Statewide County HI Archives News.....Important People - Part 10. July 31, 2008 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/hi/hifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 August 3, 2008, 7:31 pm Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands July 31, 2008 Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 July 31, 2008. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Hawai'i Keepers of the Culture A Study in time, of the Hawai'ian Islands Important People - Part 10. by Darlene E. Kelley ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Part 10. Important People; AMOS STARR COOKE (1810 -1871) Born in Danbury, Connecticut, Cooke married Juliette Montague in 1836 and the couple arrived in Hawai'i with the Eighth Company of American missionaries in 1837, shipmates on the voyage were Samuel Northrup Castle and his wife. The Cookes, as early teachers, pioneered the educational system in the islands. They took charge in 1838 of the recently founded Chiefs' Children School ( later called the Royal School.), attended by prominent young Hawai'ians, including all five of the future monarchs of the Kingdom. Juliette Cooke ( 1812 -1896 ) was an especially gifted music teacher; by 1843 the royal students were performing as an orchestra. Instruction was not limited to church hymns, and Mrs Cookes' efforts blossomed into a form new to the world, Hawai'ian Music. The Cookes' spent a decade in this exhausting work, in addition to rearing their own children, numbering five. Cooke in 1849, at the death of Levi Chamberlain, became assistant superintendent of secular affairs for the mission. Released from service after fourteen unremitting years, Cooke became Castle's partner and began an association that resulted in the development of Castle & Cooke,a firm still outstanding in Hawai'i today. Children of Cookes, who founded a prominent island family, included Joseph Platt Cooke, Martha Eliza Cooke, Juliette Montague Cooke Atherton, Amos Frank Cooke, and Clarence Warren Cooke. +++++++++++++++++ ANNA CHARLOTTE COOKE [ RICE ] ( 1853 -1934 ) Born at Punahou School, daughter of William Harrison Rice and Mary Sophia Hyde Rice, Anna spent her early years on Kaua'i. She was educated at Punahou School and Mills College, Oakland, California. She married Charles Montague Cooke Sr. in 1874. With her husband she established the Cooke Library at Punahou and the Aquarium at Waikiki. Mrs. Cooke also founded and endowed the Honolulu Academy of Arts, which opened in 1927 and is still a noteable gallery and museum. +++++++++++++++++ CHARLES MONTAGUE COOKE Sr. ( 1849 -1909 ) Second son of Amos Starr Cooke and Juliette Montague Cooke, Chareles was born in Honolulu and edcated at Punahou School. After attending Amherst Agricultural College, he entered the family company of Castle & Cooke. He joined in 1877 the firm of Lewers & Dickson, lumber merchants; when Joshua G. Dickson died in 1880, Cooke bought Dickson's interest and the name was changed to Lewer's & Cooke. C. M. Cooke retired to California in 1894 but his talents were needed in Honolulu and he returned to become president of the Bank of Hawai'i, Ltd., succeeding the retiring Peter Coffin Jones. In 1899 Cooe ws elected president of C. Brewer & Co., an office he held till his death. He was also active in the development of several sugar plantations and was one of the original trustees of the estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop. With his wife, Anna Charlotte (Rice) Cooke, he helped to establish the Cooke Library at Punahou and the Aquarium at Waikiki. The couple had six children, including Charles M. Cooke, Jr. and Clarence Hyde Cooke. +++++++++++++++ CHARLES M. COOKE, Jr. ( 1874 - 1948 ) Son of Charles Montague Cooke, Sr. and Anna Charlotte ( Rice ) Cooke, young Charles was educated at Punahou School and Yale University, where he received a batchelor's degree in 1897 and the doctorate in 1901. He married in that year Eliza Lefferts of Brooklyn, New York, and the couple went to Europe to do scientific reserach. Cooke returned to Hawai'i in 1902 and began a lifelong affiliation with the Bernice P. Bishop Museum as a malacologist. He assembled the largest collection of Polynesian land and sea shells in the world, numbering several million. He led several zoological expeditions to Pacific Islands for the Museum and published a number of scientific articles and several books on concholgy. He was regent of the University of Hawai'i, president of the board of trustees of Bishop Museum, and president of the Honolulu Academy of Arts, founded by his mother. +++++++++++++++++ HENRY ERNEST COOPER (1857 -1929 ) Born in New Albany, Indiana, Cooper sudied law in Boston and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1879. He visited Hawai'i in 1890 to study opportunities in investment in coffee growing,and soon returned to organize the Hawai'ian Abstract & Title Co. Cooper was a member of the Committee of Safety in January, 1893, and when the monarchy was overthrown, he read the proclamation dissolving that government. He was judge of the First Circuit Court from 1893 -1895. He served as minister of foreign affairs in 1895 and later held half a dozen posts under the Republic, of which he was acting president for three months in 1898. Cooper was the first secretary of the Territory when that regime was established in 1900. +++++++++++++++++++ PETER CORNEY ( ? - 1835 ) Corney, a British seaman and adventurer, spent most of the years from 1813 to 1835 in the employ of the North West Company and later the Hudson's Bay Company. He first arrived in the Hawai'ian Islands in January, 1815, as chief officer of the trading schooner Columbia. When this vessel was sold for twice its bulk in sandalwood, Corney stayed ashore. He became involved in 1818 in the incursion of some South American pirates, and left in command of the insurgent vessel Santa Rosa under the leadership of Hypolite Bouchard. Under Bouchard, Corney took part in the piratical raid on Monterey, capital of Spanish Califrnia. In 1835, Corney was appointed chief officer of another Columbia, a bark built for the Hudson's Bay Company,and sailed from London with his wife and four children. Unfortunately, he died when the ship was in the English Channel. His family continued the voyage and settled in Honolulu, where Corney's eldest daughter Anna, at the age of fifteen married Jules Dudoit. ++++++++++++++++ SOPHIA CRACROFT ( 1816 - 1892 ) A niece of the renowned Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin and a lifelong companion of his wife, Lady Jane Franklin, Sophia Cracroft accompanied Lady Jane to Hawai'i in the summer of 1861. Her letters home, supplimented by extracts from the journels of Lady Franklin, give a lively account of the experiences of the two visitors during more than two months of travel not only in O'ahu but also Kaua'i and the Big Island where they viewed the volcano of Kilauea when in the accompaniment of the Governor and his wife. ++++++++++++++++ JOHN ADAMS CUMMINS (1835 - 1913 ) Born on O'ahu, Cummins was a son of an English settler in Hawai'i with wide sgar, cattle, and agricaultural holdings, and a Hawai'ian mother. Through his mother he was distantly related to Kamehameha I. After attending the Royal School, Cummins worked on his father's ranch, becoming manager in 1855. He married a lady named Kahalewai in 1863, and after her death married Kapeka Mersberg in 1902. He founded the lucrative Waimanalo Sugar Plantation on the east side of O'ahu, where he was often visited by royalty, his close friends. Cummins was appointed minister of foreign affairs by King Kalakaua in 1890. He took part in the counter-revolution of 1895 and was fined for conspiracy to overthrow the Republic. He was a promoter of horse racing and introduced some blooded stock to the Islands. He was a charter member of the Hawai'ian Jockey Club in 1885. Cummins was given a ten-ton pilot boat by friends in Boston, in which he cruised from his dock at Waimanalo to every port and inlet in the islands.In order to visit the Cummins house, portly King Kamahameha V had a short railway line laid from the boat landing. ++++++++++++++++++ ALBERT R CUNHA ( SONNY ) (1879 -1933 ) Born in Honolulu, Cunha graduated from St Louis High School and Punahou School ( 1897 ) and for a time attended Yale Law School; he is credited with composing Yale's " Boola Boola " song. He went on to a career as composer and arranger, band leader, pianist, singer,businessman, and politician. He was an active performer not only in the islands but also on the mainland. He is considered the chief popularizer of hapa-haole songs and published the first collection of these. He influenced such other popularizers as Johnny Noble and Henry Kailimai. Later Cunha set up the Cunha Music Co. to publish his work and that of others. He was interested not only in Hawai'ian Music but also in jazz and ragtime, march, semi-classical works, and opera Cunha was elected to the Territorial House of Representatives from 1923 to 1924 and was a member of the Honolulu Board of Supervisors from 1924 to 1927. he married May Willams in 1910 and te couple had one son and one daughter. +++++++++++++++++ FATHER DAMIEN ( JOSEPH DE VEUSTER ) (1840 -1889 ) Born in Tremeloo, Belguim, Damien came to Hawai'i in 1864 as a Picpus father and was ordained in Honolulu. He worked among the Hawai'ian people on other islands before being sent, at his request, in 1873 to the leper colony on Moloka'i. He labored there until his death from the disease, contracted in 1883, and was buried at the church he built there. In 1936, his body was removed in great state to Antwerp. Much noteriety came to Damien from the "open letter" published by Robert Louis Stephenson to the Rev. Charles McEwen Hyde. A statue of Damien by Marisol Escobar is one of the two representing the State of Hawai'i in the National Capital in Washington; the other statue is Kamehameha I. In regards to the open letter -- It seems that while Stevenson was in Hawai'i, in June 1889, he visited the government's leper colony on Moloka'i. According to Fanny Stevenson, his wife, her husband had had first gone to the island on a fact-finding mission, expecting to uncover the " truth " about Father Damien De Veuster, the missionary to the lepers, who had died a month earlier. His admiration was awakened by first hand reports of the man's courage and resourcefulness, which contradicted then current rumors that the prist had contracted leprosy through intrimatcies with female patients. In Sidney, Australia, eight months later, Stevenson read an attack in the religious press upon Damien by a Dr. Charles M. Hyde, a former missionary to Moloka'i, who maintained that these rumours were true. The letter by Hyde was circulated throughout the southseas and the world. Stevenson was so provoked that he wrote his famous, Father Damien " Open Letter " to the Reverand Dr. Hyde of Honolulu (1890) in a hotel lobby, in uncharacteristic haste. His defense of Father Damien was curious. It did not deny Hyde's charges so much as it suggested that his publications was an indication of the meanness, cowardness, and jealousy of Hyde. Though defending Damien's character was a way for Stevenson to identify with the good work of the missionary Priest, the defense involved some risk. Stevenson fully expected to be sued and financially ruined by Hyde, by a libel suit he knew, as a lawyer, he had little chance of winning. Luckily for the Stevensons, Hyde contented himself with dismissing the Author as a crank. Stevenson countinued writing about his visits to Hawai'i. ++++++++++++++++++ FRANCIS WILLIAMS DAMON ( 1852 -1915 ) Son of Samuel Chenery Damon, Francis married Mary R. Happar in 1884 and the couple were prominent in church and school work. They helped to found the First Chinese Church of Christ, and in 1892 opened their home as a school for teaching English to Chinese boys. This later became the Mills School, which was combined with the Kawaiahao Girls' Seminary and the Okamura School to form the present Mid-Pacific Institute. The Damons also inspired the founding of the Free Kindergarten Association in Hawai'i with Julia Montague Cooke Atherton. +++++++++++++++++ SAMUEL MILLS DAMON ( 1845 - 1924 ) Born in Honolulu, son of Samuel Chenery Damon, Samuel was educated at Punahou School. He began his outstanding business career as a clerk in the store of W.N. Ladd & Co. He married Harriet M. Baldwin of Lahaina, Mau'i, in 1872 and they had no fewer than ten children. In 1871, Damon went to the Bank of Bishop & Co. then the only bank in the islands. He was made a partner in 1881, when Charles R. Bishop moved to California in 1894. Damon acquired his interest and headed this institution. Damon realized the promising future of the sugar industry and became a director of a number of large plantations. Damon was made a minister of finance under Kalakaua in 1887 and held that post through the periods of the Provisional Government and the Republic. It was Damon who frankly advised Lili'uokalani during the Revolution in 1893 to yield to those who wanted a change of government. However, in 1897, he was sent to London to represent the former Queen at the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Damon's interest in education was keen and he served as a member of Bernice P. Bishop Trust, whose income went to the support of the Kamehameha Schools. Perhaps his most memorable contribution was the creation of the lovely Moanalua Gardens on the large estate that he owned to the west of Honolulu, bequeathed to him by Bernice Pauahi Bishop. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ to be continued in part 11. 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