Gerrit P. Judd

Gerrit Parmele Judd (April 23, 1803 – July 12, 1873) was an American physician and missionary to the Kingdom of Hawaii who later became a trusted advisor and cabinet minister to King Kamehameha III.

Judd was born April 23, 1803 in Paris, Oneida County, New York, the son of Elnathan Judd and his wife Betsey Hastings. On his mother's side, he was descended from Thomas Hastings, who came from the East Anglian area of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634.

He was educated as a physician at the medical college in Fairfield, New York. He married Laura Fish (1804–1872) on September 20, 1827 in Clinton, Oneida County, New York. The couple sailed to Hawaii (then known as the 'Sandwich Islands') that same year, on the ship Parthian, the third company from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

He was assigned to the mission at Honolulu on the island of Oahu, as a missionary physician, and continued in that employment fifteen years.

In 1842 he resigned from the mission and became an advisor and translator to King Kamehameha III. He also became involved in the civil concerns of the islands, and was the King’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from November 1843 to March 1845, Minister of Interior from March 1845 to February 1846, Minister of Finance from April 1846 to September 1853, and in the House of Representatives from 1858 to 1859. He was commissioned in 1849 as Minister Plenipotentiary to England, France and the United States.

He was one of the founders of the Punahou School for children of the missionaries in 1841. He founded Hawaii's first medical school in 1870, and was the author of one of the first medical texts written in Hawaiian, Anatomia : he palapala ia e hoike ai i ke ano o ko ke kanaka kino, in 1838.

In 1850 Judd purchased from King Kamehameha the land which became the Kualoa Ranch on the Windward Coast of Oahu. His descendants still own and operate the ranch today.

Judd died July 12, 1873 in Honolulu and was buried in the Oahu Cemetery.

They had nine children:

1. Gerrit Parmele II born March 8, 1829, died November 13, 1839, buried in Oahu Cemetery.
2. Elizabeth Kinaʻu born July 5, 1831 died August 9, 1918. Married September 29, 1857 to Samuel Gardner Wilder (1831–1888) from Leominster, Massachusetts, six children.
3. Helen Seymour born August 27, 1833 and died April 2, 1911.
4. Charles Hastings born September 8, 1835 (twin) died April 18, 1890. Married November 1, 1859 to Emily Catherine Cutts (1840–1921), four children. Worked in the Guano and farming businesses, and held several posts in the Kingdom.
5. Laura Fish born September 8, 1835 (twin) died November 22, 1888 at San Francisco, California. Married February 22, 1861 to Joshua Gill Dickson (1830–1880), four children.
6. Albert Francis born January 7, 1838 died May 20, 1900. Married April 4, 1872 to Agnes Hall Boyd (1844–1934) nine children. Last child Lawrence M. Judd became Governor of the Territory of Hawaii in 1929–1934.
7. Alan Wilkes born April 20, 1840 and died March 26, 1875.
8. Sybil Augusta born March 16, 1843 and died September 10, 1906. Married February 27, 1862 to Henry Alpheus Peirce Carter (1837–1891), seven children. Son Charles Lunt was a member of the Committee of Safety, and son George Robert was Governor of the Territory of Hawaii (1903–1907).
9. Juliet Isabelle born March 28, 1846 and died June 27, 1857.

Judd's life was the basis of the novel The White King. A biography, Dr. Judd, Hawaii’s Friend which was written by his great-grandson Gerrit P. Judd IV (1915–1971) and published in 1960. His papers were kept under restricted access at the Bishop Museum until his great-grandson Albert Francis Judd III died in 2006.

• Gerrit P. Judd (1838). Anatomia. Lahainaluna.