John Owen Dominis. American, Italian, Croatian?

While doing research for my post on Marco Antonio De Dominis I came across John Owen Dominis, an American who in 1891 married Lili’uokalani, the last queen of Hawaii. The Italian historian Daniel Farlati writes that the Dominis family was a noble family from modern day Rab, Croatia. Did this prince consort have any connection with the noble family too? Ante Kovačević investigated the matter in his paper On the Descent of John Owen Dominis, Prince Consort of Queen Liliuokani, in the Hawaiian Journal of History in 1976.

The first major conflict with a Croatian origin is that Dominis’ father, also named John, Attested to being born in Trieste, Italy, and was referred to by others as the Italian. Kovačević conjectures it would not have been uncommon for a Dalmatian to speak Italian (it was the official language in the early 19th century), and perhaps he told other Americans he was Italian, given Trieste being a large city nearby.

Lili’uokalani was neither confident of the Italian origin story. After John Owen died, she wrote to the Hawaiian Consul of Austria Victor von Schönberger asking for information.

I write to you and ask if you could give me some aid in trying to obtain information about a gentleman who resided here many years ago and who went by the name of Capt. John Dominis. . . . When Capt. Dominis was living he never told who he was, or mentioned his family connections except once to his wife and his son when the latter was very young, that he was born in Trieste and that he came from a family of high standing and respectability and spoke casually of a Marquis but never gave their name.

She also questioned whether he had taken a different name, but the rumors spread that some Dominis living in Trieste or Dalmata was the rightful heir. Several papers picked up the story that the queen was looking for relatives. The Austrian War Ministry investigated, and passed the information along to Dalmatia. Dalmatia responded That they knew of Dominis’ living in Rab and Zadar. They also added that a certain Giolamo Dominis has emigrated to San Francisco and was known to visit the Hawaiian Islands.

Kovačević also consulted persons with the last name Dominis. He finds in one letter from a certain Betty Dominis, who wrote of John Owen after seeing a photo of him in a 1955 newspaper.

We concluded that his father must be a son of Daddy’s great-grandmother who had 24 children. There were two Johns. One was daddy’s grandfather, John the apostle and the other was John the Baptist. The latter did some dirty trick and disappeared, and he had been never talk of. . . .

Betty’s Sister in law claims that Lili’uokalani wrote to her grandfather, Dr. Dragomir Dominis about the prospect of visiting Rab to meet John’s relatives. Unfortunately, the letter was lost to a house fire.

Kovačević consulted the Baptism and Marriage records of Rab and did find based on Betty’s testimony, a Vincenco Dominis, whose birth date matches the recollection of the queen when talking about John’s father. He also checked the records of Trieste and found no person by the Name Dominis fitting the time frames.

The ancestry of John Dominis is left inconclusive. Kovačević sees the family traditions of the Dominis’ as strong probability that Dominis was likely the son of Vincenco Dominis and Agnes Galzigna, but why John chose not to reveal further information about his past is lost to time.