Bond District, Historic district in Hawaii County, United States.
The Bond District in North Kohala, on the island of Hawaii, comprises three sections: the homestead of missionaries Ellen and Reverend Elias Bond, Kalahikiola Church, and the Kohala Seminary. The homestead's main house, begun by Reverend Isaac Bliss and finished before the Bonds arrived in June 1841, was built of native wood and plaster on a stone foundation, later enlarged with fieldstone walls set in burned coral mortar and a kitchen wing added around 1845.
Reverend Elias Bond and his wife Ellen arrived in Kohala in June 1841 and took over a house begun by Isaac Bliss; Bond bought about 1,400 acres of the ʻIole ahupuaʻa after the Mahele. Kalahikiola Church, built of hand-laid stone and mortar, was dedicated on October 11, 1855, replacing two thatched structures destroyed by storms. Bond founded the Kohala Sugar Plantation in 1862; its mill closed in 1973, the same year an earthquake cracked masonry walls that were later repaired.
Kalahikiola means roughly "the day of salvation approaches" in Hawaiian, and services there were held in Hawaiian until 1950; the English-language congregation was called the "Foreign Church". The Bonds' sugar plantation, formed in 1862, was noted for a less authoritarian management style than other Hawaiian plantations.
The three sections lie along Iole Road off Akoni Pule Highway: the Bond homestead, Kalahikiola Church at 53-540 Iole Road, and the Kohala Seminary. The church and homestead are separate stops, so plan to drive between them rather than walk. The 1973 and 2006 earthquakes damaged masonry walls, and repairs are visible on the church.
The homestead's stonework used fieldstones bound with burned coral mortar, the same technique Elias Bond saw under construction at Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu in 1841. Around 1900 a rock-crusher and power-house on the estate first produced gravel for the estate roads, then was converted to process macadamia nuts.
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