The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

Visit to Pitcairn

We heard nothing from the people or our literature until Mr. John I. Tay made his visit to the island, in the year 1886, ten years later, when we learned that as the result of reading the volume of the Signs and the tracts, the whole island, at one time, almost decided to change their day of worship from the first day of the week to the seventh day, and keep the Lord’s Sabbath. This they did not do, however, until the time of Mr. Tay’s visit. He had been for a long time deeply impressed to visit the island, but knew nothing of the people personally, nor of their interest already kindled in the truth. GSAM 427.3

After his return to America, he pleaded most earnestly for a ship to be constructed with which missionaries could be transported from island to island in the Pacific Ocean. He attended the General Conference held in the year 1889, with this thought uppermost in mind, and there he plead the cause of the Polynesian Islands. The conference, seeing the utility of the undertaking, voted to raise, by donations, the sum of $12,000 with which to build or buy a ship to work among the islands of the Pacific Ocean. GSAM 428.1