Phebe Clothilde Chloe Coe was born in Samoa to Jonas Mynderse Coe and Princess Le'Utu Taletale Malietoa. Phebe married Richard Heinrich Robert Parkinson and the couple had 10 children. They moved to New Britain to help her sister, Emma Eliza Coe, also known as Queen Emma, establish coconut plantations on the Gazelle Peninsula. After Richard Parkinson died in 1907, Mrs Parkinson continued to work the Kuradui plantation; but the estate was confiscated from her after World War I by the Australian Expropriation Board. From then until her death in Japanese-occupied New Ireland in 1944, Mrs Parkinson led a wandering life, staying from time to time with one or another of her children, and occasionally with her grandson, Rudolph Diercke. It was through Diercke that Mrs Parkinson (then in her seventies) went to live in the Tingwon Islands.

Robert Stewart Parker was born on 19 February 1915 in Artarmon, New South Wales. He received his Masters in Economics from the University of Sydney. In 1938 he was appointed Lecturer in Public Administration and Secretary to the Council of the Canberra University College. From 1939 to 1945 he was Lecturer in Public Administration at Victoria University College, Wellington, before returning to Canberra University College as Lecturer in Political Science. From 1949-1954 Parker was Head of the School of Public Administration at Victoria University, New Zealand. Parker began his association with the Australian National University as a Research Fellow in the Social Sciences, Department of Political Science, Research School of Social Sciences from 19 October 1947 to 24 February 1949, then Reader (Public Administration) from 1 March 1954. He was Professor and Head of ANU's Political Science program in the Research School of Social Sciences from 1962 until his retirement in 1978. He was a member of the 1957 Committee of Inquiry into Commonwealth Public Service Recruitment (Boyer Committee), the Interim Council of the Administrative College of Papua New Guinea (1962-69) and the Papua New Guinea Public Services Arbitration Tribunal (1972-73). Parker died on 31 July 2002.