Julia Fayerweather Afong

Julia Hope Kamakia Paaikamokalani o Kinau Beckley Fayerweather Afong (February 1, 1840 – February 14, 1919) was a Hawaiian high chiefess who married Chinese millionaire merchant Chun Afong with whom she had sixteen children. She was of British, American and Hawaiian descent. Life She was born on February 1, 1840, in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, the first-born child and daughter of Abram Henry Fayerweather (1812–1850) and Mary Kekahimoku Kolimoalani Beckley (1820–1850). Her family was considered to be of the aliʻi (noble) class. She was the maternal granddaughter of British Captain George Charles Beckley and Ahia, a distant relation of the reigning House of Kamehameha and descendant of the 15th-century King Līloa. Her two sisters were Mary Jane Fayerweather Davison Montano (1840–1918), who married American pharmacist Benoni Richmond Davison and Colombian photographer Andreas Avelino Montano, and Hannah Fayerweather Bell (1843–1870), who married Thomas Kamukamu Bell. A brother named William Malulani Fayerweather (1841–1843) died young. On May 28, 1857, she married Chinese millionaire merchant Chun Afong. The wedding ceremony was officiated by American Protestant missionary Reverend Lowell Smith. This marriage connected Afong to the reigning Kamehameha family and the ruling Hawaiian elite class. In 1874, her husband supported the political aspirations of Kalākaua (who shared a wet nurse with Julia and was considered a foster brother). Afong quietly gave financial support to Kalākaua in the election of 1874 against Queen Emma (the widow of Kamehameha IV). After the king's election, he appointed Afong to his Privy Council of State. The family business in Hawaiʻi steadily grew with investments in retail, shipping, opium sales, and sugar and coffee plantations. After the death of Afong's eldest son Chun Alung in 1889, he sold or reorganized most of his business holdings in Hawaiʻi and invested in the Douglas Steamship Company in Hong Kong. He named Samuel Mills Damon as administrator of an estate left in Hawaiʻi to support Julia and their many children. Afong never returned to Hawaiʻi and died in Hong Kong in 1906.