Background
Green was born December 20, 1796 in Lebanon, Connecticut to Beriah and Elizabeth Green.
Green was born December 20, 1796 in Lebanon, Connecticut to Beriah and Elizabeth Green.
He graduated from Andover Seminary and on September 20, 1827 he married Theodosia Arnold (1792–1859) of East Haddam, Connecticut.
They traveled to Honolulu by March 30, 1828 on the Parthian, as part of the third company from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The family was assigned to Lahaina, Hawaii on the island of Maui until 1831, then Hilo for one year. In 1833 they moved to Wailuku, Hawaii back on Maui, and built one of the first permanent houses there.
Their house is now the Bailey House Museum.
He helped Lorrin Andrews translate the Bible into the Hawaiian language, and published the first book on the history of the Christian church in Hawaiian. He refused to wear cotton clothing, since it was generally picked with slave labor.
In 1843 he became an independent pastor and experimented with agriculture. In 1844 he published a biography of an early convert who was known as "Blind Bartimeus", after the biblical character, born with the Hawaiian name Puaʻaiki.
At the suggestion of local chief Kiha, he founded the independent Poʻokela Church in Makawao on land donated by King Kamehameha III, conducting services in the Hawaiian language.
The expression Poʻokela means "foremost". Poʻokela Church is located at 200 Olinda Road, 20°50′59″North 156°18′32″West.
Green had conducted services from about 1857 in English in his home. He founded a congregation called the "Pāʻia foreign church" because English was the foreign language of the Kingdom of Hawaii at the time, and the location was closer to the sugarcane plantation near the coastal town of Pāʻiowa
In April 1861 the church was commissioned by minister of the interior Prince Lot Kamehameha, who would later become King Kamehameha V. lieutenant was then called the Makawao Union Church.
Henry served as organist for over forty years. Baldwin and his brother-in-law became wealthy co-founders of Alexander & Baldwin.
The family is buried at the Makawao Union Church cemetery. J. Porter Green died June 26, 1886, in Honolulu.
In 1836 the Greens founded a girls" boarding school called the Wailuku Female Seminary.
Other members of this company were Review Lorrin Andrews and Doctor Gerrit P. Judd. He was an early member of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, founding a local chapter and published reports of his progress growing wheat and other non-tropical crops at higher elevations.