PEOPLE ALMOST MENTIONED IN A WEEK: THE REVEREND WILLIAM ELLIS HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: THE REVEREND WILLIAM ELLIS A WEEK: We are apt enough to be pleased with such books as Evelyn’s Sylva, Acetarium, and Kalendarium Hortense, but they imply a relaxed nerve in the reader. Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man, — all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners! The young pines springing up in the cornfields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact. We talk of civilizing the Indian, but that is not the name for his improvement. By the wary independence and aloofness of his dim forest life he preserves his intercourse with his native gods, and is admitted from time to time to a rare and peculiar society with Nature. He has glances of starry recognition to which our saloons are strangers. The steady illumination of his genius, dim only because distant, is like the faint but satisfying light of the stars compared with the dazzling but ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. The Society-Islanders had their day-born gods, but they were not supposed to be “of equal antiquity with the akua fauau po, or night-born gods.” It is true, there are the innocent pleasures of country life, and it is sometimes pleasant to make the earth yield her increase, and gather the fruits in their season, but the heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter retirements and more rugged paths. It will have its garden-plots and its parterres elsewhere than on the earth, and gather nuts and berries by the way for its subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heedlessness as berries. We would not always be soothing and taming nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but sometimes ride the horse wild and chase the buffalo. The Indian’s intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger in her midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something vulgar and foul in the latter’s closeness to his mistress, something noble and cleanly in the former’s distance. In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes, “Some nation yet shut in With hills of ice.” REV. WILLIAM ELLIS 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: THE REVEREND WILLIAM ELLIS 1792 August 13, Monday: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and little Marie Thérèse Charlotte and Louis-Charles became prisoners in the tower of the Temple (a 12th-Century fortress that had been erected by the Knights Templar in what is now the 3d arrondissement of Paris, no longer in existence). From this point forward the revolutionaries would understand their family name to be Capet. Here “M. Capet” takes the air in his prison: “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: THE REVEREND WILLIAM ELLIS Adelaide Amelia Louisa Theresa Caroline was born in Meiningen, the 1st of the daughters of George, Duke of Saxe-Coburg Meiningen. WALDEN: As with our colleges, as with a hundred “modern PEOPLE OF improvements”; there is an illusion about them; there is not WALDEN always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. ADELAIDE HARRIET MARTINEAU William Ellis got married with a woman of the Bedborough family who had been born in Reading, England (not much is known about her). Thaddeus Mason Harris was made a resident member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: THE REVEREND WILLIAM ELLIS 1794 August 24, Monday: William Ellis was born in London of working-class parents. His father was named William and a short-lived older brother had also been given that name. He would grow to have a love of plants and in his youth would become a gardener, first in the eastern part of England, then at a nursery near London, and then for a wealthy family of Stoke Newington. However, he would not remain a gardener, but would elect to attend Homerton College, then in Hampstead, and train himself to accept a mission assigned by the London Missionary Society. November 21, Friday: Honolulu Harbor in the Sandwich Islands was discovered by white people, for what that’s worth. The legislature of New Jersey passed “An Act for Supporting Idiots and Lunatics and Preserving Their Estates.” This early public policy seems to have been more preoccupied with the protection of their property than with proper care for the patients.1 PSYCHOLOGY 1. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1994 “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: THE REVEREND WILLIAM ELLIS 1815 Russia tried to make landings in the Sandwich Islands, which they were denominating as the “Cook Islands.” His training at Homerton College (then in Hampstead) complete, William Ellis was ordained. November 9, Thursday: A missionary needs a wife. The Reverend William Ellis got married with Mary Mercy Moor. The couple would be posted by the London Missionary Society to the South Sea Islands. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 9th of 11th M 1815 / Our Meeting was small silent & short, & I believe generally a dull season. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 1816 January 23, Tuesday: The Reverend William Ellis and Mrs. Mary Mercy Moor Ellis embarked for Sydney, Australia and then Eimeo in the Windward Islands of the South Pacific Ocean, their passage paid by the London Missionary Society. While they and other London Missionary Society missionary couples (such as the Reverend and Mrs. John Orsmond and the Reverend and Mrs. John Williams) were learning the local language, several chiefs of nearby islands, who had assisted Pomare in regaining sovereignty of Tahiti, visited Eimeo, and the missionaries were also invited to also visit these other islands. 6 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: THE REVEREND WILLIAM ELLIS 1818 June: The Reverend William Ellis and Mrs. Mary Mercy Moor Ellis, the Reverend and Mrs. John Orsmond, and the Reverend and Mrs. John Williams sailed to the island of Huahine. This was an event of note, and attracted visitors from neighboring islands, including King Tamatoa of Raiatea. 1822 April 16, Tuesday: The Reverend William Ellis and a small group of other white people arrived at Honolulu on Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands from Tahiti, aboard the schooner Mermaid. Aloha! A small schooner, the Prince Regent sporting six cannon, accompanied them and was presented as an appropriate gift to King Kamehameha II. August 27, Tuesday: The plan of the missionary group that had sailed from Tahiti to the Hawaiian Islands on the schooner Mermaid had been to pass on and visit the Marquesas Islands, but instead the vessel returned to Tahiti. The Reverend William Ellis was invited to remain behind at Honolulu on the island of Oahu, and sent for his family to join him there. 1823 The Reverend William Ellis’s A JOURNAL OF A TOUR AROUND HAWAI’I, THE LARGEST OF THE SANDWICH ISLANDS (New-York: Crocker and Brewster). February 4, Tuesday: Massachusetts approved the creation of the Hampshire and Hampden Canal Company. Lake Chad was for the first time sighted by Europeans (Lieutenant Hugh Clapperton and Dr. Walter Oudney).2 The Active arrived at Honolulu on the island of Oahu bearing the family of the Reverend William Ellis. In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 4th of 2 M 1823 / Several of our friends have set out for Providence Quarterly Meeting this Morning - I feel [—]rey at staying behind & fear it will add no spiritual strength. — Visited dear Sister Eliza Rodman in her room this morning, she is a poor suffererd & my heart is deeply interested for her - unless she recovers soon I fear her situation is very alarming RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 2. They decided they would call it Lake Waterloo. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: THE REVEREND WILLIAM ELLIS 8 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: THE REVEREND WILLIAM ELLIS June: The Reverend William Ellis joined with some American missionaries, the Reverends Asa Thurston, Artemas Bishop and Joseph Goodrich, on a tour of the big island of Hawaii, to investigate suitable sites for mission stations.