They lived in the Hanse district of Hamburg, Germany, on the estuary of the Elbe River in Schleswig-Holstein, about 250 kilometres (160 mi) northwest of Berlin.

[1] Because of an argument with his stepmother, he intended to join the California Gold Rush in 1848, but was delayed on a stopover in Sydney, Australia, and again in Tahiti.

She was named after Kalama-A-Kuakini, an aliʻi (member of the royal family) from Maui related to High Chief Kalanimoku.

[1] Meyer returned to Molokaʻi in 1853 to establish a family homestead in the remote north central area known as Kalaʻe which means "the clearness" in the Hawaiian language.

[5] About this time, the Kalaupapa peninsula just to the north of the Meyer homestead and below a steep cliff, was converted into a leper colony.

Since he did not have the large cash investments of planters on other islands, only about 30 acres (12 ha) of sugarcane were cultivated, and the mill was built with older 1850s technology.

The oldest son Otto Samuel Meyer was born on March 2, 1854, and married Maggie Ann McCorriston in December 1889.

His tenth child, also named Bertha Amalia, was born June 20, 1868, married Authur Aubrey, and died April 15, 1965.

They named their son (Meyer's grandson) Harvey Rexford Hitchcock, Jr.[11] His sugar mill has been restored into a museum, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Hawaii as site 79000762 on September 4, 1979.