Edward Gravierʻs descendants never knew he sailed to Hawaiʻi in the late-1870s. Then his great-great-grandson found him on the Civil Beat website.

Sitting on his couch in Laytonville, California, browsing the internet, Phil Gravier stumbled upon information that his family had been trying to find for 150 years.

Five generations ago, his great-great-grandfather disappeared, and nobody knew what had become of him.

Phil Gravier finally found what they were looking for — on the Honolulu Civil Beat website.

“I saw it and I got goosebumps,” he said.

Last year, Civil Beat published a six-part series on a long-forgotten hoard of documents I had discovered at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, while doing research for a book on Hawaiian history. The records, shipped to the East

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