John Paris died in Honolulu in 1928. He is buried next to his wife on the grounds of Oahu's Kawaiahao Church. This Church was the first Christian Church built on the island, and the church where John married his wife in 1877. The couple had three sons and two daughters. It would take over 80 years for a descendant to start looking for the origins of her great-grandfather. With no knowledge of his life beyond Hawaii, Yolanda Paris Sugimoto reached out to a researcher on Guam to help learn if Guam held the roots of her ancestor. The ensuing research would take the two on a journey across the ocean and back in time and yield surprising results that neither could have anticipated.
—anonymous