In remembrance · The ʻUkulele Archive
Augusto Dias
Augusto Dias crossed the Pacific aboard the Ravenscrag in 1879 and became one of the three Madeiran woodworkers whose Honolulu shops stand at the threshold of the Hawaiian ʻukulele story.
What endures
The surviving instruments are few, light, and precious. Their labels and construction preserve the work of a cabinetmaker adapting an island craft at the moment a new Hawaiian instrument was taking shape.
The documentary trail is fragmented: city directories, newspaper advertisements, surviving labels, family memory, and a small number of pre-1900 instruments. This tribute distinguishes established dates from later origin stories.
Chronology
A life in the record
1879
Arrived in Hawaiʻi from Madeira aboard the Ravenscrag with his family.
1884
Opened a Honolulu woodworking and stringed-instrument shop.
Before 1900
Built the rare surviving instruments now associated with his early workshop period.
1910
His documented workshop period closes after illness and the loss of a shop to fire.
2018
Descendants dedicated a new grave marker in Honolulu honoring his contribution.
Evidence, not decoration
Follow the record.
Every source is shown so family knowledge, instrument evidence, and later research can strengthen—or correct—this page.
Continue the story