News Release

Pitcairn Island population increases.

ANGWIN (Napa County), CALIF. ------- Tiny, remote Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific Ocean which has been declining in population for decades, has finally turned a small corner.

Nadine Christian with Emily Rose, first baby born on Pitcairn Island in 17 years. Born Sept. 14, 2003.

A baby girl, Emily Rose Christian, was born to Mrs. Nadine Christian, age 31, at 10:58 Sunday night, September 14, in the Pitcairn Island Medical Clinic. Both mother and daughter are “doing fine,” according to a report from the island to the Pitcairn Islands Study Center located on the campus of Pacific Union College here.

The birth of the 8 pound 4 ounce child is the first on the island in 17 years.

Lyle Burgoyne, pastor of the Pitcairn Seventh-day Adventist Church who is also the island’s Medical Officer and a fully-trained Australian midwife, delivered the baby.

Also present at the birth was Mrs. Christian’s husband, Randall Christian, 29, who is an eighth generation descendant of Fletcher Christian, leader of the famed mutiny on H.M.S. Bounty in 1789.

The Christians have a son, Bradley, age 2.

Mrs. Christian went into false labor on September 3, as a result of a fall from one of the three-wheel all terrain vehicles that operate on Pitcairn, but after several hours of observation in the island clinic she was sent home.

There are some 40 Pitcairners on the one by two mile volcanic island today. An additional group of off-islanders swells the total to about 50. At its high water mark in the 1930s there were 233 people on Pitcairn.

Pitcairn is located about midway between Panama and New Zealand, some 1,200 miles southeast of Papeete, Tahiti. It is the sole British island possession in the Pacific Ocean.

(Additional Pitcairn information: http://library.puc.edu/pitcairn/)

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Pitcairn Islands Study Center, 1 Angwin Ave., Angwin, CA, USA. Herbert Ford, 707-965-6625, 707-965-2047, Fax: 707-965-6504, Email: hford@puc.edu, Website: http://library.puc.edu/pitcairn