John Tay

John I. Tay
Born	1832
Died	8 January 1892 Suva, Fiji
Nationality	American
Occupation	Ship's carpenter, Missionary

John I. Tay (1832 – 8 January 1892) was a Seventh-day Adventist missionary who was known for his pioneering work in the South Pacific. It was through his efforts that most of the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island were converted to Adventism, and that the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists purchased the Pitcairn schooner for missionary work in the South Pacific.

John I. Tay was born in 1832. He went to sea when he was sixteen. Tay served on the U.S. sloop-of-war USS Housatonic during the American Civil War (1861–65). He settled in Oakland, California after the war, and joined the Adventists in 1873. He married a woman named Hannah and built a house in Oakland. He worked to spread the Adventist message on the ships in Oakland harbor. He had been given the book Mutiny on the Bounty by his mother when he went to sea, heard more of Pitcairn Island from a shipmate on the Housatonic who had visited the island, and heard yet more from the captain of the Ocean King whom he met in Oakland harbor. All this made him want to visit the island.

By 1886 Tay was in poor health, and was advised by his doctor to take a sea voyage. Tay sailed to Tahiti on the Tropic Bird as ship's carpenter. He left San Francisco on 1 July 1886 and reached Tahiti on 29 July 1886. After waiting less than two months, he obtained passage for Pitcairn on HMS Pelican. This was a British man-of-war. Tay reached Pitcairn Island on 18 October 1886, and stayed until the last week of November. At the time Pitcairn was inhabited by descendants of the mutineers on HMS Bounty. The islanders were already familiar with Adventist concepts, as they had received a box of Adventist tracts about ten years earlier. In five weeks Tay converted the whole population to Adventism. He was unable to perform baptisms since he was not ordained, but promised to return with a minister.

Tay left the island on 20 November 1886 on the 14-ton yacht General Evans, bound for Tahiti. While waiting for a ship to carry him back to San Francisco, he wrote a letter to a friend that was used for a story by the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper wrote "[S]o successful was he [Tay], as he claims, in his efforts to convince people there [at Pitcairn] that Saturday, the seventh day of the week, is the true and divinely appointed Sabbath, that the entire community determined to observe Saturday as their Sabbath in the future.... While at Pitcairn's Island, Mr. Tay was the guest of their head man [Simon Young], who visited this city a few years ago. He was then a very strict Sunday Sabbatarian."

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