Born in London to Welsh parents, John Williams (1796-1839) was a missionary who set sail in November 1816 with his wife Mary Chawner Williams to the South Pacific, with the goal of converting the inhabitants of the region’s many islands to Christianity. They reached Tahiti in the autumn of 1817 and soon after established their first missionary post on the island of Raiatea. Over the following years, Williams and his wife were very successful in converting the native populations of the Society Islands, the Cook Islands and Samoa. In 1834, John Williams arrived back in London to a hero’s welcome. Whilst there, he published a popular text on the South Pacific, titled Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands.
John Williams and his wife left London in 1837, arriving back the following year in the South Pacific to continue their work. In 1839, he set sail for the New Hebrides islands, an area of the South Pacific where his work was unknown. On the morning of 20 November 1839, shortly after arriving on the shores of the island of Erromango in the New Hebrides, Williams and a fellow missionary, James Harris, were killed by the native islanders.
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