Rosalie Keliinoi

Rosalie Enos Lyons Keliʻinoi (September 18, 1875 – November 2, 1952) was a Portuguese-Native Hawaiian politician of the Territory of Hawaii. In 1925, she became the first woman elected to the Hawaii Territorial Legislature, representing the island of Kauai.

Early life and family

Born in 1875, at Wailuku, on the island of Maui, she was the daughter of Augustine Enos, a Portuguese immigrant to the Kingdom of Hawaii who worked as a rancher and merchant at Makawao, and Kininia Makaokatani, the daughter of a Native Hawaiian farmer from Koloa, on the island of Kauai. She was educated at St. Anthony's School for Girls on Maui at Wailuku and later Sacred Hearts Academy in Honolulu.

At the age of eighteen, she eloped with and married Thomas Benjamin Lyons. The couple lived in Wailuku and had seven sons. They divorced in 1916 and she remarried to Samuel Keliʻinoi. Both her husbands were active in politics: Lyons was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the Hawaii Territorial Legislature and served as postmaster of Wailuku while Keliʻinoi was a member of the Republican Party and was elected as a representative in the legislature from 1903 to 1904 and in 1911. They moved from Maui to Kapaʻa, Kauai in 1917.

Political career

After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution giving women the right to vote, Keliʻinoi entered politics with the assistance of her husband and Hawaii Senator Charles Atwood Rice. She ran for the 1924 Hawaii Territorial election and was elected as a Republican representative for the sixth district (corresponding to the island of Kauai). She became the first woman since the monarchy to sit in the legislature.

Keliʻinoi served in the 1925 session of the Hawaii Territorial Legislature, as the only female member. During her one term, she introduced sixteen bills and was responsible for the passage of four bills improving upon women's rights in Hawaii. Her notable contributions included a bill which gave married women the right to sell and manage their own lands without their husbands' consent, a bill promoting the welfare of pregnant women and a bill designating Huliheʻe Palace as a museum.

Keliʻinoi died of heart failure, in Honolulu, on November 2, 1952. She was buried at the Saint Anthony Church Catholic Cemetery in Wailuku. Her status as Hawaii's first female legislator paved the way for other future Hawaiian women in politics. In March 2017, Hawaiʻi Magazine ranked her among a list of the most influential women in Hawaiian history.