The American statesman Sanford Ballard Dole (1844-1926) was president of the Republic of Hawaii and, after its annexation to the United States in 1898, first governor of the Territory of Hawaii.

Sanford Dole was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on April 23, 1844, the son of Protestant missionaries from New England. He grew up on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Kauai and went to missionary schools run by his father. He left the islands to attend Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., where he spent a year. After another year in a Boston law office, he was admitted in 1868 to the Massachusetts bar. But that same year he returned to Honolulu to practice law. He showed a good deal of interest in community affairs and often wrote for newspapers. In 1873 he married Anna P. Cate of Maine.

Dole was elected to the Hawaiian Legislature in 1884 and 1886 as a Reform party member. In...