John Davis Paris (September 22, 1809 – July 28, 1892) was an American Christian missionary to the island of Hawaii.

Mary and John embarked in November 1840, and arrived in Honolulu on May 21, 1841, on the Gloucester, along with the ninth company sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

[3] They and the Rice family had been assigned to the Oregon Territory, but were told that an uprising had wiped out the mission station there, so were advised to stay in Hawaii.

[4] The family was assigned to the remote southernmost station at Waiʻōhinu in the Kaʻū district of the island of Hawaiʻi.

A large stone church had been built in 1839 on land donated by Chiefess Kapiʻolani, in an area known as Kuapehu, inland from the town now known as Nāpoʻopoʻo, on the south end of Kealakekua Bay[5] but it had fallen into ruin after six years without a pastor.

[1] In 1866, a well-educated native Hawaiian named Joseph Kaona had asked Paris to use the new Lanakila church to store some bibles.

Kaona had grown up in the area, and served in the government of the Kingdom of Hawaii as a district judge and in its House of Representatives in 1853.

Paris learned that Kaona had been sentenced to an asylum a few years earlier after claiming he could raise someone from the dead.

Paris tried to lock the Lanakila Church, but the door fell off its hinges and Kaona claimed it was a miracle.

Kaona had his followers chant Psalm 150 for seven days while beating drums made from sugar kegs and tin pots.

[17] Ella Hudson Paris translated many hymns into the Hawaiian language under the pen name "Hualalai" (for the nearby volcano Hualālai).

[18] The Kahikolu church has held an annual choral event since 1999 called ʻAha Mele O Hualalai in her honor.

Hannah's sister Mary married the wealthy Hilo businessman William Herbert Shipman, whose father had replaced the Paris family at Waiʻōhinu.

[20] Jack London visited the family in 1907, and mentions a Paris daughter showing the visitors the nearby historic sites.