Items on Pacific Islands from the minutes and reports of the annual general conferences (1879-1964) of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Missionaries and the Church were active in French Polynesia at the time, including Tahiti, Tubuai, and the Tuamotu Islands, as well as being active in the Hawaiian Islands, Samoa and Tonga.

Reverend Charles Moore went to Tonga as a Methodist missionary in 1924. He spent four years in Ha'apai, followed by four years in Vava'u, and returned to Australia in 1932. The correspondence (85 items) chiefly consists of letters from the Rev. Rodger C.G. Page, president of the Tongan Conference of the Methodist Church. Other correspondents include Queen Salote Tupou and a number of other Tongans, whose letters are in the Tongan language. In addition there is a copy of a letter from the Rev. Shirley W. Baker, Premier of the Tongan Government, to the president of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference in Melbourne of 1888.

The logbooks cover voyages in the ships 'Laughing Water' (1868), 'Corypheus' (1870-71), 'Day Spring' (1872), 'Alsager' (1872-73) and 'Ceara' (1874). The voyages in the 'Laughing Water' were between Newcastle, Lyttleton (NZ) and Melbourne. Those in the 'Corypheus' between Melbourne and China. On her last voyage the 'Corypheus' ran aground on a reef in the Marshall Islands and the crew sailed 3,000 miles in the ship's boats to Rockhampton. The voyage of the 'Day Spring' was from Melbourne to the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and return. The 'Alsager' sailed from Melbourne to Malden Island for a cargo of guano. She foundered off Tongatapu, apparently as a result of sabotage. The 'Ceara's' voyages were from Adelaide to Mauritius and then to various Australian ports.

Captain William Driver (1803-1886) was born Salem, Massachusetts, USA. He went to sea aged 14, and made his first voyage to Fiji in quest of beche-de-mer in September, 1872, in the ship Clay under Captain Benjamin Vanderford. He spent 49 months in the South Seas beche-de-mer trade before returning to Salem. Given command of the Charles Doggett, he sailed for the Pacific again in January, 1831. He remained at sea until 1837 when he retired to Nashville, Tennessee.

The logbook is for the voyage of the Charles Doggett. It begins on January 30, 1831, when the ship was 2,098 sea miles from Salem en route to New Zealand, and ends in March, 1832, when the ship was gathering a cargo of beche-de-mer in Fiji. In the interval, calls were made at Tubuai, Tahiti (French Polynesia), Pitcairn Island, Samoa, Tahiti and Niuatoputapu (Tonga). Driver's visit to Pitcairn Island from Tahiti was for the purpose of returning 65 descendants of the Bounty mutineers, who had been moved from Pitcairn to Tahiti four months earlier as it was feared that their island was becoming overpopulated. Driver describes this episode in some detail in an 1871 memoir accompanying his logbook of the Charles Doggett.
See also the Bureau's newsletter Pambu, December 1969:17.

Dr William Henry Harvey was a botanist, becoming professor and chair of Botany at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, from 1856 until his death in 1866.

The letters, four in number, give vivid accounts of Dr Harvey's visits to Tonga and Fiji in the latter half of 1855 during the course of a world tour. The letters are addressed to Harvey's sister Hannah (Mrs Hannah Harvey Todhunter) and his niece Mary (Mary Christy Harvey). Dr Harvey was particularly interested in algae; but he also investigated other aspects of the natural history of Tonga and Fiji, and wrote at length of a religious revival in Tonga and cannibalism in Fiji. (Twenty-six other letters of Dr Harvey, dealing with other aspects of his world tour, which took in Gilbraltar, Malta, Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand, are deposited in the library of Trinity College, Dublin). See also the Bureau's newsletter PAMBU, March 1968: 8, pp.1-4.

Reverend Dr Ernest Edgar Vyvyan Collocott (1886-1970) served as a Methodist missionary in Tonga from 1911 to 1924. During his career in Tonga and afterwards, he wrote numerous papers on Tongan myths, legends, history, language, customs and astronomy for Mankind, The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Folklore, and the special publications of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum.

The correspondence comprises approximately 100 letters relating to a wide range of Pacific subjects, with emphasis on Tonga. Correspondents include many of the leading Pacific scholars of the day, such as Elsdon Best, W.H. Skinner, H.E. Gregory, anthropologists W.C. McKern and E.W. Gifford, and linguists Sidney H. Ray and S. Churchward. Also included is a copy of a speech made by Queen Salote of Tonga at the laying of the foundation stone of the schoolhouse at Nafuala in 1921 and the annual report of the Chief Justice of Tonga for 1921.