On April 15, 1862, Captain Zenas Bent and Mr. Johnson Wilkinson, both subjects
of the Kingdom of Hawaii, landed in Palmyra and took possession of the atoll
for King Kamehameha IV.
By revolution, Hawaii became a republic in 1893. In 1898, the Republic of
Hawaii, specifically including Palmyra by name, was annexed to the United
States. On April 30, 1900, the Congress made the US Constitution and all US
laws fully applicable to Hawaii, thus making it an incorporated Territory--an
action consistently interpreted as perpetual and incapable of being undone.
In the Hawaii Statehood Act of March 18, 1959, the Congress specifically
excluded Palmyra from the new state and vested the civil administration of
Palmyra in the Secretary of the Interior and judicial jurisdiction in the US
District Court for the District of Hawaii (apart from that court's jurisdiction
over the state). This arrangement is pending such time as the Congress might
see fit to provide a government for the Territory.
Palmyra is privately owned, the US Supreme Court having confirmed the descent of
land titles from those issued by the Kingdom of Hawaii. Deeds affecting
properties in Palmyra are filed with the US District Court in Hawaii. The
current owner is The Nature Conservancy.
Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "adamnvillani" <avillani@...>
To: <BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2005 5:23 PM
Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Re: U.S. External Territories list
>
>
> --- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Lowell G. McManus"
> <mcmanus71496@m...> wrote:
>> The territory of the United States consists of:
>>
>> 1. the 50 states of the Union
>> 2. the District of Columbia
>> 3. one Incorporated Territory: Palmyra
>
> So how did Palmyra become an Incorporated Territory, when none of the
> other various Pacific islands did?
>
> Also I think some of the dispute on this group as to how many US
> exclaves there are might be clarified by noting that there are two
> separate questions here, namely, how many territorial exclaves are
> there (which has the 52-exclave answer) and how many different
> first-level political units are there under U.S. sovereignty (Lowell's
> answer).
>
> Adam
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