Life in Hawaii

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Titus Coan's Life in Hawaii is a vivid autobiographical testimony of nearly fifty years of missionary labor across the Hawaiian and South Pacific islands. With humility, Coan insists that any worth in his story belongs to God's grace, not to himself, and then unfolds a life shaped by providence, revival, hardship, and steadfast service. He recalls a devout Connecticut childhood, formative discipline, near-drowning rescues, farm labor, study, teaching, and early militia enthusiasm before a powerful religious awakening redirected his ambitions. From church work in Medina and study at Auburn Seminary to prison ministry, ordination, and marriage, his path leads outward to the Sandwich Islands and beyond. The book brings readers aboard a long sea voyage and into the Marquesas, where Coan contrasts Catholic and Protestant efforts, foreign violence, and native resistance with scenes of patient Christian witness. He describes volcanic landscapes, devastated settlements, tribal warfare, and the moral darkness of sacrifice and cannibalism, yet also moments of hope: schools, worship, Communion, and converts transformed by the gospel. Throughout, this is both a spiritual memoir and a firsthand record of extraordinary Pacific history.