William Wyatt Gill

William Wyatt Gill ( * December 27 1828 in Bristol, England; † November 11, 1898 in Marrickville, Sydney ) was an Australian missionary and ethnologist.

Life

He was the son of John Gill of Barton Hill and his wife, Jane. Raised in Kingsland Congregational Chapel in Bristol, he decided early on to train as a preacher. In the Missionary Society, London Missionary Society, he was taken in 1851 and landed on 15 November of the same year in Hobart on Tasmania. 1852-72 he worked almost exclusively in Mangaia in the Cook Islands. Some of his publications and work for the Royal Geographical Society, he produced in London from 1873 to 1877. He then took the missionary service back up and lived until the death of his wife in 1883 in Rarotonga. In his last years he worked in Sydney.

Gill presented one of the first religion and culture of the peoples of Polynesia dar.

Works

• Gems from the Coral Islands. Western Polynesia: Comprising the New Hebrides group, the Loyalty group, New Caledonia group. London 1855. ( Archive.org )
• Life in the Southern Isles; or, Scenes and Incidents in the South Pacific and New Guinea. London 1876.
• Myths and Songs from the South Pacific. London 1876. ( Archive.org )
• Historical Sketches of Savage Life in Polynesia. Wellington 1880. ( Archive.org )
• Work and Adventure in New Guinea 1877 to 1885. London 1885.
• Jottings from the Pacific. London 1885. ( Archive.org )
• The Genealogy of the Kings of Rarotonga and Mangaia as Illustrating the colonization of Iceland did and the Hervey Group. 1889 (New Zealand Electronic Text Collection)
• The South Pacific and New Guinea. Sydney 1892. ( Archive.org )
• From Darkness to Light in Polynesia. London 1894. ( Archive.org )