C hater Road, Chater Garden, Chater Square in Central, and Catchick Street, the extension of Kennedy Town Praya - all are named after one of Hong Kong's most important men. But the life and legacy of Sir Paul Catchick Chater remain little- known.

There is no biography of the man. There are few testimonials to him apart from names in documents here and there. Even the art collection he bequeathed to the Hong Kong government is vastly reduced from his original trove. Yet this is the man who brought into being companies that now dominate our lives - Hong Kong Land, Hong Kong Electric and the original Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company. Of Armenian roots, he was a leading figure in the (then Royal) Hong Kong Jockey Club. He was one of the first two unofficial members appointed to the Executive Council, and adviser to Hong Kong governors.

One of the most telling stories about him comes from The China Mail which wondered why he was getting into a sampan at dusk, night after night, and pottering around the harbor in the shadows of the shore. He was taking soundings to measure the depth of different parts of the foreshore - his idea was that some land reclamation might make sense and to find water deep enough to handle ocean-going steamers.

The result of his searches were the first Kowloon wharfs. He is also credited with the first reclamations of parts of the harbor in Kowloon and Wan Chai, starting a trend that many might wish had stopped with his lifetime.

He pioneered the development of the Kowloon peninsula, built St Andrew's church there, funded trade and industry and became the greatest philanthropist of his time in the region.

His vision and commitment to Hong Kong cannot be doubted. The puzzle bothering not a few historians of Hong Kong - and far flung members of the Chater family - is what commitment Hong Kong is showing to Chater in return. In other words: why is there no recognized biography of one of Hong Kong's most important people?

Many have seen the need for the whole story to be told. The late great chronicler of Hong Kong and the China Coast, Austin Coates, wrote that "In his long life, Chater had two `students,' in the Chinese meaning of that word: Sir Robert Ho Tung in the 19th century, Noel Croucher in the 20th. Both became millionaires, and both acknowledged their debt to Chater as their real mentor in the world of finance."

Sir Robert Ho Tung, the first Eurasian allowed to live on the Peak, was the famous comprador to Jardines, and leader of a myriad commercial and other enterprises in Hong Kong. Croucher rose, thanks partly to Chater, from status of "poor white in the colony" to one of Hong Kong's richest and eccentrically most generous men. He left behind The Croucher Foundation which provides discreet but critical financial support to research in science, medicine and technology for Hong Kong.

But Chater's story remains untold. The author of a rare study on the Armenians who ventured east to India and the China Coast - Mesrovb Jacob Seth - wrote in his 1937 book, Armenians in India: "The future historian of Hong Kong will find his task as regards the past 60 years a sinecure, for the record of Hong Kong will be a replica of the career of Sir Paul Chater."

But it is not the historians of Hong Kong who are taking up the challenge of chronicling Chater, but his descendants, in particular, Liz Chater, who lives in Hampshire, England, and visits Hong Kong and Calcutta every few years when she can afford it.

She has amassed a large bulk of material, tracking down mementoes, grave stones and key marriage certificates, tracing the vast family tree of Chaters and the larger Armenian community, and bringing together people similarly interested in the subject.

"I knew nothing about Sir Paul when I started," she told the Weekend Standard. "I had a baby in 2000 and he just slept and slept, so I had a lot of time on my hands and starting flicking through the computer on family history pages.

"I found my father, my grandfather, and before long I was hooked. The questions kept coming, and one name just kept leading to another.

"When I came to Sir Paul, I realized he was famous and looked around for a biography of him - but there was nothing," she said, on a recent visit to Hong Kong.

Catchick Paul Chater was born in Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1846 to a family of Armenian merchants, one of 14 children. But he was orphaned by the time he was nine and became a scholarship boy. Aged 18, he reached Hong Kong, where he worked in the Bank of Hindustan, China and Japan, staying with the family of his relatives, the Jordans. Within a couple of years he was trading in gold and bullion on his own account and investing in land.

His business partners and friends included Sir Hormusjee Mody, the Sassoon family, William Keswick and John Bell-Irving (the other leading unofficial member of the Executive Council), and the entire Freemason community of which he was a prominent member.

By the late 1880s, new ideas or enterprises didn't get off the ground without Chater - be it shipping, insurance, utilities or the ground itself. When Chater died in 1926, governor Sir Cecil Clementi recalled that when he had first set foot on Hong Kong he had done so on land Chater had created.

Chater's idea had been that marine lot holders would themselves fund the works to create the land, which ultimately remained under government control. He went to London to get permission for this precedent arrangement. He was also the first to suggest to the government that new lands should be acquired beyond Kowloon - namely the New Territories.

Catchick Street in Kennedy Town marks where he was responsible for reclaiming 10.5 hectares. He pioneered iron mining in the New Territories, coal-mining in Tongkin Indo-China (hence his award of Legion d'Honneur from a grateful France), and initiated cotton-spinning factories. He gave money to the University of Hong Kong, St John's Cathedral and Kowloon Union Church, as well as St Andrew's. And he set a certain tone with his entertainments at home, the lavish Marble Hall. Not everyone appreciated his taste, but well-stocked wine cellars and sweeping verandas halfway up the Peak ensured his style.

Liz Chater has doggedly filled out many of the details with her work.

Born on September 8, 1846, Chater was baptized on October 3 at the Armenian Church in Calcutta, inheriting the family name of Catchick from his great grandfather Agha Catchick Arrakiel. This man's contribution to commerce had been rewarded by King George III with a handsome miniature portrait and a valuable sword.

"[Chater's mother] Miriam, clearly was never to forget the type of man her grandfather was, and no doubt had hopes that her new born son would one day make his mark in life as Agha Catchick had. Little did she know how her new born son would change the lives of so many. Sadly she was not to see him grow up into the man that he was to become," writes Liz Chater.

"In January of 1853 when Catchick was just six years old, his father Chater Paul Chater tragically drowned in the Hooglie River. There was no government pension associated with the post that Chater Paul Chater had before he died, Miriam must have constantly struggled with such a large family and with so many mouths to feed. Tragically, two years later on July 24, 1855, Miriam died (cause unknown). She must have realized that she was dying, as she made her will one day beforehand," adds Liz.

In 1867, Chater was a broker operating from 59 Wyndham Street. In 1868-1869, he operated from Chancery Lane; from 1870 through to 1872 he worked out of Seymour Terrace. From 1873 through to 1876 he used his own residence at 17 Caine Road as his office. It appears that he and his brother, Joseph Theophilus Chater were brokers at the same time. Sir Paul Chater was appointed as Consul for Siam in Hong Kong in 1890, a post he held until 1907.

Liz Chater believes that her forebear got his leg-up in life through the Sassoons, clients of the Bank of Hindustan where he worked: "One day he plucked up the courage to ask the head of Sassoons whether they would help him if he started as an Exchange broker. They said yes and Catchick resigned from the bank. In his first month of trading he cleared HK$600 and very quickly he rose to be the greatest financial magnate of the colony."

A journalist named TP O'Connor, who met Sir Paul Chater at Vichy in September 1924, wrote in the Sunday Times (London): "Sir Paul Chater is perhaps the least known and at the same time one of the most powerful and, what is more important, one of the most beneficent figures in the Empire.

"The young Armenian from Calcutta and everything in Hong Kong have been indissolubly associated. He is at the head of everything there; no enterprise gets on without asking his assistance. Shipping, banking, international companies with their heads in London or in Paris - he is in them all. And he has accumulated one of the largest fortunes in the Empire. He is the father of everything in Hong Kong, by long residence and service. He is the oldest British settler, he is the oldest member of the Executive Council. From his immense wealth he has given most generously to every good cause; he is thus the chief philanthropist as well as the oldest settler in that very prosperous and go-ahead colony, one of our proudest and best creations in the Empire."

A Shanghai journal wrote of him after his death: "Sir Catchick Paul Chater's career was in every way a modern romance, for he rose from a poor boy to be the financial king of the colony, its greatest landowner, one of its most generous benefactors, a leader in its administration and probably one of the six best-known men in all China, with a reputation that has made him famous in many countries."

It wasn't all so simple, however. An enduring mystery that Liz Chater is still trying to solve is the detail of his marriage. He was reported to have been living with a Scandinavian woman more than three decades younger than himself - hardly the stuff to endear Chater to the firm moralists in the colony. Perhaps this helps explain why there are no newspaper reports of the marriage, for which Liz Chater has found the 1910 certificate. Instead, his marriage is reported to have occurred in 1915 - but the lack of coverage of what might have been a scandalous event makes it hard to clarify events.

"It's one of those irritating snippets I want to pin down," she says.

All Liz Chater needs now is a professional historian to help put all of Chater's life together, and the money to back the research and publication.

"Yes, Chater left money to the family, but in the 80 years since his death it has dwindled as the families have grown, and there is no money left," she says.

Chater left the bulk of his estate to the Armenian Holy Nazareth Church in Calcutta, where it helps run a Home for Armenians where elderly members of the community still live. Father Oshagan Gulgulin there manages the philanthropy and is organizing an Armenian Festival of History and Culture in November to help celebrate the 300-year anniversary of the church.

Representatives from leading companies and clubs in Hong Kong - many of which owe so much to this man - have displayed a fascination for the story and have allowed access to their records to Liz Chater. But none have decided to fund the project that she knows she cannot finish on her own.

"It's a question of finding the right person at the right time - there are funds for worthy projects in Hong Kong," said Peter Stuckey, vice- president of the Royal Asiatic Society. He finds it encouraging that there appears to be a growing interest in Hong Kong's history among Hong Kong people now.

"It will begin to be seen to be in some company's interests," he hopes.

As with so many historical quests, this one is drawing more people in as it goes along - not least long-lost Chater relatives.

Vaudine England is author of The Quest of Noel Croucher, Hong Kong's Quiet Philanthropist (Hong Kong University Press, 1998) a biography of Noel Croucher tracing his rise in Hong Kong to the patronage of Sir Paul Chater