William P. Ragsdale

William Phileppus Ragsdale (c. 1837 – November 24, 1877) was a lawyer, newspaper editor, and translator of the Kingdom of Hawaii and popular figure known famously for being luna or superintendent of the leper colony of Kalaupapa. Elements of his life story influenced Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Ragsdale was born in 1837, a hapa-haole or half-Hawaiian, half-Caucasian. His father Alexander Ragsdale was an American plantation owner originally from Virginia who had settled in Hawaii in 1817 and married Kahawaluokalani (Kahawalu), a minor Hawaiian chiefess and a descendant of King Kekaulike of Maui and his wife Kahawalu. His siblings were Edward Alexander Ragsdale (1839–1863) and Annie Green Ragsdale Dowsett (1842–1891), who married James Isaac Dowsett. He was considered a distant relative or cousin of Queen Emma.

From 1861 to 1865, Ragsdale served as the first editor of Ka Nupepa Kūʻokoʻa ("The Independent Newspaper") for publisher Henry Martyn Whitney. After four years, he was replaced by missionary descendant Luther Halsey Gulick, Sr. in 1865. His Roman Catholic faith was a probable reason why he was replaced, since the Hawaiian Congregationalists wished to have a newspaper more favorable to them. In 1866, Ragsdale was working as a government translator and interpreter for the Hawaiian legislature. American writer Mark Twain visited the island kingdom at the time and described the legislative session and Ragsdale:

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