When Maile Melrose's mother was a girl, Granny Greenwell was still alive — a wizened figure in a high-necked black dress and shawl, taking her daily constitutional in Kealakekua town, handing out peppermints to the children.

Today, Melrose is delightedly playing the role of Granny Greenwell as part of a new program at the Kona Historical Society's restored Greenwell Store at Kalukalu, the latest addition to the living history complex that includes the Uchida coffee farm exhibit down the road and a weekly firing up of the Portuguese masonry oven in a meadow nearby.

Granny Greenwell was Elizabeth Caroline Hall Greenwell, known to her husband, multi-faceted landowner, farmer and businessman Henry N. Greenwell as "Lizzie."

As Granny, Melrose dons a lace cap, a Mother Hubbard dress, and the gracious manner and precise accent of a cultured woman who grew up on the island of Montserrat and was wooed away by Greenwell when he visited there in 1868. Greenwell, a wide-ranging entrepeneur and inveterate journal-keeper, had arrived in the Islands in 1850, liked the place and decided to stay, buying 300 acres in the ahupua'a of Kalukalu. There, he farmed oranges, engaged in an import-export business, and founded the handsome stone general store in 1875. Elizabeth Greenwell served as storekeeper and postmistress.

The store is now stocked with accurate reproductions of goods that Henry and Elizabeth would have sold: woolen longjohns, coffee beans, rope, ladies' parasols — you name it.

Melrose's mother was the youngest daughter of the Greenwell's eldest son and often told stories of her grandparents, both of them memorable personalities. Later, the family bequeathed the Greenwell journals to the Kona Historical Society.

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.