NOTE Funded by the Hawaiian Evangelical Society, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and by the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, the mission commenced when B.G. Snow, A.A. Sturges and Luther H. Gulick and their wives sailed out of Boston in November 1851. In Honolulu Rev. Ephraim Clark, Secretary of the Hawaiian Missionary Society, Rev James Kekela and two other Hawaiian missionaries, Daniela Opunui and Berita Kaaikaula and their wives joined the party which sailed for the Carolines, Marshalls and the Gilbert Islands on 15 July 1852. Mission stations were established in Kosrae and Ponape in August and September 1852. In 1857 George Pierson opened the first Protestant mission station on Ebon in the Marshalls. In the same year Hiram Bingham Jr. with his wife set up a mission station on Apaiang in Kiribati (then the Gilbert Islands), but poor health forced Bingham to return in 1864. He was replaced by two other American missionaries, Horace Taylor and Alfred Walkup, and several native Hawaiian pastors. In all nineteen Hawaiian families went to Kiribati – more than twice the combined number who travelled to the Marquesas, Marshalls and Carolines. The missionary work was gradually given up owing to changes in sovereignty in the Micronesian islands. The last missionary to work in Kiribati was Daniel P. Mahihila who went to Maiana in 1892 and returned to Hawai’i in 1904. (From notes by Kanani Reppun, Librarian, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu.)

CONTENTS The Micronesian Collection, 1852-1923, consists of 7.5 linear feet of manuscript material. The main series is correspondence of missionaries and Hawaiian pastors from Micronesian islands, as follows: Ruk, Ponape, Kenan, Kosrae and Yap in the Caroline Islands; Apaiang, Tabian, Tarawa, Tabiteuea, Marakei, Maiana, Butaritari in the Kiribati group; Mille (Mulgrave), Ebon, Majuro, Jaluit, Arno, Namrik in the Marshalls; and Nauru and the Mortlock Islands. The papers also include: church statistics; reports of general and committee meetings; mission station reports; records of voyages of the mission ships, including the Morning Star; printing, publishing and postal records; education and training reports; and records of the Woman’s Board of Missions. <b>See Finding aids for details.</b>

James Lyle Young (1849-1929) was born in Londonderry (Derry), Ireland, and went to Australia with his parents in the mid-1850s. After working in Australia as a station hand, Young, in 1870, went to Fiji where he was associated for five years with a cotton-planting venture at Taveuni. In April, 1875, he left Fiji on a trading voyage to Samoa. After playing a prominent part in the downfall of the head of the Samoan Government, Colonel A.B. Steinberger, Young sailed for the Marshall Islands to open a trading station for Thomas Farrell at Ebon Atoll. About the end of 1879, Young became business manager for a German firm, A. Capelle & Co., of Jaluit.

The journal describes Young's life as a trader for Capelle. His headquarters were at Guam, then the capital of Spain's settlements in the Mariana Islands. Young made frequent visits to other islands in the Marianas and also to islands in the Carolines and Marshalls. See also PMB MS 21 and 23 and the Bureau's newsletter Pambu, Dec. 1968:5, pp.1-12.

Main journal entries written from Ponape (also Pohnpei), aboard barquentine vessel "Mathilde", Lelu Island off Kusaie (also Kosrae), on board schooner "Olesaga", on board schooner "Beatrice" towards the Mariana Islands, Aguigan; at Guam; Faraulep. Other islands mentioned but illegible.