Ralph Simpson Kuykendall

Ralph Simpson Kuykendall (April 12, 1885 – May 9, 1963) was an American historian who served as the trustee and secretary of the Hawaiian Historical Society from 1922 to 1932.

His parents Reverend John Wesley Kuykendall and Marilla Persis Pierce were both Methodist missionaries and descendants of Dutch settlers from New York.

After a year of study, Kuykendall took a break and moved to Florida to work with his brother at a newspaper.

He apparently succeeded at collecting and assessing the material he obtained in the field and compiling his results into cohesive works.

He had intended to complete his doctorate when he was again awarded the Native Sons of the Golden West fellowship to do research in the Archives of Seville, Spain.

While in Spain, Kuykendall was tapped to be the executive secretary of the newly established Hawaiian Historical Commission.

Kuykendall mostly relied upon the historical collections at the Territorial Archives, the Library of Hawaii and other museums.

A History of Hawaii documents the early beginnings of the Hawaiian kingdom to United States territory.

Kuykendall continued to serve as the executive secretary of the Hawaiian Historical Commission until its dissolution in 1932.

Volume 2: Twenty Critical Years, 1854-1874, published 1953, is about the "middle period" after the establishment of the Kingdom.

Volume 3: The Kalakaua Dynastism, 1874-1893, published 1967, is about the decline of the Kingdom, Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, and eventual overthrow.

Also, in 1948, Ralph Kuykendall and A. Grove Day published Hawaii: A History From Polynesian Kingdom to American Statehood.

Kuykendall was diagnosed with cancer in the early 1960s and he moved to Tucson, Arizona to live with his son.

The University of Hawaii at Manoa named the building in which the English Department resides after Kuykendall.

(June, 1923) 1923 New Light on relations between Kaumualii…and Kamehameha…, Paradise of the Pacific (August 1923) 1924 James Colnett and the Princess Royal, Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, XXV:26-53 (March, 1924) 1924 An Hawaiian in Mexico in 1789-1790, Thirty-Second Annual Report of the Hawaiian Historical Society, pp. 37–50.

1926 Story of Mormon Settlement on Lanai, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, June 24, 1926 1926 Hawaiian Diplomatic Correspondence in the … Archives of the Department of State, Washington, D.C. (Publications of the Historical Commission of the Territory of Hawaii, Vol.

In collaboration with Lorin Tarr Gill; Kuykendall wrote independently somewhat more than half the book and planned and edited the whole.)

1928 Articles in Dictionary of American Biography on Henry E. Cooper, Sanford B. Dole, Gerrit P. Judd, Jonah K. Kalanianaole, William Richards, and Lorrin A Thurston.

1929 Some Early Commercial Adventures of Hawaii, Thirty-Seventh Annual Report of the Hawaiian Historical Society, pp. 15–33.

48–67, (Honolulu, 1931) 1931 Albert Pierce Taylor, December 18, 1872 – January 12, 1931 (obituary) Thirty–Ninth Annual Report of the Hawaiian Historical Society, pp.

14 (Honolulu 1931) 1931 Who was Builder of the Kings’s Highway?, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, June 20, 1931 1931 Education in the Hawaiian Islands prior to the Founding of Lahainaluna High School, Ka Lama Hawaii (Centennial Year Book of Lahainaluna High School), 1931, pp 53–58; The Friend, July 1931; and Hawaii Educational Review, XX: 60-63, 67 (November 1931) 1931 Two Neglected Graves, The Friend, July 1931.

Cited in full: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, March 7, 1932 (Study of Kuykendall on Morals of Hawaiians is Added to Judd’s Report) and Honolulu Advertiser, March 6, 1932 (Hawaiians Law Abiding Americans, Governor’s Answer to Naval Chief.)

5–64, (Honolulu, 1943) 1943 Review of Harold Bradley’s The American Frontier in Hawaii, (Stanford University Press, 1942).

2:15-16, 32, February 1949 1950 Review of Osgood Hardy and Glenn S. Dumke’s A History of the Pacific in Modern Times (Houghton Mifflin, 1949).

(Also guest editor of Hawaiian Section, same issue) 1952 Review of Eugene Burns’ The Last King of Paradise.

Pacific Historical Review, XXI: 297-298 (August 1952) 1953 The Hawaiian Kingdom: 1854-1874: Twenty Critical Years.

310 p. 1954 Review of Hilary Conroy’s The Japanese Frontier in Hawaii, 1868–1898, (University of California Press, 1953).

New York, Prentice Hall, 1961. x, 331 p. 1967 The Hawaiian Kingdom: 1874-1893: the Kalakaua Dynasty, Honolulu, University of Hawaii, 1967. viii, 764 p. (Completed by Dr. Charles Hunter.)

Letters to the Editor 1926 Further Comment on Portraits of Kamehameha I Honolulu Advertiser, Oct. 5, 1926, Editorial Page.

1943 Work Progresses on Hawaii War Records Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Oct. 9, 1943, Editorial Page.