These papers comprise part of the records of the Vicariate of New Caledonia which are designated Oceania Nova Caledonia (ONC) in the Marist Archives. The ONC material fills four large filing cabinets which are listed as APM I ONC, APM II ONC, APM III ONC and AMP IV ONC. The ONC files are not as well organized as the other Pacific vicariates and they contain many unclassified and unnamed sections. Please also see PMB MS 161.

Papers from cabinet APM III ONC comprising:

1. Dossier entitled '1862-1916 Relations' Internal Folder 'N.C. Reports'; Account by Fr Rougeyron, SM of a missionary journey (June-August 1858) and general missionary activity in New Caledonia; Correspondence between Fr Rougeyron, SM and Fr Yardin, SM, Procureur of the Society of Mary in Lyon, 12 December 1868 and 22 October 1869; Typed, edited copy of the Annual Report of the Vicariate of New Caledonia for 1869 by Fr Rougeyron, SM, including extracts from priests' letters dated 10 June 1870 and 23 November 1870; Reports to the Superior General of the Society of Mary from Fr Rougeyron, SM dated 28 June 1870 and 26 December 1870, the latter dealing with the mission at Paita; Annual reports of the Vicariate of New Caledonia for 1870 and 1872 by Fr Rougeyron, SM; Summary of Marist missionary achievements in New Caledonia from 1860 to 1872 by Fr Rougeyron, SM; Extract of a report from Fr Villard, SM to Fr Rougeyron, SM dated 16 November 1867 (29 pages)
2. Dossier entitled 'N.C. Reports II 1900'; Report of a tour of Marist missions in New Caledonia and the New Hebrides dated 5 July 1900 by A. Aubry, SM; Reports on New Caledonia missions, 3 December 1902 (A. Oliez) and 1905 (A. Marion, SM); First four pages of a typed report on New Caledonia missions by Fr Provincial, dated 16 October 1913

We remember Sione Latukefu as a scholar, Tongan patriot and Christian gentleman. Sione was born at Kolovai on Tongatapu in 1927, where his family were prominent commoners with important traditional responsibilities. His grandfather was a distinguished Tongan poet and his family were closely involved in the sufferings, educational achievements and faithful witness of the Wesleyan mission and afterwards the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga. After secondary education at Tupou College Sione trained for a teaching career in Tonga and then, with scholarships, at the University of Queensland. He had already been ordained a minister of the Free Wesleyan Church in 1960.
Sione’s autobiographical essay, ‘The making of the first Tongan-born professional historian’, in the book Pacific Islands History, edited by Dr. Brij Lal, glosses over most of his educational advancement. The boy from Kolovai was not meant to aspire to academinc honours. Yet the highest in the land acknowledged his ability. Queen Salote, herself a scholar of traditional matters, recognized Sione’s potential, gave him encouragement and, in her last days, passed on some of her own knowledge to him.
Taking his studies further at the Australian National University, in an era when Phd Degrees were still fairly novel throughout the world, Sione was one of the first Pacific Islanders to obtain one. He was a generous, careful and perceptive historian.
Queen Salote had hoped that Sione would take charge of the Tongan Archives. Her death in 1965 caused him to take a different path. While at ANU he met his beloved life-partner, then Dr Ruth Fink and they were married in Sydney in 1966. Both Ruth and Sione successfully applied for the positions of anthropologist and historian respectively at the new University of Papua New Guinea. At Port Moresby they helped lay the groundwork for future courses and trained a new generation of Papua New Guinean leaders. Sione was also a successful funds raiser and from 1969 to 1988 he was secretary and executive officer of the Te Rangi Hiroa Fund for promoting the study of Pacific history.
After 18 years of dedicated service, by which time Sione was an Associate Professor, they retired for a while to Canberra to live. Sione’s dedication then led him to accept the post of Principal of the Pacific Theological College in Suva which he held from 1989 to 1991 when ill health led to his return to Canberra. At the College he proved a stabilising influence and helped to give the curriculum a greater academic emphasis. In Canberra he contined to work on various research projects surviving a triple by-pass operation and other setbacks with great courage and aplomb. He participated fully in the life of the new Division of Pacific and Asian History and he was still writing articles and working on a book at the time of his death.
From Niel Gunson, Memorial Tribute to Reverend Dr Sione Latukefu, Tonga Research Association website http://tongaresearchassociation.wordpress.com/

Professional correspondence, arranged by correspondent or subject in chronological order, with some related papers, 1962-1994.
Manuscripts, associated corresopondence and related papers, 1967-1994 (SL Ms/1-39), together with,
A study of the modern elite in Tonga: papers and recordings for an incomplete research project, including correspondence, lists of interviewees, transcripts of some interviews, research trip records, press cuttings, and audio interview recordings, 1993-1995(SL Ms/40-46).
See Finding aids for details.

Supplementary volume to the Annales des Missions ... (see PMB Doc 174 and 194-198) containing letters written by the first Marist missionaries in the Pacific 1837-1855.

The London registered Pacific Islands Company Limited (PIC) was formed in 1897 following the restructuring of J T Arundel & Co, which had copra, phosphate and trading interests in the central Pacific. The first Chairman of the PIC was Lord Stanmore (Sir Arthur Gordon), with John Arundel (1841-1919) its vice-Chairman. In 1900 Albert Ellis (1869-1951), a company employee, travelled to Banaba (Ocean Island) and confirmed that the island contained huge deposits of phosphate. Ellis secured mining rights from island leaders while the PIC was granted an imperial mining license, completed by British annexation of Banaba. The company secured exclusive mining rights for 999 years in return for an annual payment of £50 to the Banaban people. Within a few years the company was making up to £125,000 per annum. This provoked a scandal, and the license was modified to provide for a trust fund and compensation for environmental damage; the later commitment was never fulfilled. So profitable was Banaban mining that the PIC sold all of its other non-phosphate interests in the Pacific. In 1902 it formed the Pacific Phosphate Company Limited (PPC) in collaboration with Jaluit Gessellschaft of Hamburg, giving it mining rights on German Nauru. Following World War I the PPC was replaced by the British Phosphate Commissioners (BPC) with many of the company’s former executives, including Ellis, rolling over their managerial positions to become the new commissioners. The BPC was not dissolved until 1981 by which time Ocean Island had been mined out and almost completely depopulated while Nauru, independent since 1968, had assumed direct responsibility for phosphate mining. The origins of many of these developments can be traced to the PIC and PPC whose correspondence is available here.

Letters of J.T. Arundel, G.C. Ellis and A.H. Gaze, 1896-1901.

Letters of J.T. Arundel to Pacific Islands Co Ltd, London, Letterbook Nos. 1-4, 1899-1908, and enclosures;
Letters of Pacific Islands Co Ltd., Sydney, to Head Office, London, Letterbooks A-F, and enclosures, 1898-1904.
<b>See reel list for further details.</b> See also PMB 1174 & 1176, 1205-1207, J.T. Arundel & Co, Pacific Islands Co Ltd & Pacific Phosphate Co, and PMB 480-495, 497-498, for diaries, corresp. & further papers of J.T. Arundel & A.F. Ellis.

See PMB 1174 and 1175 for administrative history of the Pacific Islands Co Ltd and the Pacific Phosphate Co Ltd.

PIC/PPC, Sydney, letter books (letters-out), Gen. 1-12, Sep 1898-Jul 1906;
J T Arundel (Sydney) letter books, Pvt. 1-4, Feb 1899-Mar 1905;
Letter books, Islands 1-3, Sep 1898-Jun 1902;
Letter books, JM & Co, Aug 1896-Mar 1903;
Letter books, PI Co General 2 & 3, Oct 1900-Aug 1905;
Letter books, PI Co Agency 1, Jun 1903-May 1905.
Letter book, PP Co Insurance, Jul 1904-Jun 1906;
PPC Sydney, Reports by J T Arundel, Nos.1-174, Mar 1903-Nov 1909;
Letter book re purchase of Ralum property from E E Forsyth, 1900-1905; Letter book, Ocean Is. 1, Oct 1904-Jun 1906;
Letter book/journal, Arthur C Bell, Supercargo, Emu, Jul-Sep 1900;
Levers Pacific Plantations Ltd (inclu. Henderson & Macfarlane, Flint Island, etc.) reference file, 1897-1903;
Copy Suwarrow Island diary, May-Jul 1902. <b>See Finding aids for details.</b>
See also PMB 1174 & 1175, 1205-1207, J.T. Arundel & Co, Pacific Islands Co Ltd & Pacific Phosphate Co, and PMB 480-495, 497-498, for diaries, corresp. & further papers of J.T. Arundel & A.F. Ellis.

Please see PMB 1039 for full entry

Typescript carbon copies of 42 letters (Box 3i/1(a)-(g): 35 written by Morgan to Fison during the period 19 August, 1870 to 4 July, 1881; 1 letter from Joseph Henry, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution, 27 November, 1871; 1 letter from Andrew Mackenzie, 30 December 1871, Maelly, Wandandian; 1 letter from Alexander Falconer, 27 June, 1873, Eildon, near Alexandria; 1 letter to L.H. Morgan from Spencer Baird, Smithsonian Institution, 18 October, 1879; 1 letter to Mrs A.M.H. Watts from L.H. Morgan, 21 January, 1881, Rochester; 2 letters from A.W. Howitt to L.H. Morgan, 16 October 1879 & 4 February, 1880, Rochester.

Adam Wilson (10 Mar 1909-11 Dec 1988) was born in Edinburgh. His family were strong Baptists. He was apprenticed as a joiner/ woodworker. Encouraged by his father, John Christie Wilson, to pursue a career as a missionary, Adam Wilson attended the All nationa Bible College in London to train for missionary work in Africa. There he met Dr McLeod who persuaded him to try the John G. Paton mission in the New Hebrides. Rev. Adam Wilson arrived at the tangoa Teacher Training Institute on Santo, New Hebrides, on 26 July 1934 where he worked as an "artisan missionary” helping to look after the Presbyterian Mission's infrastructure as well as teaching. Adam Wilson also edited the Mission journal, Quarterly Jottings from the New Hebrides. He married Christina Alexander Wrighton (29 Jan 1904-12 Jan 1969; born in Overtown, Scotland) at Rev. Frank Paton's manse in Melbourne on 11 March 1935. Christina was a nurse by profession. It is likely that Adam Wilson was a coastwatcher, possibly based in Santo, responsible to the Australian Navy for providing information on the Japanese if they arrived in the New Hebrides before the Americans. Adam Wilson left the New Hebrides Presbyterian Mission in 1947 when it was considered that his practical skills were no longer a priority.
From Alan R. Wilson, Nov 2007.

Letters from Adam and Christina Wilson, mainly from the Tangoa Teacher Training Institute, Santo, New Hebrides, to their family in Edinburgh, 1935-1947, arranged as follows:
Correspondence, Aug-Dec 1935
Odd pages of correspondence, 1935-1936
Correspondence, Jan-Dec 1937
Correspondence, Feb-Oct 1938
Correspondence, Aug 1940-Dec 1941
Correspondence, Feb 1942-Nov 1943
Correspondence, Jan 1944-Oct 1945
Correspondence, Jan 1946-May 1947
See Finding aids for details.

Mary Helen Margaret Leishman was born at Bunbury Western Australia on 17 April 1902. She died on 7 May 1995 in Launceston, Tasmania. Helen Leishman gave 22 years service to the Anglican Church's Melanesian Mission in the Solomons and New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) as both lay missionary nursing sister, then as a member of the religious sisterhood, the Community of the Cross. That Community corporately moved to the Roman Catholic church in July 1950, after which Helen Leishman spent more than 38 years in a Carmelite Monastery in Tasmania.

Helen Leishman trained as a nurse in Perth WA, completing her midwifery in Adelaide SA. While living and working in Perth she heard a clergyman preach on the work of the Anglican church's overseas missions. Some time later, on an impulse, she enquired about missionary life, was accepted on the spot, sent to Mission headquarters, Siota, Solomon Islands for training, then was assigned to a school in the New Hebrides.

Her enculturation programme was conducted by the Community of the Cross, an Anglican Sisterhood of three members established only a year previously. She subsequently joined the Community. She taught in the Community's school, was nurse, dentist, midwife and otherwise multi-skilled member of the Community, became the de facto mother of the babies taken in as orphans, taught personal and community hygiene and mothercraft to the older students at the school, trained indigenous women who joined the Community in hygiene, child care, midwifery and other elementary medical skills. Either alone, or with colleagues (mostly one or two Taina), she worked in remote locations, went periodically to distant islands to preach Christianity, teach, and attend to the sick. She was in the Solomons during World War II when the Japanese invaded, remained in seclusion in the mountains under the protection of the indigenous people until after the battle of Guadalcanal, when evacuated to the New Hebrides. After some years back in the Solomons the Sisters decided to join the Roman Catholic church, an event described by Mother Margaret Wilson, the Community Superior (see PMB 145). (From T.W. Campbell, “The Hidden Lives of Helen Leishman”, <i>Women-Church</i>, 33, Spring 2003.)

These letters cover the period 1930 to 1948. The originals, held privately, are to be placed with St Mark's Library, Canberra ACT. <b>See Finding aids for details.</b>

See PMB MS 432, material related to the Roman Catholic Mission Fiji.

The correspondence is in seven files:

1. Miscellaneous, 1919-30
2. Father L.L. Dubois, SM, 1921-30
3. Mission Station, Wairiki, 1922-30
4. Mission Station, Vanuakula, 1924-30
5. Mission Station, Loreto, 1930
6. Mission Station, Nabala, 1930
7. Procure, Sydney, 1925-30

See PMB MS 432, material relating to Roman Catholic Mission Fiji.

Correspondence of Bishop Julian Vidal, SM with Fr Nicolas SM and other priests.