Historian Ethel Damon (1883-1965) was born in Honolulu, the daughter of Edward Chenery Damon, a retailer with JT Waterhouse and Company, and Cornelia Beckwith Damon.
She was the granddaughter of American Protestant missionaries the Rev. Samuel Chenery Damon — the pastor of the Honolulu Bethel Union Church, Seamen’s Chapel from 1842 to 1884 — and Julia Mills Damon.
A graduate of Punahou in 1901, the Normal School at Honolulu in 1903 and Wellesley College in 1909, where she was valedictorian, Miss Damon taught Latin, French, German and history at Punahou from 1912 until 1917, when she volunteered for the American Red Cross to serve in Europe during World War I.
While overseas, Damon first saw service as an interpreter in Paris, and later was a nurse’s aide before being assigned to serve under her friend, Kaua‘i health-care pioneer Miss Mabel Wilcox, in caring for refugee children at Le Harve, France.
Damon was decorated by the mayor of Le Havre with the medal of that city and with the Order of Elizabeth from the queen of Belgium for her war work.
She then became a prolific writer devoted to documenting Hawai‘i’s history.
“Koamalu,” privately published by her in two volumes in Honolulu in 1931, is her history of Kaua‘i.
It is lengthy, with 976 pages, is indexed by over 1,530 references, and contains a great range of historical subject matter with emphasis on a roughly-100-year period from the early 1800s through the early 1900s.
Numerous photographs and illustrations are incorporated throughout the book.
Its value to researchers is inestimable, and it remains to this day essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the history of the Garden Isle.
Among Ethel Damon’s other works are: “Father Bond of Kohala,” “The Stone Church at Kawaiahao, 1820-1944,” “Siloama: The Church of the Healing Spring,” “Sanford Ballard Dole and His Hawai‘i,” and “Samuel Chenery Damon.”
Edward Joesting’s “Kauai, The Separate Kingdom,” which was published in 1984 and contains a history of Kaua‘i to the time of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, approaches “Koamalu” in importance.
