Origin of Polynesian

Diocese

THE Bishop in Polynesia, Rt. Rev. L.

S. Kempthorne, of Suva, is now in Britain, attending the Lambeth Conference. Meanwhile, his chaplain in Western Samoa, Rev. C. W. Whonsbon- Aston, tells the interesting story of how the Diocese of Polynesia was formed.

Mr. Whonsboti-Aston was recently in Ireland, at a place called Enniscorthy. In an article in the Polynesian Church Gazette, he says:— This is the part of Ireland of particular interest to Polynesia, The Diocese of Melanesia was ’born with the whole of the New Zealand

Church behind it; New Guinea Diocese saw its genesis from the acts of Aus tralia’s General Synod; but the Diocese of Polynesia owes its beginnings to the lone labours of William E. Floyd, whose early days were spent around Ennis corthy.

On Saturday morning we went down to the store owned by Mr. Buttle, whose name reminded me of the firm of Buttle’s in Sydney. He remembered some con nections that would lead us to Floyd’s relatives.

In the cool of the summer evening we motored to a very clean white and thatched farm cottage where two women folk relatives had but a hazy idea of their cousin, who had died nearly 40 years earlier. But a lead from them took us to Kilcormack to be greeted by a good old soul on two sticks, her hands twisted with arthritis. She brought out the old family photo album, with the apertures, from which burst another generation in beards and poke bonnets.

We established that the founder of the work in our Diocese was born in Gorey, a picturesque town on the Dublin side of Enniscorthy.

She told us an interesting story of the rescue of Floyd’s grandmother by some Roman Catholics in the terrible mas sacres that accompanied the Rebellion of 1798. The grandmother had a permanent injury to one arm caused when carrying Floyd’s father under that damaged wing to protect the babe’s life.

At Clone *it was interesting to meet a parishioner who remembered Floyd’s re turn to Ireland many years ago to raise funds for the beautiful church in Levuka and for the Indian Mission at Labasa.

As we returned from Kilcormack in the dusk, with the healthy smells of the farm life about us, there was a younger cousin with a discovery. It was an old photo

taken in Melbourne, years ago, and sent Home by Floyd’s parents—tfie photo of an Australian aborigine. Probably this gave Floyd his interest in the missionary world outside, for he left Melbourne in 1870, after his ordination there and his first Curacies, for Fiji, to become Chap lain and, later, first Vicar of Levuka,