Death Of Mrs. Parkinson

And Mrs. Schultze

Memories of “Queen Emma"

TWO well-known old ladies, Mrs. Phoebe Parkinson and Mrs. Schultze, who refused to leave their plantations in New Ireland in 1941, and were caught in the Jap invasion, died between the end of 1941 and the liberation of the Territory in 1945.

Mrs. Parkinson was a remarkable old lady, very bright and interesting, al though she was well over 80 years old.

She was a sister of another very remark able woman, Mrs. Kolbe, better known to fame as “Queen Emma,” who died in Monte Carlo about 1914. These women were daughters of the first United States Consul in Samoa, Jonas M. Coe, who mar ried a high-caste Samoan. Emma, good looking and well-educated, married an Englishman, Forsayth; ran away from Samoa in the ’seventies with a trader named Farrell; established most pros perous trading stations and plantations in New Britain; sent to Samoa for her brothers and sisters, of whom Mrs. Par kinson was one; and eventually married a German, Captain Kolbe. Members of the family were scattered all over the Western Pacific, prior to World War 11.