William Richards: The South Sea Solomon

Abstract

IN the year 1779, Captain Cook was stabbed in the back with an Hawaiian dagger, and the mighty traveler who, in the words of a missionary writer, had with enthusiastic ardor thrice circumnavigated the globe ) and had constantly neglected his opportunities for spreading the Gospel fell into the water, and spoke no Ten years later in remote America, James Richards, a former soldier in the revolutionary army, and his wife (born Lydia Shaw) moved into the Berkshire Hills. With their four children, they settled in a district later incorporated as the town of Plainfield. Here James Richards became a very important citizen and had six children more. William, the seventh child, was to visit Hawaii in a far different capacity from the unfortunate Cook, and his life although probably more edifying than the sea captain's was to be hardly less interesting. In 1813, William Richards entered Williams College. His eldest brother, James, had been graduated from Andover Theological Seminary a year before, where, with four others, he had laid the foundation of the American Board of Com-