Maria J. Forbes

[1] Her mother, Maria (née, Patton), had been one of the third company of missionaries who reached Honolulu in the ship Parthian in 1828.

[2] Forbes was one of five island girls who, after studying at Punahou School, Honolulu, pursued their education together at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Massachusetts,[3] in the years 1850-53.

Harvey Rexford Hitchcock as missionary pastor of what at that time constituted an interesting portion of the Hawaiian field.

After years in this service, physicians prescribed travel for his health and while on return from the Eastern United States, he died in Colorado Springs, in 1888.

[4] A year after she was widowed, Forbes was appointed[6] the manager of the Lunalilo Home for aged and disabled Hawaiians in Honolulu.