David McHattie Forbes
| David McHattie Forbes | |
|---|---|
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| Born | July 21, 1863 Whitemire, Scotland |
| Died | March 23, 1937 (age 73) Hilo, Hawaii |
| Education | Common and Night Schools in Scotland |
| Occupation | Botanist, Collector, South Kohala District Forester and Magistrate of Waimea, Hawaii |
| Spouse(s) | Catherine Lougher |
| Children | Blodwyn, David Merlyn, Allister, Dyfrig, Mary Elizabeth |
| Parent(s) | Alexander Forbes, Mary McHattie |
David McHattie Forbes (July 21, 1863 – March 23, 1937) was a Scottish botanist, ethnologist, sugarcane plantation manager and explorer on the island of Hawai'i. He practised forestry, agronomy, and horticulture and served as the first district forester of South Kohala in 1905, and twenty years later was appointed a judge in Waimea.
In 1905, he was the discoverer, with two colleagues, of the greatest collection of Polynesian artifacts ever found. The location of the find became known as the Forbes Cave and his family preserved his third of the found objects for half a century until they donated them to the Volcanoes National Park in 1956. The Forbes Collection was on public view for 34 years until 1990, when the NAGPRA legislation was passed and each item was evaluated. They were found to be priceless cultural artefacts but also to be subject to repatriation and they were removed permanently from public viewing. The other two-thirds of the found objects were sold to the Bishop Museum by Forbes' two expedition partners: Wilhelm Wagener and Friedrich Haehnisch.
Born in Scotland, the son of Alexander and Mary (McHattie) Forbes, he was educated in the local schools.
He began working in the private estate nurseries of Moray, Scotland in 1879 and later in the forests of the same estate. In 1882, he worked in the nurseries of Dixon & Co., Edinburgh. In 1883 he became the Foreman Forester for the estate of Fletcher's Saltoun Hall, the seat of the oldest and largest private library in Scotland.
In 1887, at the behest of William H. Purvis, he traveled to Kukuihaele near Waipio Valley, Hawaii, via Cape Horn, to manage an experiment in cinchona cultivation above the sugar line. Purvis, who had already introduced the macadamia nut from Australia, recognized the potential benefits to finding a species of tree that would thrive in the land above the sugarcane, and the bark of the cinchona he imported from Ceylon had a promising yield ratio between bark and quinine. When Purvis' plantation was transferred to the Pacific Sugar Mill Company, in which Samuel Parker invested in 1879, D. M. Forbes succeeded C. Von Mengersen as manager, running the Pacific Sugar Mill from 1893–1907.
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