Memories Of “Queen Emma”

The Real Facts of Her Marriages and Her Life in New Guinea

By Gordon Thomas

Rabaul, June 1.

MRS. Ettie Juker approached me the other day after having perused the article in the April PIM about her aunt, “Queen Emma”.

There were, she said, several inac curacies. I told her that the best way in which to remedy that was to have the truth printed, and I prevailed on her to give me a few facts, knowing that she was Queen Emma’s favourite niece, and had lived with her for a number of years, both in New Britain and in Europe.

It was from her, therefore, that I

gathered together a few facts of the old, pioneer days of this Territory, as well as a few personal details of those people who first made their home here, and started planting up virgin bush among some of the wildest cannibals in the world. For the natives about here, in the eighties, were a really tough proposition.

Jonas Myndes Coe. the father of Queen Emma, was born in Troy, New York, and, being of adventurous spirit, he took sail for the South Seas, and made his home in Apia, where he was commercial agent for the United States. He did not marry two sisters in succession. By his first wife he had eight children—four boys and four girls. Mrs. Kolbe (Queen Emma) was his second daughter; Mrs. Juker’s father was the fifth child; and Mrs.

Phoebe Parkinson (who is still alive and lives not far from Rabaul) was the youngest child. Mrs. Grace Schmidt (who died recently) was the last child of six daughters by the second wife of J. M.

Coe. Incidentally. Mrs. Schmidt was not educated in the USA, or in Dubbo, NSW, as reported.

Queen Emma was married to Kolbe in 1892, not 1912 as mentioned in the article. Her first marriage was to Mr.

Forsayth, who was a trader in copra in Samoa; she had two children by him (J. M. C. Forsayth and a girl). Emma was not happily married, and she went to USA for the purpose of obtaining divorce, in which she was successful. Later, For sayth was reported as having died at sea. The daughter of this marriage died shortly after Emma went to USA.

In 1879, Emma, in company with Cap tain Farrell (who was a friend of Mrs.

Juker’s father and owned a schooner in Samoa, and was engaged in recruiting labourers for the “Long Handle” firm known as the DH & PG) landed in New Guinea (or, to be correct, Bismarck Archipelago) in 1880, and settled on Mioko Island, in the Duke of York Group. This trading station was later sold to the DH &t PG for £5,000.

Two years later, in 1882, Mr. and Mrs.

Parkinson arrived, bringing with them Emma’s son, J. M. C. Forsayth, and one of their own children.

The Parkinsons settled on the island of New Britain, near Kokopo, and started planting up land for Emma. There was some partnership arrangement between the Parkinsons and Emma; but, after planting up Malapau and an adjoining estate, which is now included in the Ralum property, Parkinson left Emma and became manager for the Neu Guinea Compagnie at Kokopo. After serving the NGC for some time. Parkinson returned to Emma, as the manager of her trading and planting interests at Kokopo.

Six years after the arrival of the Par kinsons (i.e., 1888), Grace (later Mrs.

Schmidt) arrived and joined her half sister; also, the father of Mrs. Juker, with five of his children. A sister (Mrs.

Mary Ann Horgren), and three children, followed, eleven years later, and settled in the Territory.

Mrs. Juker was the eldest child, and was about 14 years old when she arrived in the Territory. She lived with Tier aunt, Queen Emma, for some ten years, and, at 24, she married George P. Kaumann, accountant of the DH & PG, of Samoa.

In 1909, Queen Emma (then Mrs.

Kolbe) and her niece travelled to Europe, and in Genoa they were joined by Mr.

Kolbe. In 1911, Mr. and Mrs. Kolbe re turned to New Britain, leaving the niece (Mrs. Kaumann, at that time) behind in Europe, visiting her husband’s relations in Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt.

Queen Emma's firm, widely known as the E. E. Forsayth Company, was sold to the Hamburgische Sudsee Aktien Gesellschaft (HSAG) by J. M. C. For sayth while his mother was in Europe.

The send-off, mentioned in the PIM article, was not given by the residents of New Guinea, but by the sisters of Queen Emma (Mrs Parkinson, Mrs. Hor gren and Mrs. Grace Schmidt).

SPEAKING of the circumstances sur rounding the death of Queen Emma, Mrs. Juker said - “The lady referred to as having come from Germany, who was supposed to have had a prior right to my uncle (Mr. Kolbe), I knew very well. She was a resident of Melbourne, and she was on her way to England to try and sell her business. We all stayed together at the Miramara Hotel, in Genoa, for a week, and then she left for England. She was merely an ac quaintance of my uncle, as well as of my late husband (Mr. Kaumann). Later, she returned to Melbourne, where she died during the last war. Her daughter married an English colonel.

“There was nothing so tragic in my aunt’s death,” continued Mrs. Juker.

“She had been a sufferer from diabetes for many years, and she entered a clinic at Frankfurt in 1909; the doctor there informed her that her state was serious.

At times, my aunt could hardly walk.

I saw her later, in Sydney, and she looked very poorly; a few months after wards she died. I am convinced that the shock of my uncle’s death killed her.”

During the interview, Mrs. Juker em phasised the fact that much of Queen Emma’s prosperity was due to the ener gies of Mr. and Mrs. Parkinson, in those early years; and they, on several occa sions saved the lives of Queen Emma and her son. The growth of her business came after she married Kolbe, who opened up more land, made roads and planted up large areas of coconuts.

MRS. Juker, who still lives out on the North Coast, a few miles from Rabaul. is still well, though some what frail. Five years after the death of George P. Kaumann she married Dr.

Alfrede R. Juker, a Swiss.

“At one time,” said Mrs Juker, “the PIM compared my grandfather, Jonas M.

Coe, to a beachcomber This is an error.

The conditions under which he left the USA were very sad. Early in his life both his parents died, leaving himself and elder brother to live with an aunt in New York. Her son was a banker and broker, and very well connected in that

city, and my grandfather was an upright and honourable man. By marrying his Polynesian wives according to the law of his own country, he showed that he was neither afraid nor ashamed of the criticism of the world.”

And then this little, frail woman left the office to go back to her old homestead at Rakuranga, at one time one of the finest plantations on the North Coast, and a home which, during the last war, became famous for its hospitality—as famous almost as Gunantambu was in the days when Queen Emma held sway.

Of all those old pioneers who came from Samoa in the early eighties, there are few now remaining. Mrs. Parkinson, who celebrates her seventy-eighth birth day on June 5, this year, manages to get about, as stately as ever; she lives with her grandson. Rudolph Diercke, over on a plantation in the Namatanai district, but recently she came to Rabaul to obtain a pair of eye-glasses. She told me that for years now, her sight had been so good that glasses were not necessary.

“But now I find I must have them to read the smaller print of the papers,” she explained to me.

Parkinson left behind him a literary monument in his “Thirty Years in the South Seas” (printed in German). But the work accomplished by those pioneers in opening up this country, in doing the spade work, should be recorded.

Editorial Note

THE PIM is grateful to Mrs. Juker for supplying authentic information about the life of Queen Emma. Much of the material hitherto published about this remarkable woman—on which part of the article in the April PIM was based —evidently is very inaccurate. It has been said, for instance, that Emma was well into middle age when she married Kolbe, and that Kolbe was merely a hanger-on, interested mostly in Emma’s money. Mrs. Juker makes it clear that Emma was only in her thirties when she became Mrs. Kolbe, that they were to gether for some 20 years, and that Kolbe assisted her very much in managing her properties and increasing their values. It is to be hoped that Mr. Thomas, or some other competent writer, will gather up the romantic story of Queen Emma while her old associates are still available to supply the truth.

Mr. Charles Edmund Wakeham, who for 35 years had plied his trade of car penter in Fiji, died in the Colonial War Memorial Hospital, Suva, on May 18, aged over 80.