National Archives and Records Administration Web Site:

Christoph Farden: 

The long-lost founding father of the famous Farden family of Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii. The Farden's had wondered for many years what had happened to the man they knew as Christoph Farden, the grandfather of the 12 musical
children of Charles and Annie Farden. No one had heard a thing about
him since he sailed to San Francisco in August 1873, taking with him Alexander, Charles' older brother. Alexander would have been five (5) years old at the time, while Charles, 2 years old, stayed on Maui with his Hawaiian mother, Kailiino and Kekua.

 

Charles grew up in Paia with his mother, Kailiino Kawahahee Kakaio and her husband, Kekua.  Kekua and Kailiino separated and divorced about 1881 and Kekua died about 1883.  Kailiino remarried in about 1888 to Giles Norton at Kawaiahao Church in Honolulu, Hawaii. Charles worked on a plantation in Pa'ia, Maui sometime in his late teens and before going to Honolulu to attend Punahou School in the early 1890's. After graduating from Punahou School, Charles returned to Pa'ia and procured land.  He met and married Annie Shaw in the late 1890's who attended and graduated from Maunaolu Seminary in Macawao, Maui during that time.  Charles became a luna at the Pioneer Sugar Plantation in Lahaina where they established their residence (Puamana) and lived a very full life for the following half-century raising their family. Charles Kekua Farden died in 1945 and his wife Annie the following year. 

 

Farden Family -Christoph Farden  - 1860's - 1873   
Charles, the father of the Farden family of Lahaina, raised 12 children
during the 1900'-1950's.  Charles's father, Christoph, left Maui in 1873
when Charles was 2 years old. He left Charles with his mother Kailiino, and Kekua her husband (Charles' step-father). In 1992, Ann Blackman of Washington D.C, came to Lahaina for a visit and showed Jim Luckey and Barbara Sharp an adoption paper drawn up in Haiku, Maui, dated  Sept. 4, 1869. It was between Christoph Farden, and Kekua and Kailiino the parents of the child (Alexander was 6 months old). It took us only seconds to see that the "F", and the signature was that of Christoph Farden. (Note: There is also an adoption on March 10, 1863 for a child named William, age 2 years, - Mother: Kailiino - Father: Christoph Farden). This child "William" is believed to be "William Brodie Needham", bio-son of George Needham a plantation owner/manager in Hana, Maui and previous husband of Kailiino.  Records in later years show that William Needham married and lived on Oahu.  This "William" though adopted by Christoph Farden may have not been a child of Christoph but is the son of William G. Needham.

 

Christoph Farden, being in Hawaii in the mid 1800's, had come to Maui as a cooper on a whaling ship. The ship was wrecked in a storm in the Arctic seas and sank. The surviving crew was rescued after being lost in the northern sea and stranded in the cold dundra of the North. Christoph Farden procured land on Maui and became a luna of a sugar plantation, assumed to be associated with William Neeham, Sr. on Maui.

 

The Farden family had lost all traces of Grandfather Christoph in 1873 when they thought he sailed to Germany but he acutally sailed for San Francisco. He left on the ship COSTA RICA with adopted son, Alexander. Also on board were;  W.G. Needham, Needham's wife and their two children; and a friend Emma Maria Walters whom Christoph married just days before leaving Hawaii.  It seems that Needham and Christoph knew each other very well because they were working in the sugar cane plantation business together.

Much research was done but after looking at dozens of whaling journals, it has never been determined which whaling ship Christoph Farden arrived in Maui on.  It is believed that the name of the ship was Houqua and sailed out of Bedford, Massachustts with Captain Brown.  Lost in the Arctic
Sea,  Dec 4, 1851  the ship Canton rescued the crew of the Houqua. Christoph was on Maui for about 10 years. After Christoph left Maui in 1873 with his son Alexander, he went to the United States to live,  There are no records of further contact with his son Charles again but Christoph did finalize his business in Hawaii and procured the services of an attorney to manage his remaining assets in Hawaii. Christoph and his son, Alexander, everntually arrived in New York and purchased the Globe Hotel. It has been mentioned that Christoph named the hotel "The Globe" after the ship that he had traveled to Hawaii on as a cooper (no formal confirmation of this).  Christoph and Emma had four more daughters: Freida, Matilda, Anna, and Elsie. Alexander married Louise Gropper (Gruber) and had a daughter named Messeline and lived in the Boroughs of Queens New, York (1900 US Census). Messeline eloped and married John Decker. They had five children during the following seven years. When Alexander's wife Louise was about 27 years old and after her last child, she became fatally ill. Christoph is buried in a cemetary in New Jersey near the Delaware River. Irmgard Farden and other family members visited his gravesite in the late 1990's.