Bishop, Bernice Pauahi, Princess, 1831-1884

Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, KGCOK RoK, was born Pauahi Pākī on December 19, 1831 in Honolulu, Hawai'i, to high chiefs Abner Pākī and Laura Kōnia Pākī. She was the great-granddaughter of Kamehameha I, the warrior chief who united the Hawaiian islands under his rule in 1810. As the last royal descendant of the Kamehameha line, Pauahi inherited thousands of acres of land. Her inheritance, about nine percent of the island chain’s total acreage, made Pauahi the largest landholder in the kingdom.

When Pauahi was born, the Native Hawaiian population numbered about 124,000. When she wrote her will in 1883, only 44,000 Hawaiians remained. Pauahi witnessed the rapid decline of the Hawaiian population. With that decline came a loss of Hawaiian language, culture and traditions. She believed education would offer her people hope and a future, so she left her estate to found Kamehameha Schools.

Bishop wished that a portion of her estate be used "to erect and maintain in the Hawaiian Islands two schools...one for boys and one girls, to be known as, and called the Kamehameha Schools." She directed her five trustees to invest her estate at their discretion and use the annual income to operate the schools. After Bishop's death in 1884, her husband Charles Reed Bishop started work in carrying out her will.

By the time of her death on October 16, 1884, her estate consisted of 485,563 acres (which was reduced to 375,569 acres by the January 22, 1886 meeting of the Trustees of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Estate) of land across the Hawaiian Islands that she had either purchased or inherited from her parents Pākī and Kōnia, from her aunt ʻAkahi, from her cousin Keʻelikōlani, and from other relatives. These lands were incorporated after Pauahi's death into the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Estates, which fund the Kamehameha Schools to the present day, serving more than 48,000 learners annually at 30 preschool sites, K-12 campuses on Hawai‘i, Maui and O‘ahu; and through a broad range of community outreach programs. Charles Reed Bishop founded the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in 1889 as another memorial to Pauahi, on the grounds of the original boys school.