One of the best-known pictures ever taken by Ray Jerome Baker (1896-1954), Hawaii’s premier photographer during the first half of the 20th century, is of a 14-year-old Pau rider, Miss Adele Kauilani Robinson, posing on horseback at Old Plantation, Honolulu in 1910 — a reproduction of which is published with this story.
Adele Kauilani Robinson was born in Honolulu, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George D. Robinson, and was educated at Kaahumanu Central Grammar School.
Her grandfather, George Thomas Robinson of England, settled in Hawaii in 1852, where he was employed in his uncle James Robinson’s Honolulu shipyard.
Grandfather Robinson married Hannah Previere, a descendent of John Previere, who’d arrived at Kaanapali, Maui, before 1800 and had married the daughter of Napuupahoehoe.
Oddly enough, although he never learned to speak Hawaiian fluently, and his wife, Hannah, did not speak English articulately, they understood each other quite well.
Adele’s father, George D. Robinson, the son of George Thomas and Hannah Robinson, was a blacksmith born in Honolulu in 1856.
He married an alii descendent, Ada Kawananakoa Kahalewai, who was the daughter of Rev. J. W. Kahalewai and his chiefess wife, Mohiai — the granddaughter of Nahiole, who’d fought in the Battle of Nuuanu.
Ada Robinson and her female siblings, being of high alii birth, were often visitors of Queen Liliuokalani at Washington Place.
In 1916, Miss Adele Robinson married Herman G. Lemke (1887-1963), also born in Honolulu, an employee of H. Hackfeld &Co. and an authority on Hawaiian genealogy.
One of her and Mr. Lemke’s sons, Paul Lemke (1923-2008), attended Kamehameha Schools and served in the Merchant Marines on perilous convoys running supplies and servicemen to war fronts in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters during World War II.
After the war he remained in the Merchant Marines, married Marie Aguiar (1924-2015) of Kauai and became a Kauai rancher and the author of numerous letters published in local newspapers that expressed his concerns for private citizens.
Paul and Marie Lemke had five children: Beatrice, Kulamanu, Paul, William and Albert.
What was the name of the ship they traveled in? To and from Honolulu harbor? 1856