Peter Cushman Jones

Peter Cushman Jones (October 12, 1837 – April 23, 1922) was a businessman and politician during the Kingdom of Hawaii, Provisional Government of Hawaii, Republic of Hawaii and Territory of Hawaii. He founded the second bank in the Hawaiian Islands. Early life Peter Cushman Jones was born December 10, 1837, in Boston. His father was also named Peter Cushman Jones (1808–1885), and his mother was Jane MacIntosh Baldwin, whose grandfather Isaac Baldwin (1738–1775) died in the Battle of Bunker Hill. He traces his ancestry to several notable early Bostonians, including Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) and daughter Anne Dudley who married Simon Bradstreet. He was fourth of nine children. He was educated at the Boston Latin School in 1849. However, as he describes himself:As a scholar I was extremely dull, I never remember having been at the head of my class at school but have many times been at the other end of the class, the "foot." Although his parents expected him to attend Harvard, he transferred to a less disciplined school briefly and then took a job instead in April 1852 at age 14. He would never go back to school. In 1857 he decided to leave, and planned to go west to Saint Paul, Minnesota. His father objected, so instead he left in June 1857 to Honolulu, since William Austin Whiting, the son of his employer, had been there. He arrived on October 2, 1857, with total assets of 16 cents. He found various jobs as clerk with former New Englanders in the islands. On May 12, 1862, he married Cornelia Hall (1842–1876), daughter of merchant Edwin O. Hall, and on February 27, 1864, he officially became a citizen of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Business and politics By 1866 he bought out a former employer and formed a partnership with C. L. Richards in a ship chandlery business. In January 1871 he became a partner with Henry A. P. Carter in C. Brewer & Co. which acted as agent for the growing number of sugarcane plantations in Hawaii. In December 1879, while Carter was away on a diplomatic mission, the other partner John D. Brewer died, making him effectively head of the business. In 1883 the company was formally incorporated with himself as president, including Charles Reed Bishop as an investor. Bishop had founded the first bank in the Hawaiian Islands, called, appropriately, First Hawaiian Bank. Jones managed C. Brewer until July 1891. He returned with his family to Boston to visit relatives, and then came back to Honolulu in October 1892.