Frank Solomon (30 May 1906 – 21 December 1991) was an American-born New Zealand Rugby Union player. He has played national provincial rugby for Auckland and international rugby for the All Blacks. Considered a pacific pioneer in New Zealand rugby, Solomon became the first Samoan to play for the All Blacks. He was the older step-brother of former All Black Dave Solomon and the great-uncle of former All Black Josh Kronfeld. Solomon was the first U.S. national of Samoan descent to play for a New Zealand national rugby team. The second was Jerome Kaino in 2004. Early life Solomon was born on 30 May 1906 in the American Samoan capital of Pago Pago as the oldest of two. He was born 6 years after 'Eastern Samoa' (present day American Samoa) became a U.S. Territory, which divided Samoa into two administrative territories according to the Tripartite Convention. The governor of American Samoa at the time of Solomon's birth was Rdml. Charles Moore from Decatur, Illinois. While the United States occupied the eastern portion, the Germans occupied the western portion (consisting of Savaii and Upolu) known as German Samoa at the time. It wasn't until 1914, New Zealand occupied the German territory without resistance from the Germans. Thus changed the name from German Samoa to Western Samoa until 1997. Solomon's father was the mayor of the former Fijian capital of Levuka and during that time where he and his step-brother Dave were educated, Solomon and his family moved to the Samoan capital of Apia before finally reaching to Auckland, New Zealand in 1921. It was at that time Solomon spent his last school days at Seddon Memorial Technical College (now Auckland University of Technology). International rugby career Solomon had achieved the unusual distinction of winning a New Zealand Maori jersey. It wasn't unusual on the strength of his playing ability, as he had plenty of that, or for the fact that he wasn't a regular in first-class player, as that was also a common scenario at the time, but for the fact nobody had bothered to check that he was actually Maori. With Islanders being something of a novelty in New Zealand back then, it was automatically assumed his skin owed its colour to Maori blood, and into the team he went. He was one of the better players on that 1927 internal tour, and nobody caught up with the fact he