“This island is inhabited…It is to be regretted that all these detached islands should not be visited by our national vessels, and friendly intercourse kept up with them. The benefit and assistance that any shipwrecked mariners might derive from their rude inhabitants, would repay the time, trouble, and expense such visits would occasion.”
In 1859, Palmyra Atoll was claimed for the United States by Dr. Gerrit P. Judd of the brig Josephine, in accordance with the Guano Islands Act of 1856, but no guano was there to be mined.
Annexation by the Kingdom of Hawaii (1862):
On February 26, 1862, King Kamehameha IV of Hawaii commissioned Captain Zenas Bent and Johnson Beswick Wilkinson, both Hawaiian citizens, to take possession of the atoll. On April 15, 1862, it was formally annexed to the Kingdom of Hawaii, while Bent and Wilkinson became joint owners.
Over the next century, ownership of the atoll passed through various hands. Bent sold his rights to Palmyra to Wilkinson on December 25, 1862. Palmyra later passed to Kalama Wilkinson (Johnson’s widow). In 1885, it was then divided between three heirs, two of whom immediately sold their rights to William Luther Wilcox who, in turn, sold them to the Pacific Navigation Company. In 1897, this company was liquidated, and its interests were sold first to William Ansel Kinney, and then to Fred Wundenberg, all of Honolulu. On June 12, 1911, Wundenberg’s widow sold his two-thirds undivided interest in Palmyra as a tenant in common to Judge Henry Ernest Cooper.
A further Wilkinson heir left her share to her son William Ringer, Sr., who also bought his great-uncle’s share, giving Ringer a total one-third undivided share in Palmyra as a tenant in common.
Meanwhile, in 1889, Commander Nichols of HMS Cormorant claimed Palmyra for the United Kingdom, unaware of the prior claim made by Hawaii.
Part of the U.S. Territory of Hawaii (1900–1959):
In 1898, the United States by the Newlands Resolution annexed the Republic of Hawaii, formerly the Polynesian Kingdom of Hawaii, and Palmyra with it. An Act of Congress made all of Hawaii, including Palmyra, into an “incorporated territory” of the United States at that time. On June 14, 1900, Palmyra became part of the new U.S. Territory of Hawaii. To end all British claims, Congress passed a second act of annexation in 1911.
With imminent opening of the Panama Canal, Palmyra became strategically important. Britain had established a submarine cable station for the All Red Line on nearby Fanning Island. So the U.S. Navy sent USS West Virginia to Palmyra, where on February 21, 1912, American sovereignty was formally reaffirmed.
William Ringer, Sr. died in 1909 survived by his wife and three minor daughters. In 1912, Henry Ernest Cooper bought the daughters’ inherited rights to Palmyra from their legal guardian and petitioned to register Torrens title to all of Palmyra for himself but, after a challenge in court, Cooper’s ownership of the atoll was held by the Supreme Court of Hawaii to be subject to rights sold by Ringer’s widow to Henry Maui and Joseph Clarke. Maui’s and Clarke’s interests, noted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1947, were deeded as to one-third to Mrs. Bella Jones of Honolulu in 1912 and the rest passed to their heirs.