Samuel Thomas Alexander

Samuel Thomas Alexander (October 29, 1836 – September 10, 1904) co-founded a major agricultural and transportation business in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Early life In November 1831, the Reverend William Patterson Alexander (1805–1884) and Mary Ann McKinney Alexander (1810–1888) arrived in April 1832 as missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands. Samuel Thomas was born October 29, 1836, at the Waioli mission in what is now Hanalei on the northern coast of Kauai island. In 1843 the family moved to the Lahainaluna School, where they became friends with the family of Dwight Baldwin who had arrived in the previous company in 1831. Alexander's education was sporadic; he went to Punahou School for various times between 1841 and 1859 In 1857 he and Frederick S. Lyman (son of missionary David Belden Lyman) went to California in a late wave of the California Gold Rush, but came back empty handed. He then went to Williams College for one year, and then Westfield School in Massachusetts. He followed his father's footsteps and taught at Lahainaluna briefly. In 1863 Alexander became manager of the Waihee sugarcane plantation near Wailuku, hiring Henry Perrine Baldwin (1842–1911) as assistant. Business and adventure On January 26, 1864, Alexander married Martha Eliza Cooke, daughter of Amos Starr Cooke, one of two former missionary who founded the Castle & Cooke company. Abigail Charlette Baldwin (1847–1912) married his older brother William DeWitt Alexander (1833–1913) in 1861. William was a teacher and then president of Punahou School. In 1869 his sister Emily Whitney Alexander married Henry Perrine Baldwin.