Alatau Tamchiboulac Atkinson

Alatau Tamchiboulac Atkinson (November 16, 1848–April 24, 1906) was a member of the House of Representatives for the Republic of Hawaii. He served as Superintendent of Public Instruction for the Territory of Hawaii following annexation to the United States. Appointed Inspector General of Schools for the Kingdom of Hawaii, he served under the administrations of Kalākaua and Liliʻuokalani, and continued in the position under the Provisional Government of Hawaii and the Republic of Hawaii . A journalist and newspaper owner, he is believed to have been one of two authors of satirical works lampooning Walter Murray Gibson cabinet regime under Kalākaua. Atkinson Drive in the Ala Moana area of Honolulu, was named to honor him. Background He was born in the small town of Kapal in the Kazakh steppes of Central Asia, to British explorers Lucy Atkinson and Thomas Witlam Atkinson, who named him after the famous Tamshybulak Spring in Qapal and the Alatau Mountains (Tien Shan), and spent the first ten years of his life in Siberia, Central Asia, and St Petersburg. After his father's death in Kent, England when Alatau was ten years old, a public fund-raising appeal by Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society, helped finance Alatau's education at Rugby School. After a brief career in Russia as Secretary of the Turko-Russian boundary commission, he changed careers to become a writer for the British newspaper Newcastle Courant. He briefly held a teaching position in England at Durham School. Hawaii's school system An 1854 treaty for Hawaii's annexation to the United States had been submitted to Kamehameha III, but he never signed it. During the 1863–1872 reign of Kamehameha V, the Hawaiian language was still the predominant communication in Hawaii's schools. Increasing exposure to the outside world was being brought by the sea trade, missionaries, and foreigners operating sugar plantations in the islands. In 1867, a proposed reciprocity treaty, tax relief for sugar planters, had gotten as far as the United States Congress, but was defeated in the Senate. Atkinson was offered a position by Bishop Thomas Nettleship Staley in 1868, to become instructor and principal at St. Alban's College in Pauoa, Hawaii. He left England together with his wife Annie (nee Humble) and his daughter Zoe in 1869 for the long sea journey to Hawaii. St. Alban's would later merge with ʻIolani School. Atkinson would later also be given charge of the Fort Street School.