{{Short description|Hawaiian politician (1858–1931)}} {{Use American English|date=May 2026}} {{Use mdy dates|date=January 2025}} {{Infobox person | name = Lorrin A. Thurston | image = Lorrin A. Thurston, 1892.jpg | image_size = | birth_name = Lorrin Andrews Thurston | birth_date = {{birth date|1858|7|31}} | birth_place = [[Honolulu]], Kingdom of Hawaii | death_date = {{death date and age|1931|5|11|1858|7|31}} | death_place = [[Honolulu]], Territory of Hawaii | spouse = {{plainlist| * {{marriage|Margaret Clarissa Shipman|1884|1891|end=died}} * {{marriage|Harriet Elvira Potter|1893}} }} | children = 3 | occupation = Lawyer, politician, businessman | signature = Lorrin A Thurston 1888 signature.svg }}
'''Lorrin Andrews Thurston''' (July 31, 1858 – May 11, 1931) was a Hawaiian citizen lawyer, politician, and businessman. Thurston played a prominent role in the [[Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom|overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii]] to replace [[Liliuokalani|Queen Lili{{okina}}uokalani]] with the [[Republic of Hawaii]], with discreet US support for which Congress much later [[Apology Resolution|apologized]]. He published the ''Pacific Commercial Advertiser'' (a forerunner of the present-day ''[[Honolulu Star-Advertiser]]''), and owned other enterprises. From 1906 to 1916, he and his network lobbied with national politicians to create a [[Hawaii Volcanoes National Park|national park to preserve the Hawaiian volcanoes]].
==Family life== He was born on July 31, 1858, in [[Honolulu]], Hawaii.<ref name="park"/> His father was Asa Goodale Thurston and mother Sarah Andrews.<ref name="thurstons"/> On his father's side he was grandson of [[Asa Thurston|Asa]] and [[Lucy Goodale Thurston]], who were in the first company of American Christian missionaries to the [[Hawaiian Islands]] in 1820.<ref name="bishop">{{cite book| author=Sereno Edwards Bishop |title=Reminiscences of Old Hawaii | publisher=Hawaiian Gazette Company |url=https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesol00thurgoog |year=1916 | isbn=1-104-37410-2}}</ref> On his mother's side, he was also the grandson of another early missionary, [[Lorrin Andrews]]. His father was [[speaker (politics)|speaker]] of the house of representatives of the [[Kingdom of Hawaii]] but died when Lorrin was only a year and a half old in December 1859. He then moved to [[Maui]] with his mother.<ref name="thurstons">{{cite book |title=Thurston genealogies |author=Brown Thurston |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SBBWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA288 |year=1892 |publisher=Portland, Maine |edition=2nd |page =288 }}</ref>
He was fluent in the [[Hawaiian language]] and gave himself the Hawaiian nickname ''Kakina''.<ref name="overthrow"/> In 1872, he attended [[Oahu College]], where he played [[baseball]] with the sons of [[Alexander Cartwright]] (who invented the modern game). He was expelled shortly before graduation.<ref name="press">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aEZlsHy70hUC |title=Presstime in paradise: The Life and Times of the Honolulu Advertiser, 1856–1995 |author=George Chaplin |year=1998 |publisher=University of Hawaii Press |isbn=978-0-8248-2032-9 |pages=111–130}}</ref> After working as a translator for a law firm and clerk at the Wailuku Sugar Company, he attended law school at [[Columbia University]]. He returned to Honolulu in 1881 and became partners in a law firm with [[William Owen Smith]].<ref name="overthrow">{{cite book |title=Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q3o2BaNiJksC |author=Stephen Kinzer |year=2006 |publisher=Times Books |isbn=978-0-8050-7861-9 |page=16}}</ref>
He married Margaret Clarissa "Clara" Shipman (daughter of missionary [[William Cornelius Shipman]] from [[Hilo, Hawaii]], and sister of businessman [[William Herbert Shipman]]) on February 26, 1884. They had a son Robert Shipman Thurston on February 1, 1888. Margaret died in childbirth on May 5, 1891 (as did the infant).<ref name="press"/> On April 5, 1893, Lorrin Thurston married Harriet Elvira Potter of [[St. Joseph, Michigan|Saint Joseph, Michigan]]. They had a daughter Margaret Carter (the mother of [[Thurston Twigg-Smith]]) in 1895, and a son Lorrin Potter Thurston in 1899.<ref>{{cite web| title=Historical Collections of Hawai'i |publisher=USGenWeb Archives |author=Darlene E. Kelley |url=http://files.usgwarchives.net/hi/statewide/newspapers/importan77nnw.txt }}</ref> Lorrin Andrews Thurston died on May 11, 1931. In 1919, Robert Thurston married Evelyn M. Scott, and Margaret Carter married [[William Twigg-Smith]].
==Work== Lorrin Thurston was influential in both the political arena and the business world of Hawaii.
===Politics=== He followed his father and became a member of the [[legislature of the Hawaiian Kingdom]] in 1886. Thurston inherited the conservative thinking of the missionaries, which put him at odds with Hawaiian royalty as well as immigrants such as Greek hotelier [[George Lycurgus]] whose lifestyles were filled with gambling and liquor.<ref name="greek">{{cite journal |hdl=10524/422 |title=The Queen's "Greek Artillery Fire": Greek Royalists in the Hawaiian Revolution and Counterrevolution |author=Helen G. Chapin |journal=Hawaiian Journal of History |year=1981 |volume=15}}</ref> The Missionary Party would change its name to the [[Reform Party (Hawaii)|Reform Party]] in 1887, as it grew to include business owners. In July 1887 Thurston authored what is called the "[[1887 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii|Bayonet Constitution]]" because it was imposed under threat by the Honolulu Rifle Company militia. It limited the executive power of the monarch [[King Kalākaua]]. Thurston became the powerful Interior Minister, with Englishman [[William Lowthian Green]] as minister of finance, as the old cabinet of [[Walter M. Gibson]] was ousted.<ref name="gazette87">{{cite news |title= Appointment of a New Cabinet! |newspaper= Hawaiian Gazette |location= Honolulu |date= July 5, 1887 |page= 4 |url= http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025121/1887-07-05/ed-1/seq-4/ |access-date= July 31, 2010 }}</ref> Voting rights and membership of the legislature were based on property ownership, resulting in effective control by wealthy Americans and Europeans. He served in the cabinet until June 17, 1890, when he was replaced by [[Charles N. Spencer]].<ref>{{cite web |url= http://archives1.dags.hawaii.gov/gsdl/collect/governme/index/assoc/HASH01ed.dir/doc.pdf |title= Interior, Minister of: office record |work= state archives digital collections |publisher= state of Hawaii |access-date= July 30, 2010 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120321000105/http://archives1.dags.hawaii.gov/gsdl/collect/governme/index/assoc/HASH01ed.dir/doc.pdf |archive-date= March 21, 2012 |url-status= dead }}</ref>
[[Liliuokalani|Queen Lili{{okina}}uokalani]] became monarch in 1891 and tried to seize more power with a new constitution. In 1892 Thurston led the Annexation Club, later adopting the title [[Committee of Safety (Hawaii)|Committee of Safety]], which planned for making Hawaii a territory of the [[United States]]. In 1893 the Committee of Safety was supported by the U.S. Military in an [[overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom]], and the resulting [[Provisional Government of Hawaii]] was controlled by Thurston's committee. Thurston headed the commission sent to [[Washington, D.C.]], to negotiate with [[Benjamin Harrison]] for American annexation. Lili{{okina}}uokalani and Crown Princess [[Ka'iulani|Victoria Ka{{okina}}iulani]] also traveled to Washington to claim the new government did not have the support of the majority of the Hawaiian population. As news spread of the force used, the proposed treaty met opposition and was not ratified. A century later in the [[Apology Resolution]] of 1993, the [[U.S. Congress]] controversially apologized for the involvement of the [[United States Marine Corps]] in the overthrow, and the controversy continues to modern times.
In March 1893 [[Grover Cleveland]] became president, and disavowed the treaty. Thurston helped draft another constitution, and the [[Republic of Hawaii|Republic of Hawai{{okina}}i]] was declared on July 4, 1894. He appointed [[Sanford B. Dole]] to the office of President of the Republic. A series of abortive revolts called the [[Wilcox rebellions]] had little public support, and were defeated during this period. In 1897 [[William McKinley]] became president and Thurston's commission again lobbied for annexation. The [[Spanish–American War]] in April 1898 increased American interest in the Pacific, due to battles in the [[Philippines]].<ref>{{cite journal |hdl=10524/212 |title=The Summer of 1898 |author=Albertine Loomis |journal=Hawaiian Journal of History |year=1979 |volume=13 }}</ref> By July 1898 the annexation formed the [[Territory of Hawaii]] and Thurston retired from political office to run his business affairs.
===Business=== [[Image:Lorrin A. Thurston, 1916.jpg|thumb|left|Thurston {{Circa|1916}}]] In 1898 he purchased the ''Pacific Commercial Advertiser'' newspaper (forerunner of the present-day ''[[Honolulu Advertiser]]'').<ref name="advertiser">{{cite web |title =Advertiser boasts a storied history |author=Bob Krauss |url=http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/commemorative/history |publisher=[[Honolulu Advertiser]] official web site |access-date=July 11, 2009 }}</ref> As principal owner and publisher after 1900, he promoted the sugar and pineapple industries. He headed the Hawaiian Promotion Committee (which evolved into the [[Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau]]), but objected to the [[hula]] which he claimed was "suggestive" and "indecent".<ref name="press"/> His fortunes rose considerably as a result of the 1898 annexation by the United States, since it removed all duties from shipments to the largest market. Thurston is credited with expanding Hawai{{okina}}i's [[sugarcane]] [[Sugar plantations in Hawaii|plantation]]s and railroads and bringing the first electric street cars to Honolulu. Following [[World War I]] he called for government restrictions on Japanese-language schools, later ruled unconstitutional by the [[U.S. Supreme Court]]. Thurston put out a special edition to support the fight to ban billboards in Hawai{{okina}}i. He worked with [[Wallace Rider Farrington]] and [[Alexander Hume Ford]] to hold a world conference of newspaper editors.<ref name="advertiser"/>
He was also a volcano enthusiast, starting in his childhood exploring [[Haleakalā]] on Maui. He would act as an informal tour guide for visitors to the summit, and used oral history to estimate the time of its last eruption.<ref name="park"/> In 1891, he bought and expanded the [[Volcano House]] hotel at the rim of the active [[Kilauea|Kīlauea]] volcano on the [[Hawaii (island)|island of Hawai{{okina}}i]].<ref name="hotel">{{cite journal |url=http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hawaii-notes/vol5-2d.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071217182553/http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hawaii-notes/vol5-2d.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=December 17, 2007 |title=The Volcano House |year=1953 |volume=5 |issue=2 |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |journal= Hawaii Nature Notes}}</ref> Thurston commissioned a [[cyclorama]] of Kīlauea which he displayed in his travels to the mainland, including the Chicago [[World's Columbian Exposition]] of 1893 and the [[California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894]] in [[San Francisco]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Hawaiian Kingdom 1874–1893: the Kalakaua Dynasty |author=Ralph S. Kuykendall |year=1967 |isbn=978-0-87022-433-1 |publisher=University of Hawaii Press |page=115 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=41gjgT5C0K8C }}</ref>
[[Image:Jaggar and Thurston at Kilauea.jpg|thumb|right|Thurston (center) at the volcano in 1917]] Thurston eventually made peace with George Lycurgus, who had been an [[insurgent]] against Thurston's government, and sold him the Volcano House in 1902. He also became friends with early [[volcanologist]] Dr. [[Thomas Jaggar]] in 1909 and raised money to fund the [[Hawaiian Volcano Observatory]] in 1912. He used his newspaper to promote the national park idea and convinced the territorial legislature to fund a group of congressmen to visit Haleakalā and Kīlauea in 1907. The trip included a dinner cooked over active lava vents. He hosted a visit by the Secretary of the Interior [[James Rudolph Garfield]] in 1908, and another congressional visit in 1909. He convinced Governor [[Walter F. Frear]] to introduce a resolution supporting the idea, and formed a survey team to propose exact boundaries. His newspaper printed endorsements of the park by President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] (a classmate at Columbia), conservationist [[John Muir]], and powerful senator [[Henry Cabot Lodge]].<ref name="park">{{cite journal |url=http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hawaii-notes/vol5-2e.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071220041244/http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hawaii-notes/vol5-2e.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=December 20, 2007 |title=Thurston, Father of Hawaii National Park |year=1953 |volume=5 |issue=2 |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |journal= Hawaii Nature Notes}}</ref> In 1913 he explored a [[lava tube]] in [[Hawaii Volcanoes National Park|Hawai{{okina}}i Volcanoes National Park]] that is named after him.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nps.gov/havo/planyourvisit/craterrimtour_tube.htm |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120805092625/http://www.nps.gov/havo/planyourvisit/craterrimtour_tube.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=August 5, 2012 |title=Thurston Lava Tube |publisher=Hawaii Volcanoes National Park official web site |access-date=July 11, 2009 }}</ref> The park was finally formed in 1916.
He added a preface and published a second edition of his grandmother's book on early missionary life in May 1921.<ref>{{cite book| author=Lucy Goodale Thurston |title=Life and Times of Mrs. Lucy G. Thurston: Wife of Rev. Asa Thurston, Pioneer Missionary to the Sandwich Islands |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f1MXAAAAYAAJ |year=1872 |publisher=second edition 1921, reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2007 |isbn=978-1-4325-4547-5}}</ref> His memoirs were published in a limited edition (along with those of Sanford Dole) after his death in 1931 by his newspaper.<ref>{{cite book |title=Memoirs of the Hawaiian revolution |author1=Lorrin Andrews Thurston |author2=Sanford Ballard Dole |author3=Andrew Farrell |year=1936 |publisher=Advertiser publishing Co., Ltd. Honolulu |volume=1}}</ref>
The newspaper business was run by his son Lorrin Potter Thurston, whose policy of using the term "Jap" during [[World War II]] pleased the military, but not local readers of Japanese descent. After the war readership declined, until its hostile take-over in 1962 by Lorrin's grandson [[Thurston Twigg-Smith]] who changed to a more moderate editorial line. In 1992 it was sold to [[Gannett Company]] as the next generation of the family had no interest in running the paper.<ref name="advertiser"/> Twigg-Smith wrote a book about the revolution and the role of his grandfather in 1998, and criticizing the modern [[Hawaiian Sovereignty movement]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Twigg-Smith|first=Thurston|author-link=Thurston Twigg-Smith|title=Hawaiian Sovereignty: Do the Facts Matter?|year=1998|publisher=Goodale Publishing|location=Honolulu|isbn=978-0-9662945-0-7|oclc=39090004}}</ref> In 1966, a chapel at Punahou School designed by [[Vladimir Ossipoff]] was named after Robert Shipman Thurston, Jr. of the class of 1941 who disappeared in [[World War II]].<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.punahou.edu/page.cfm?p=2787 |work= Punahou School web site |title= Thurston Memorial Chapel |access-date= December 4, 2010 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110720190245/http://www.punahou.edu/page.cfm?p=2787 |archive-date= July 20, 2011 }}</ref>
==Legacy== Thurston's legacy is preserved throughout the islands. On Oahu, the Thurston name serves as a marker in many places, including a street named after Thurston in the [[Punchbowl Crater|Punchbowl]] neighborhood and the Thurston Memorial Chapel on the Punahou Campus.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.punahou.edu/page.cfm?p=1788 |title=Punahou: History |access-date=April 28, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100527113911/http://www.punahou.edu/page.cfm?p=1788 |archive-date=May 27, 2010 }}</ref> Others include Thurston Lava Tube at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island.
In the 2009 film ''[[Princess Kaiulani (film)|Princess Kaiulani]]'', Thurston was portrayed by [[Barry Pepper]].<ref>{{IMDb title|qid=Q7244660|title=Princess Kaiulani}}</ref>
===Family tree=== {{center| {{Thurston Hawaii family tree}} }}
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== {{commons category}} *{{cite book |last1=Thurston |first1=Lorrin A. |title=The liquor question in Hawaii, what should be done about it |date=1909 |publisher=T.H. |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100196653|via=[[HathiTrust]]}}
{{s-start}} {{s-gov}} {{succession box| title= [[Kingdom of Hawaii]] Minister of Interior | before=[[Luther Aholo]] |after= [[Charles N. Spencer]] | years= July 1887 – June 1890 }} {{end}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thurston, Lorrin A.}} [[Category:People from the Republic of Hawaii]] [[Category:People associated with the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom]] [[Category:Columbia Law School alumni]] [[Category:Lawyers from Hawaii]] [[Category:Members of the Hawaiian Kingdom House of Representatives]] [[Category:Hawaiian Kingdom interior ministers]] [[Category:19th-century American newspaper publishers (people)]] [[Category:1858 births]] [[Category:1931 deaths]] [[Category:Politicians from Honolulu]] [[Category:Burials at Oahu Cemetery]] [[Category:Editors of Hawaii newspapers]] [[Category:Reform Party (Hawaii) politicians]] [[Category:Writers from Honolulu]]