Her father was John Young,[citation needed] known as Olohana, the royal advisor of Kamehameha I, from Lancashire, England.

In her teenage years, she married High Chief "George Cox" Kahekili Keʻeaumoku, the Governor of Maui.

Cox was a close advisor of the Hawaiian king and the younger brother of the powerful Queen regent Kaʻahumanu's.

Hānai was a common custom in native Hawaiian culture, even if both natural parents of the adopted child were still living, despite missionaries' stern opposition to "giving away" children.

One should not take the word, "immediately", too literally, for it was customary to preserve the piko or umbilical cord, to bathe the infant and perhaps oil it lightly, to wrap it snugly in its tapa-cloth receiving blanket, to allow the mother to nurse it, and then to perform the hānai ceremony.

The ceremony of hānai constituted a solemn promise that was as binding as any modern legal instrument: the Rookes did not sign a written deed of adoption until December 30, 1851, fifteen years after.

Grace and her husband moved into their new spacious wood-frame mansion, Rooke House, shortly after Emma's birth.

[7] After living in the Hawaiian Islands for nearly thirty years, the fifty-two-year-old Dr. Rooke died on November 28, 1858, at Kailua, Hawaii.

Emma later wrote to Kamehameha V, "I loved my mother above everything on this side of the grave and perhaps it was my erring in making too much of my earthly thing that she has been taken from me..."[9]