John Rae

Who was John Rae?

John Rae, was a Scottish/Canadian economist. He was born to an unknown mother and a merchant father whose bankruptcy caused him to move to Montreal in 1822, after he graduated from the University of Aberdeen. Later, he moved to Williamston and Hamiliton in Ontario, Canada where his wife died of cholera. He was well acquainted with the Scottish/Canadian community and affiliated with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. In Canada he worked as a timber trader, schoolteacher and a doctor. In 1834, he moved to Boston and New York where he also worked as a teacher. He went on to Central America where he was a physician, and he moved with the gold-miners to California in 1849, and a couple years later, poor and sick of malaria, he finds enough money to board a ship to the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi where he worked as many different professions. He was a medical officer for the Hawaiian Board of Health and vaccinated a number of native children of smallpox. He was geologist and wrote papers on the geology of the islands. He was also a historian in Hāna, Maui, writings articles for the newspaper Polynesian.