Timothy Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman was the son of Benjamin Franklin Pitman of Boston, MA and Kinoʻoleoliliha, a member of the Hawaiian royal family. His father moved his children to Massachusetts in 1861. Pitman enlisted in the 22nd Massachusetts Infantry, Company H as a private during the Civil War. Pitman was separated from his regiment and captured by Confederate guerrilla forces. He was forced to march to Richmond and incarcerated in the Confederate Libby Prison, where he contracted "lung fever" from the harsh conditions of his imprisonment and died on February 27, 1863, a few months after his release on parole in a prisoner exchange. Modern historians consider Pitman to be the only known Hawaiian or Pacific Islander to die as a prisoner of war in the Civil War.