The 20th Century Club heard Linda Rifling discuss the history of the Pitcairn Islands during its Feb. 19 meeting at Grace Episcopal Church.
Rifling said that the Pitcairn Islands are the last British overseas territory in the Pacific Ocean and that they consist of four volcanic islands. Pitcairn is the second-largest of the four islands measuring 2.2 miles from east to west. It is inhabited and is where the capital city of Adamstown is located.
Rifling said that the official languages are English and Pitkern, with ethnic groups including British, Polynesian, Chilean and mixed. With only 56 inhabitants originating from four main families, Pitcairn is the least populous national jurisdiction in the world.
While archaeologists believe that Polynesians were living on Pitcairn as early as the 15th century, it was uninhabited at the time of its discovery by the British on July 3, 1767. The island was named after 15-year-old crew-member Midshipman Robert Pitcairn, who was the first to sight the island. It became a British colony in 1838 and peaked in population at 233 in 1937.
Since then, the population has fallen due to emigration.
Tourism provides the population with 80 percent of its annual income according to Rifling. Rifling said that the population is Seventh-Day Adventist.