She was raised and educated in Hilo and Honolulu and served as a maid of honor and lady-in-waiting of Queen Emma, the wife of Kamehameha IV.

In later life, she invested in Hawaiian curio shops selling artifacts of Hawaiiana; many of her collections are preserved in the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum.

[9][10] Her maternal grandfather Hoʻolulu, along with his brother Hoapili, helped conceal the bones of King Kamehameha I in a secret hiding place after his death.

[note 1] In the 1850s the family moved to Honolulu, where Benjamin Pitman took up banking and built a two-story house that he named Waialeale ("rippling water") at the corner of Alakea and Beretania Streets.

Taught by Wetmore, who had come to Hawaiʻi in 1848 with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and started the school in April 1850, the two elder Pitman children received their education in English rather than Hawaiian.

[19] Wetmore taught the children reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic and singing, while also reinforcing the curriculum with a strong adherence to the principles of the Protestant faith.

"[26] After the death of Pitman's mother, Kinoʻole, in 1855, her father married Maria Louisa Walsworth Kinney, the widow of American missionary Rev.

[35][36] Henry Pitman fought for the Union Army in the American Civil War from 1862 to 1863 and died after being released from Libby Prison.

[38] The 1865 Massachusetts State Census listed her in the household of her father, estimating her age to be 21 and describing her race as "White".

[34] She was noted for her swimming abilities, which attracted much attention when she visited sea bathing spots on the New England coast.

[43] The Boston Daily Globe wrote of her: "Miss Mary Pitman of New Bedford, who is of the blood royal, and who claims as good a right to the Hawaiian throne as the reigning monarch.

[46] He died of heart disease on January 17, 1894, while they were visiting San Francisco during the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894.

The two women used goose and duck feathers dyed in the colors of the extinct or endangered native birds originally used to fabricate the cloaks.

[4][49][50] From her marriage to her final illness, Pitman collected and sold goods and artifacts of Hawaiiana in curio stores in Honolulu and Hilo.