. Scott and
the government claimed, were estab-
lished in part. and the trial proceeded
as to the claim of Mrs IAtcherIey.
After trial of four DAYS the jury re-
turned a verdict against Mrs Ateher-
ley, repudiating her deed, and Mrs
Scott holds the land under the lost
lease untn the end Of 1924. at rental
of $3.50 per year. except as to the school
lot proper. which the government holds
under another of the lost documents