[1] Another of his historic estates called the Ainahou Ranch, built in 1941 as a refuge from World War II, is preserved within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

[3] William Herbert's parents were newly married in July 1853, when the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent them to Micronesia.

Titus Coan, minister of Haili Church in Hilo, Hawai'i personally welcomed the Shipmans to their new post on their arrival.

[6] Her eldest child, William Herbert (W. H.) Shipman attended Punahou School in Oahu and Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.

In April 1879, W. H. Shipman married one of his mother's former students, Mary (Mele) Elizabeth Kahiwaaialiʻi Johnson, the grand-niece of Isaac Davis and the granddaughter of Kauwe, a member of the Hawaiian ali'i on Maui.

After he married, Shipman and his wife Mary moved to Kapoho, Hawaii, the easternmost point of the island, in the Puna District.

In 1881 Shipman and two partners (Captain J. E. Eldarts and S. M. Damon) purchased the entire ahupaʻa (ancient land division) of Keaʻau, about 70,000 acres (28,000 ha), for $20,000 from the King Lunalilo estate.

He started with four birds in 1918 at his coastal Puna Shipman estate, eventually moving the breeding program to the family's 'Ainahou Ranch after the 1946 tsunami almost decimated his existing flocks.

[16] In 1959, the W. H. Shipman Company sold about 15 square miles (39 km2) of land which became the Hawaiian Paradise Park subdivision in the Puna District, south of Hilo.

[18] Hawaii state law requires public access to all ocean shorelines, however, controversies have surrounded attempts to keep vehicles off the roads through the Shipman Puna property.

[20] After Herbert's death, his nephew Roy Shipman Blackshear (1923–2006) continued the work of raising nēnē, and headed the W.H.