John Young (Hawaii) - Life

Life

According to his tombstone, he was born in 1742 in Crosby, Lancashire, England. Other sources give his birth as March 17, 1744. His father was Robert Young, of Crosby, Lancashire, and mother Grace. He had two brothers: Peter and James. The Youngs were of Scottish descent. After his death, two families from Massachusetts and Connecticut claimed that Young was American and part of a member of their family, but all contemporary sources seems to indicate he was British.

Young served as boatswain on the Eleanora, an American ship captained by Simon Metcalfe, engaged in the maritime fur trade between the Pacific Northwest and China. Sailing from Cape Cod in 1789, the Eleanora put in at Kealakekua Bay on the island of Hawaii in February 1790. In March Young went ashore to investigate, and he was detained because Kamehameha did not want Metcalfe to learn of an attack on the Eleanora's companion ship, the Fair American. Metcalfe waited for two days, but eventually sailed without Young.

In battles such as the Battle of Nuʻuanu, when the army of Kamehameha conquered Oʻahu, Young had charge of the cannon. He is credited with firing the shot that put an end to Kaʻiana, who had seceded from the invading army en route, and joined fortunes with Kalanikupule, king of Oʻahu and Maui. At the close of this contest, when Kamehameha was called back to Hawaiʻi island to suppress the rebellion of Namakaeha, Young was left on Oʻahu to adjust the new regime affairs, then with a number of foreigners who also joined Kamehameha at Hawaiʻi island. Beginning about 1800 or 1802, he was appointed as the Royal Governor of Hawaii island after chief Mokuhia, whom Kamehameha had picked, was murdered by a rival. This included his superintendency of tax gatherings when he returned to Kawaihae.

Young acted as interpreter for many English speaking visitors, and sowed the seeds of Christianity in Hawaii. When Captain Vancouver visited the island during the Vancouver Expedition in 1793, he offered to take Young and Davis back to Britain. But they were already content with their island life and refused the offer. Naturalist Archibald Menzies left seeds and plants such as citrus fruit in his care. He helped mediate a treaty with Britain in 1794, and coordinated the building of the first large European-style ships.

In 1803, Richard Cleveland, of the American ship Lelia Byrd, left a mare with foal with Young in Kawaihae. This was the first horse ever seen in the islands, and led eventually to the establishment of Parker Ranch. He took the first horses and cattle to Honolulu in 1809.

Young lived near Kealakekua Bay probably until about 1819, when Kamehameha I died.

Young built the first European-style house on the island of Hawaiʻi, and its ruins are still to be seen at the Pu'ukohola Heiau National Historic Site near the town of Kawaihae. It was made of stone and Young had no tools but a hatchet and a wooden trowel. He made the door with a hatchet, hewing it out of a koa tree slab. He whitewashed the house with lime made from white coral fished from the sea.

Lucy Goodale Thurston, in her story of her life as a missionary in Hawaii, described John Young:

"He had long been a rare example in that degenerate age, of building a hedge about his family and standing in the gap thereof. When occasion offered, he spoke with energy and decision, giving no uncertain sound, well understood by his children and by strangers. By marriage, by deeds and by counsel, he had justly risen to the eminence of a peer with the chiefs of the nation. Saxon blood flowed in his veins. He was Mr. Young, the noble grandfather of our most noble Queen Emma. His descendants all had the blood of chiefs flowing in their veins, for his wives were women of high rank."

He was one of the few close friends to be at Kamehameha's side when he died in 1819 at Kamakahonu.