The Sinclairs of Pigeon Bay and the Romantic 'Prehistory' of the Robinsons of Ni'ihau

Abstract

Francis and Elizabeth Sinclair and their six children migrated from Scotland to New Zealand in 1840. Francis died there in 1846 and in 1863 Elizabeth resettled her, by then expanded, family in Hawai'i. There they bought the island of Ni'ihau and prospered as ranchers and planters, especially after the 1880s under the family name of Robinson. The early history of the family, up to the 1860s, has been often told, but never completely and often inaccurately, and is contained in two distinct historiographic traditions. This essay attempts to set the record straight by providing an extensive body of detailed, accurate information about the Sinclairs, and to discuss these two traditions. The older and more reliable New Zealand one presents the Sinclairs as hard-working pioneer settlers. The Hawai'ian tradition, in contrast, deriving from an oral record passed on by Francis and Elizabeth's daughter Anne, was dominated by elements of 'family romance'. It presented Francis as an heroic naval captain in the Napoleonic campaigns, making him a mythical ancestor befitting a family that had risen in the world. A more matter-of-fact treatment, though, has prevailed since 1988.