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Williams, John (1)

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an English missionary, called "the Apostle of Polynesia" and "the Martyr of Erromanga," was born at Tottenham, near London, June 29, 1796. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to an ironmonger, and acquired a knowledge of mechanism which was afterwards of great service to him. He was ordained in 1816, and sent by the London Missionary Society to Eimeo, one of the Society Islands, where he learned the language and began to preach to the natives in two months. From Eimeo he soon removed to Huaheine, and afterwards to Raiatea, where lie was eminently successful in introducing Christianity and, at the same time, the arts of civilization. In 1823 he removed to Raratonga, the chief of the Hervey Islands, where he established a mission that was remarkably successful, the population of the entire group having embraced Christianity under his influence. He employed native teachers, and prepared the New Test. and other books in the Raratongan language.

Being in want of a vessel to journey from island to island, he resolved to build one. He made all the necessary tools, and completed the vessel, which was sixty feet long by eighteen wide, in about fifteen weeks. The sails were of native matting, the cordage of the bark of the hibiscus, the oakum of cocoa-nut husks and banana stumps. With the aid of this vessel he extended his labors during the next four years as far as the Samoa Islands. In 1834 he returned to England, and remained nearly four years, employing himself in the publication of his Raratongan New Test. (by the Bible Society) and in raising £4000 for the purchase and outfit of a missionary ship for the South Sea Islands. In 1838 he returned to the scene of his labors, and in the following year visited the New Hebrides for the purpose of planting a mission, but was killed on the shore of the island of Erromanga, and most of his body eaten by the savage natives, November 20, 1839. Besides his New Test., above mentioned, he was the author of, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands (1837): — Missionary's Farewell (1838). See Prout, Life of the Reverend John Williams, Missionary to Polynesia; Compiled from his Journals, Correspondence, and other Authentic Sources (1843).