Philip Delaporte

Reverend Philip Adam Delaporte (c. 1868 – November 1928) was a German-born American Protestant missionary who ran a mission on Nauru with his wife from 1899 until 1915.

A Gilbertese pastor named Tabuia had founded the Nauru mission approximately 10 years before the Delaporte family's arrival, but withdrew in 1892 at the request of the German government, leaving a small core of Nauruan Christians.

[1] Delaporte and his family were sent to Nauru in 1899 by the Central Union Church of Honolulu to work under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Micronesia.

[5] The book contained an orthography, developed by Delaporte, consisting of 32 characters: b, p, d, t, g, k, q, j, r, w, m, n, ñ, c, f, h, l, s, z, i, e, a, à, â, o, ò, ô, ö, u, ù, û, and ü.

[6] The Delaportes returned to the United States several times during their tenure in Nauru, to work on publication of Philip's translations and to visit their children who were in school in the U.S.

Also in 1914, the Missionary Herald printed a letter that Delaporte wrote early in the war in which he expressed sympathy for Germany, the country of his birth.