Rowland HASSALL

HASSALL, ROWLAND (b. Coventry, England 31 Mar 1768, d. Parramatta, NSW, 28 Aug 1820). LMS missionary to Tahiti, lay preacher and landowner in NSW.

Rowland Hassall was a Coventry silk weaver of limited education who was converted and vowed to serve God after surviving cholera. Impressed by the vision of missionary outreach in the South Seas, he joined the pioneer LMS missionary voyage of the Duff with his wife Elizabeth (nee Hancox) and two small sons landing in Tahiti 5 Mar 1797. Hassall worked as a blacksmith with other artisan missionaries until deteriorating relationships with Tahitians caused the Hassall family to flee on the Nautilus with other missionaries, arriving as refugees in Sydney in May 1798.

Hassall remained in NSW. With the advantage of being a free family in a penal colony, initial help from Anglican clergy Richard Johnson (q.v.) and Samuel Marsden (q.v.) and small land grants, in time he became a wealthy and respected landowner. Several other former LMS missionary families chose to return to Tahiti in later years, but despite feeling some guilt about it Hassall chose to stay in NSW. He did, however, maintain links with Tahiti through correspondence and trade. As an evangelical layman in NSW he travelled widely as an itinerant lay preacher, visiting rural groups before they had Methodist or Presbyterian clergy in the colony, and in some cases encouraging the building of their first churches. Though poorly educated himself, Hassall helped establish rural schools for settlers' children, was appointed schools supervisor and took responsibility for ordering school supplies. Rowland Hassall's home in Parramatta was the scene of Australia's first Sunday school, initiated by his son Thomas Hassall (q.v.) and with his other children participating as teachers. He offered hospitality to CMS, LMS and MMS missionaries passing through Sydney on their way to service in the Pacific islands. Bible classes, prayer meetings and midweek services shared with other evangelical families were also held in his home as well as committee meetings for his man civic and religious interests, including the Bib Society, the Philanthropic Society, Sunday school teachers' groups and conservative political meetings. Rowland Hassall sometimes saw himself as an inadequate servant of Chris and prayed that his son Thomas' entry into ministry would 'fill up all those vacancies ... an want of zeal and love for Christ and souls I have been very deficient in'. Yet when he died in Parramatta during an influenza epidemic, it was said of him that he 'never lost sight of his original designation as a missionary'.

Hassall Correspondence (ms, Mitchell Library, NSW), W Wilson, A Missionary Journey to the South Pacific Ocean, performed in the years 1796-1798 in the Ship "Duff", (London, 1798)

MARGARET REESON