Lucius Eugene Pinkham (19 September 1850-2 November 1922) was the Democratic Territorial Governor of Hawaii from 30 November 1913 to 22 June 1918, succeeding Walter F. Frear and preceding Charles J. McCarthy.
Biography[]
Lucius Eugene Pinkham was born in Chicopee, Massachusetts in 1850, and he emigrated to Hawaii in 1892 to build a coal-handling plant for the Oahu Railway and Land Company. He became president of the territorial Board of Health in 1904 and improved the conditions of the lepers at the Molokai settlement and battled the bubonic plague and cholera. In 1908, he was removed from the Board of Health due to his racist remarks towards the Japanese community during a plague outbreak. From 1909 to 1913, Pinkham helped import Filipino labor recruits for Hawaii's sugar plantations, but he was fired after four years because of his disagreements about Filipino recruitment. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Pinkman governor of Hawaii despite his previous ties to Republicans, and he oversaw the construction of the Ala Wai Canal and the drainage of the Waikiki marshlands. He resigned in 1918 and died in San Francisco in 1922.