Mary Jane Ahia Ahuena Kekulani Fayerweather (May 14, 1842 – November 8, 1930) was a Hawaiian Kingdom high chiefess (aliʻi), composer, musician, teacher, rancher, and cultural historian of Native Hawaiian, British, and American descent. She worked as a teacher in Honolulu before her first of two marriages and later became a rancher and dairy farmer in Mānoa. She composed Hawaiian poetry, chants, and mele and was regarded as an authority on Hawaiian genealogy and culture. She also preserved and transmitted Hawaiian cultural traditions, contributing older mele and genealogical knowledge to historical collections and the Hawaiian-language press and publishing recollections of 19th-century Hawaii. She was the maternal granddaughter of George Charles Beckley, an early 19th-century English sea captain and merchant, and was also known by the married names Mary Jane Kekulani Fayerweather Davison Montano, Mary Jane Kekulani Davison, and Mary Jane Kekulani Montano.
Early life and family
Mary Jane Kekulani Fayerweather was born on May 14, 1842, in Honolulu, under the reign of King Kamehameha III. She was the third-born child and second daughter of Abraham (Abram) Henry Fayerweather (1812–1850) and Mary Kekahimoku Kolimoalani Beckley (1820–1850).
Fayerweather was born in the family home at the junction of Union Street and Adams Lane. The frame house had been shipped by her father from Boston around Cape Horn in sections, with its lumber sawn to fit before shipment. Notable Women of Hawaii instead places the home at Union Street and Garden Lane.
Her father, originally from New Canaan, Connecticut, settled in Hawaii and was a business associate of Hunnewell and Peirce before becoming chief accountant of C. Brewer & Co.. Her maternal family was considered part of the aliʻi (noble) class. Her maternal grandfather was George Charles Beckley (1787–1826), an English sea captain and merchant who came to Hawaii in 1806, served in the councils of Kamehameha I, and was appointed the first commandant of the Honolulu fort in 1816. Her maternal grandmother was Elizabeth Ahia (1797–1854), a Native Hawaiian high chiefess who was a distant relation of the reigning House of Kamehameha and a descendant of the 15th-century King Līloa. Through her parents, Fayerweather was one-quarter Native Hawaiian and three-quarters of European ancestry. She was described as small and fair-skinned, with auburn hair, and was proud of her Hawaiian, British, and American heritage.
Her older sister was Julia Fayerweather Afong (1840–1919), wife of Chinese businessman Chun Afong. Her other siblings included William Malulani Fayerweather (1841–1843), who died young; and Hannah Kealiipuahao o Kinau Fayerweather (1843–1870), who married Thomas Kamukamu Bell.
Upbringing on Hawaii Island In infancy, Fayerweather was taken to Kohala on the island of Hawaii to be raised under the Hawaiian custom of hānai by her maternal uncle William Beckley and his wife, High Chiefess Ahuenaikamakahonu-i-kaiakekua Beckley, also known as Kamakahonu Wahine. Kamakahonu had helped Fayerweather's father obtain permission to marry her mother and, in return, secured his promise that she could raise one of their children. After he refused to give up his first two children, Kamakahonu took Fayerweather, their third child, shortly after her birth aboard the Manuokawai and brought her to Hawaii. Kamakahonu, whom Fayerweather described as her adopted mother, died when Fayerweather was about two years old. William Beckley subsequently married Kahinu, a daughter of High Chief Hoʻolulu, who thereafter raised Fayerweather as her mother.
Fayerweather spent her early childhood in Waimea, in the Kohala region, where she was raised in a traditional Hawaiian household, spoke only Hawaiian, and was treated as a kapu (sacred) child. She lived in her own grass house and had few playmates, accompanied by a servant when she went to play with other children. Her nurse and governess, Kahuluhulu, taught her Hawaiian language and grammar, and Fayerweather later described her as her "Mother Goose book". She also learned Hawaiian culture and legends and began a lifelong study of genealogy, and her upbringing in Kohala later influenced her poetry and music. Her grandmother Ahia Beckley also instructed her in traditional chiefly customs and appropriate conduct toward members of the Hawaiian royal family, with whom her family had longstanding personal and familial connections.
Return to Oahu Fayerweather returned to her family in Honolulu around 1849. Her return required an adjustment from her Hawaiian upbringing to Western customs, including Western dress and table manners. Soon after her return, Kamehameha III visited her mother at the family home. On seeing Fayerweather, the king placed his hand on her head and referred to her in Hawaiian as the "little white head", after which she was instructed to salute him. Fayerweather later recalled that Kamehameha III had given her the name Kekulani in connection with an incident involving himself and Keoni Ana.
After returning to her parents, Fayerweather attended a select school operated by Mrs. Sarah Davis Gummer and her mother Mrs. Davis on King Street near Alakea Street, where her classmates included Rebecca Meek. Both of Fayerweather's parents died in 1850, her mother in April and her father later that year in November. Fayerweather recalled that her father was deeply affected by his wife's death and subsequently sold his sugar plantation at Waimea, disposed of much of his other property, and purchased the bark Helen Mar, intending to take his children to Savannah, Georgia, where he planned to manage his aunt's cotton plantation. He became ill and died before the family could leave Hawaii. Members of his Masonic lodge cared for him during his final illness and participated in his funeral. Shortly afterward, Stephen Reynolds, a fellow merchant and Mason, was appointed guardian of Fayerweather and her sisters Julia and Hannah and administrator of their father's estate.
The sisters were placed at Mrs. Wiseman's boarding school at the corner of Beretania and Punchbowl streets. After the school closed about a year later, Fayerweather attended Mrs. Bingham's private school on Hotel Street in 1851 and 1852. At Mrs. Bingham's school, mornings were devoted to academic studies and afternoons to needlework and other fancy work, in which Fayerweather developed a lifelong interest. Fayerweather subsequently lived in Reynolds's household, where she participated in weekly dancing lessons and monthly social gatherings intended in part to teach the children manners and social etiquette. Contemporary correspondence from Reynolds records that Julia continued lessons at Mrs. Bingham's school while Mary Jane and Hannah attended Mililani School, then known as the Honolulu Free School. Reynolds reported that the girls' boarding, clothing, and schooling costs were drawing on the capital of their relatively small inheritance. After becoming dissatisfied with another teacher, Fayerweather was introduced by Reynolds to George B. C. Ingraham, principal of Mililani School. Despite her older sister Julia's concern that attending a charity school would be socially embarrassing, Fayerweather later recalled that she was never ashamed of having attended Mililani because it had given her a good education. As a student there, she received the school's monthly academic honor three times, which entitled the recipient to dine with the British Consul General William Miller at his home next to Washington Place.
When Reynolds's mental health failed, Fayerweather and her sisters returned to the household of their uncle William Beckley and grandmother Ahia. Just before Christmas 1856, the court appointed Gerrit P. Judd as their guardian, despite the sisters' preference that their uncle William assume their guardianship. The sisters were subsequently separated: Hannah boarded with missionary educator Maria Ogden, who taught Hawaiian and hapa haole girls at her school on Beretania Street; Julia was placed with the Bartlett family; and Fayerweather, at age 14, was sent to live with Warren Fay Chamberlain, son of missionary Levi Chamberlain, and his wife Celia in Waialua.
She made the journey from Honolulu on horseback with Chamberlain and, already a good rider, later had a horse of her own at Waialua. The move came during a period of considerable loss and separation from her family. Her grandmother Ahia and her nurse Kahuluhulu died within a short time of one another, while her sisters had been sent to separate households and she had to leave her uncle William, who had been a father figure to her since infancy. Fayerweather was particularly affected by the death of Kahuluhulu, who had cared for her since infancy and whom she remembered as having been more than a mother to her. She nevertheless remembered the Chamberlain household as a happy home and remained there for about four years. She studied with Mrs. Chamberlain in the afternoons and learned household management in the mornings, while also becoming acquainted with members of Oahu's missionary and business families. In 1860, despite Mrs. Chamberlain asking her to remain, Fayerweather chose to return to her uncle's household in Honolulu.
Teaching and social life in Honolulu In 1860, Fayerweather rejoined the household of her uncle William Beckley and his third wife, Mary Ann Kameʻehiwa Tressilyan Beckley, who was regarded as the most beautiful woman of Kamehameha IV's court and was called the "Rose of the Pacific". Her younger sister Hannah was also living with them, while her older sister Julia had by then married Chun Afong and had her first child.
At the same time, her former teacher, Mr. Ingraham, invited her to return to Mililani School as an assistant teacher, taking the place of her friend Clara Armstrong. By then, Mililani had expanded into a two-story schoolhouse. Ingraham taught approximately 40 older pupils upstairs, while Fayerweather taught about 60 beginning pupils downstairs with one assistant. She remained at Mililani for about four years and later recalled with pride that many of her former students had become “fine men and women in Honolulu.”
During these years, German consul William Pflüger placed Fayerweather on Honolulu's social list, beginning what she called her "social whirl". Her social life brought her into close contact with members of the royal court. During the fundraising campaign to establish the Queen's Hospital, Queen Emma personally visited homes in Honolulu seeking assistance. Fayerweather was assigned to make a moss mat for the effort, and Queen Emma taught her how to make it. Princess Victoria Kamāmalu frequently visited the Beckley home with other members of her circle, and Fayerweather recalled accompanying the young women who collected fabric samples in Honolulu for the princess to select for her dresses. On one occasion, Fayerweather dressed Kamāmalu's hair for the wedding of Lydia Kamakaʻeha (the future Liliʻuokalani) in 1862, an undertaking she remembered as intimidating because of the etiquette surrounding physical contact with a high-ranking aliʻi.
Fayerweather resigned from Mililani upon her marriage in 1864. She retained an interest in education later in life. In 1909, she wrote to Ka Nupepa Kuokoa opposing reductions in teachers' salaries and urging greater investment in public education, particularly for Native Hawaiian children.
Marriage and ranching