Island Adventures

Francis ( Frank ) Hammond was notan average Mormon pioneer. After breakinghis back working on a whaling shipoff the coast of Siberia in 1844, he wasset ashore on the island of Maui to heal.While there he set up shop as a shoemakerand learned the local language. Three yearslater, he converted to Mormonism in SanFranciso, and in 1851 he was sent back toHawaii as a missionary along with his newwife, Mary Jane. In the 1860s he returnedto the islands as mission president.Through all this, he and his wife keptextensive and fascinating journals, documentingtheir adventures on land and sea, as well as relations (some prickly) withfellow missionaries and non-Mormoncaucasians and Hawaiians. Hammondestablished a Mormon gathering place onthe island of Lana i, and in the 1860s hetraveled by stagecoach from Utah to thewest coast with a satchel of $5,000 in goldcoins to purchase the land that became thesite in O ahu of the LDS temple, churchcollege, and Polynesian Culture Center."