May Mother Bowron and the fight for Hawaiian Squatters’ Rights
Born Marion Bowron in London England 1881, May Bowron left for the United States when she was 20 years old. She attended the Chicago Training School, graduating with a nursing degree in 1916. She accepted the call to become a missionary with her sister Florence. Their first assignment was the Palama settlement in Honolulu. They arrived in 1923 in Honolulu on the Matsonia, living together at 1653 Pensacola and serving as settlement nurses in the Papakolea district. That district, which lacked paved roads and sewage facilities, sat on Federal lands. A 1929 article described the residents as “squatters” who had “established makeshift homes.” A later article would amend that, “Hawaiians living on the land had never agreed with the term "squatter," however. Since the land had once been crown property, they felt they had a perfect right to live there.” May, known at that point as Miss Papakolea, started “The Tantalus Clinic” an infant and child clinic , and saw her first patients in February 1926. She initially held it…