Elisha H. Allen

Elisha Hunt Allen (January 28, 1804 – January 1, 1883) was an American congressman, lawyer and diplomat, and judge and diplomat for the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Elisha Hunt Allen was born January 28, 1804, in New Salem, Massachusetts. His father was Massachusetts minister, lawyer, and politician Samuel Clesson Allen (1772–1842) and mother was Mary (née Hunt) Allen (1774–1833).

He attended New Salem Academy and graduated from Williams College in 1823.

Allen was admitted to the bar in 1825 and commenced practice in Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1830 he moved to Bangor, Maine and entered into practice with John Appleton (born 1804), who would subsequently become Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Court. Appleton would also marry Allen's sister Sarah in 1834. Allen was a member of Bangor's first City Council, from 1834, and from 1835 to 1840 was a member of the Maine House of Representatives, representing Bangor. He served as its Speaker in 1838. From 1841 until 1843, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a member of the Whig party, but his district (Maine's 8th congressional district) was eliminated before the next election based on census data. He ran in the 1842 election against Hannibal Hamlin but was defeated.

Following this loss, Allen ran for the Maine Legislature once more, serving one term before moving from Bangor to Boston in 1847 and being elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1849.

From 1850 to 1853, he was United States Consul in Honolulu, Hawaii under president Millard Fillmore. He realized the potential for the Hawaiian Islands to provide agricultural products to the growing number of people in the California Gold Rush and tried to negotiate a trade treaty but failed.

When he was replaced by an appointment from the Democratic Party president Franklin Pierce in August 1853, he decided to stay due to the severe shortage of legal professionals, and became a citizen of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Within weeks he was appointed Minister of Finance for King Kamehameha III replacing Gerrit P. Judd, and from 1854 to 1856 served in the House of Nobles. He openly advocated annexation of the islands by the United States, and opposed French and British influence. However, when King Kamehameha IV (who was considered pro-British) came to the throne in 1855, the annexation idea was put on hold. During Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma's wedding in 1856, he offered his own wedding band to the king to allow the ceremony to continue.

In June 1856, Allen sailed back to New England and remarried in Philadelphia. The newly married couple returned to Honolulu, where from June 1857 through February 1877, Allen was chief justice of the Kingdom of Hawaii Supreme Court. The Allens' first-born son, Frederick, was born ten days after Prince Albert Edward Kauikeaouli Kaleiopapa, and the two children became playmates. The prince died when he was only four years old.