Thomas Charles Byde Rooke

Thomas Charles Byde Rooke (18 May 1806 – 28 November 1858) was an English medical doctor who married into the royal family of the Kingdom of Hawaii. He built a mansion called the Rooke House in Honolulu that became popular with political and social leaders of the Kingdom.

Life He was born on 18 May 1806 in Bengeo, Hertfordshire, England. His father was Thomas Rooke (1769–1814) and mother was Sarah Paillet Draper (died 1815).

He trained at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London and arrived in Honolulu about 1829 on an English whaling ship. In 1830 he married Grace Kamaikui Young (1808–1866). In 1844 he met Abraham Fornander who worked for him surveying and supervising a coffee plantation.

Rooke House

Rooke built a house some time in the 1830s. The house faced the Nuuanu Valley and with each of its two floors measuring approximately fifty by fifty feet (floor area of or 460 square meters) was one of largest private homes in Honolulu at the time. It was used for medical practice, a large library, and for entertaining guests. It included a coach house and living quarters for kahu ("servants"). A wide veranda swept the front of the house, and four pillars supported the roof. The ground floor was Rooke's clinic and dispensary. The family lived upstairs, in a style redolent of a British manor house, with red Kashmir carpets, mahogany and dark oak furniture, and framed oil paintings. It was on the ma kai-Waikiki (southwest) corner of Beretania and Nuuanu Avenue and bordered by Fort Street and Chaplain Lane. The one-and-a-half-acre parcel, called Kaopuana ("Raincloud"), was probably the gift of Kamehameha III. Three weeks after the Young's death, a girl Emma was born, the granddaughter of Young, daughter of Fanny Young and the hānai (adoptive) daughter of the Rookes. Much later, the house witnessed the death of two others of the Young family: James Kānehoa, Grace Rooke's half-brother, and Kaōanaeha, her mother.

During the 1900s it was a kindergarten named Queen Emma Hall in honor of the last owner of the house. Later the site of Rooke House was occupied by the Liberty Theater (which closed in 1980) and now it's a parking lot.

Later life

Rooke served as a representative to the legislature of the Hawaiian Kingdom from 1851–1855, and in 1858 was appointed to the Privy Council.

He was a founding member of the first Hawaii Medical Association, along with Charles Guillou, William Hillebrand and Gerrit P. Judd in 1856.

Rooke died of apoplexy on 28 November 1858, at Kailua-Kona. He was buried in the cemetery on the Iolani Palace grounds and later his remains were transferred to the Royal Mausoleum of Hawaii.

He owned some land in a part of Nuuanu valley called Waolani that came to be known as "Rooke's Valley". Queen Emma's uncle Keoni Ana, the premier, built a summer home in Nu`uanu called Hānaiakamālama and bequeathed it to Emma. Used as a summer retreat by Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma, it is now a museum. A street was named Rooke Avenue for Dr. Rooke in that area at . Another part of the land became the Oahu Country Club golf course. He also owned some land on Kauai island.

Family tree