Ford, Alexander Hume

Relentlessly energetic promoter of the Hawaiian Islands and "the art of surf-riding" in the early 20th century; founder of the Outrigger Canoe Club, surfing's first organized group. "Alexander Hume Ford is Hawaii's best booster and the busiest man in the mid-Pacific," Sunset magazine wrote of Ford in 1917. "You can't keep the man himself still long enough to really photograph him."

Ford was born (around 1868) into a wealthy South Carolina plantation family, but orphaned at an early age. He g...