Mary Jane Kekulani Fayerweather

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. 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.

Marriage and ranching During these years, Fayerweather met Benoni Richmond Davison, a native of New Bedford, Massachusetts, who had worked as a pharmacist in Wilmington, Delaware before arriving in the Hawaiian Islands around 1860. Davison had previously worked at a drugstore in Lahaina before moving to Honolulu when the United States Marine Hospital was transferred there. By 1864, he was superintendent of the hospital, then located on Punchbowl Street. Their wedding coincided with Honolulu's Fourth of July ball, for which Davison served as a floor manager. After their wedding supper, the newlyweds attended the ball. Her "Na Kamalei o Hawaii", composed in 1918 and published in Ka Nupepa Kuokoa in 1919, honored Hawaiian servicemen fighting in World War I. In 1922, she composed a name song for the Māmakakaua Association (Daughters and Sons of Hawaiian Warriors). She also wrote "Haaheo Kilohana i ka Lai", a name song for the Honolulu Academy of Arts dedicated to Anna Rice Cooke, which was set to music by Bina Mossman.

Fayerweather was regarded as an authority on Hawaiian customs, genealogy, language, and culture and was frequently consulted on these subjects. Her knowledge drew on her traditional Hawaiian upbringing, the teachings and oral traditions of older members of the Beckley family, and her lifelong participation in Hawaiian chiefly and royal circles. Her reminiscences document her associations with prominent aliʻi, including Ruth Keʻelikōlani, Bernice Pauahi Bishop, Queen Emma and Liliʻuokalani. She later assisted her daughter Emma in planning and directing historical pageants that recreated events and social life from Hawaiian history. Their historical work included the seventy-fifth anniversary celebration of Punahou School in 1916, a pageant held on Rocky Hill with a cast of hundreds. In 1924, Fayerweather contributed her own collection of Hawaiian mele to a collection of ancient Hawaiian music and mele compiled by ethnomusicologist Helen Heffron Roberts for the Hawaiian Legends and Folklore Commission.

In her later years, Fayerweather recorded her memories of 19th-century Hawaii and its people. Her reminiscences included accounts of her grandfather George Charles Beckley, members of the Hawaiian royal family, Honolulu society, the California Gold Rush, the 1853 smallpox epidemic, and other events and individuals from the Hawaiian Kingdom. A series of these reminiscences was published in The Honolulu Advertiser in 1923 and 1924. In 1927, she also contributed older Hawaiian mele and accompanying genealogical information to Ka Nupepa Kuokoa.

Her private notes, diaries, letters, and manuscript drafts, together with those of her daughter Emma Ahuena Taylor, are held in the Hawaii State Archives. Among the archives' holdings is an eighteenth-century engraving after a drawing by John Webber, Tereoboo, King of Hawaii, Owyhee, bringing presents to Capt. Cook, depicting Kalaniʻōpuʻu presenting gifts to Captain James Cook. The archival catalog states that the engraving had previously belonged to Kamehameha IV and was presented to Fayerweather on the occasion of her first marriage in 1864.

Death and burial

Fayerweather died in Honolulu on November 8, 1930.

Publications and works