Within two years, the Pioneer Company desperately needed help to achieve their mission: expanding literacy and converting the population. In Hiram Bingham’s detailed account of his years in Hawai‘i, he reproduces the missionaries’ February 1822 report to the ABCFM, pleading—not for the first time—for reinforcements, especially ministers “possessing richly those qualifications implied or expressed in the terms, ‘Wise as serpents, harmless as doves, patient in tribulation, apt to teach, always abounding in the work of the Lord.’”
His entreaties would be met on April 27, 1823, when the ship Thames arrived from New Haven, Connecticut, carrying 18 people for the mission, including five ministers: Rev. Artemas Bishop and his wife Elizabeth; Dr. Abraham Blatchley and his wife Jemma; Levi Chamberlain, superintendent of secular affairs; Rev. James Ely and his wife Louisa; Rev. Joseph Goodrich and his wife Martha; Rev. William Richards and his wife Clarissa; Rev. Charles Samuel Stewart and his wife Harriet; Betsey Stockton, the first African American and unmarried female missionary; Stephen Popohe of Tahiti and Hawaiians William Kamooula, Richard Kalaioulu and Kupeli‘i.
— Hiram Bingham, A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands, p. 188.
— Ka‘ahumanu, welcoming the new missionaries to the islands, as reported by Bingham, A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands, p.188.