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Born in Orange County, North Carolina, July 14, 1853, Marion Alonzo Cheek graduated in medicine from medical school before being recruited by the Presbyterian missionary Daniel McGilvary to work with the protestant mission in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, in 1874.<br/><br/> Cheek's relationship with McGilvary and the mission soon turned sour, but Cheek - who was more interested in making money and enjoying the good life - soon set himself up as a businessman in the local lumber business and established a succesful medical practice. He resigned from the Presbyterian Mission in 1886, but despite - perhaps because of - establishing a personal harem of around 20 northern Thai women - he incurred increasingly serious debts, becoming bankrupt in 1893.<br/><br/> He became ill with malaria and dysentry in 1895 and took ship for Hong Kong and treatment in June of that year, but he died of an abcess of the liver while still in Thai waters off Si Chang Island, July 4, 1895.
He was the son of Anna Leonowens of Anna and the King of Siam fame and Thomas Leon Owens, a civilian clerk, whom she married in India in 1849. He was born at Lynton near Port Gregory in Western Australia and went to Siam (now Thailand) with his mother in 1862.<br/><br/> He was raised in the Siamese royal palace and was schooled by his mother alongside the royal children until he returned to Europe to complete his education. In 1881, at the age of 27, he returned to Siam and was granted a commission of Captain in the Royal Cavalry by King Chulalongkorn.<br/><br/> Leonowens in 1884 left the military and entered the teak trade. He went on in 1905 to found the Louis Thomas Leonowens Company which became Louis T. Leonowens Ltd, an international trading company. This company remains a leading exporter of Malayan hardwoods and an importer of building materials and general merchandise.<br/><br/> Leonowens became less involved in the operations of the company after 1906 and left Siam for the last time in 1913. Leonowens died in 1919 during the global influenza pandemic. He is buried, with his second wife, in Brompton Cemetery, London.