[AA] Thomas (1794-1868)

Thomas Hassall was born in Coventry between two and three in the afternoon of 29 May 1794 and accompanied his parents to Tahiti on the Duff.  He is depicted with his mother and brother in the front of Robert Smirke’s painting The Cession of Matavai, completed in 1829 as a special gift to Captain James Wilson, the skipper of the Duff.  Then Thomas would have been about three years old.

After the family’s arrival at Parramatta in 1798, Thomas was educated in Parramatta and received the best education available at the time.  When he left school he worked as a clerk in the offices of Robert Campbell and Captain James Birnie.  In fact he was so well regarded by Birnie that in 1810 when Birnie left for a trip to South Africa, he left his business in the hands of the 15 year-old Thomas and Richard Jones.

Thomas grew up in a devout and religious household and was clearly influenced by the missionary zeal of his father.  He opened a Sunday School in his parent’s house in May 1813, the first such school in Australia.  The school grew rapidly and Thomas had to employ more teachers, so wrote a manual, “Requirements and rules for persons engaging themselves as teachers in the Parramatta Sunday school in 1816”. This was printed by the Mission Press, which was set up in his George Street home by his father.

The Sunday School lasted for many years and as time went by his younger sisters including Susanna and her friend, Elizabeth Oakes, were recruited as teachers.  It grew to 150 students and had to be transferred to St John’s and the direct supervision of Marsden.  A plaque commemorating that first Sunday School in Australia now stands on the site of Rowland’s house, on the corner of George and Charles Streets, Parramatta.

When Thomas returned from England in 1822 he examined the children of the Sunday School and then took them to his house and presented them with prizes “Medals, books, tracts and other appropriate rewards, many of which were brought by Mr Hassall from England for the express purpose”.  When the New South Wales Sunday School Institution was founded by his father and others in 1815, Thomas became its superintendent and secretary.  The role of the dissenters in the movement was resented by Rev Samuel Marsden, who persuaded Thomas to move the Sunday school to St John’s Church and tried to pull Thomas away from the movement.

The missionaries who had shared the journey to Australia and who remained close in the new colony had long hoped that Thomas Hassall would marry William Henry’s daughter Sarah, they being the two eldest children of the mission.  Thomas did propose to her but she rejected him and married Dr William Bland, a marriage which was not happy as she was very soon unfaithful to her husband, who sued an officer of the East India Company for damages.  Sarah, who had been raised in Tahiti and had become accustomed to their sexual freedom, left the colony and returned to England where it was thought she became a prostitute.

Thomas became its superintendent and secretary.  The role of the dissenters in the movement was resented by Rev Samuel Marsden, who persuaded Thomas to move the Sunday school to St John’s Church and tried to pull Thomas away from the movement.

At age 16, she had been described by fellow missionary Henry Bicknell as “drunk and a horrid blasphemer as if she had been used to it for 50 years.  She wishes the bible in the fire and all of us in hell … She also plays the whore in her father’s house”.  Altogether a most unsuitable person to have been considered by Thomas.

Thomas’ religious interests increased under the influence of Marsden, who encouraged him to enter the Anglican ministry.  There was nowhere for this first Australian candidate for ordination to study except in Britain, so in 1817 he sailed in the Kangaroo, for which he was provided with a passage but was very clearly not to be victualled at the expense of the Crown, to return to the land of his birth.  It was an arduous trip which took some 10 months to reach England.  He carried with him 400 letters to be delivered to various addresses from friends and family in the Colony.

His departure on 19 March was the scene of a farewell gathering at his parents’ home in the orchard where “not a dry eye could be seen in the whole assembly”, his father wrote.  Mrs Marsden was so overcome that she left in a hurry and her daughter, Anne, who was later to marry Thomas, apologised for her mother and sent to Thomas some of her mother’s pickles and preserves and took the opportunity to ask if there were any particular young children in his Sunday School that he wished she might pay special attention to. Thomas’ departure thus stimulated a lengthy and voluminous correspondence between his family and friends in Australia, most of which is now preserved in the Hassall Correspondence in the Mitchell Library, Sydney.

Samuel Marsden recommended Thomas to the man Marsden named his son after, Rev Charles Simeon of Cambridge, where he was educated.  Rev Simeon then arranged with the Bishop of St David’s to place him under the tutelage of the Rev John Williams, vicar of Lampeter in Wales.

Charles Simeon Marsden also studied at Lampeter, but returned home as ‘Australia’s first university drop-out’ and became a farmer at Mamre, which he inherited from his father.  Charles enjoyed a happy life and Thomas’ son James Hassall wrote of many good times at Mamre, but he was not a good manager and joined the long list of people facing the Bankruptcy Courts in 1842.  But James stayed loyal to the family and many years later bought Charles’ widow, Elizabeth (Brabyn) Marsden, what is believed to be the first ear trumpet in Australia to help her failing hearing.

Thomas studied at Lampeter College for two years but lacked a ‘title to orders’.  A letter from Mrs Macquarie referring to his future ministry in New South Wales was accepted as ‘title’ and he was ordained deacon on 15 April 1821 and priest in June.  His orders were signed by King George IV.

Thomas returned to Sydney in the Mary and on 3 February 1822 preached his first Australian sermon at St John’s, Parramatta, where he remained as Marsden’s curate until 1824.

On 12 August 1822 he married Marsden’s eldest daughter, Anne, who was born at sea on 2 March 1794 when her parents were on their way to Australia.  She was reportedly so small that she was carried ashore in Sydney in a handkerchief.  Anne was educated in England, having been taken there in 1800 by Rev James Fleet Cover, another of the South Sea Island missionaries and a relation of Thomas’.  She returned to Australia in 1810.

In June 1824 Marsden persuaded Governor Brisbane to appoint Thomas chaplain to the penal settlement at Port Macquarie.  This Brisbane did at a salary of £250 per year and authorised Thomas to build a church there.  In December 1824 the foundation stone of St Thomas’ Church was laid but Thomas did not see its completion because he was appointed in 1826 to the Bathurst district.

His time at Port Macquarie was not entirely successful because his attempts to ameliorate convict conditions met with opposition.  His frustration must have increased when all his library was lost on the Henrietta, which was wrecked on its way to Sydney carrying Thomas’ furniture and possessions.  His land at Port Macquarie on which he had planted an orchard was later sold to D.A.C.G. Bowerman for £20.

In the Bathurst district, Thomas, now officially appointed a colonial chaplain by royal warrant, lived on his property called Llambeda at O’Connell Plains, where the family lived in a house of sod walls of black clay stuccoed with lime and with a grass thatched roof.

A frightening episode was experienced there when a tribe of Aborigines, desperate to escape from a violent attack by another tribe led by an Aboriginal called Saturday, rushed for safety to the Hassall home and crowded into all the rooms and the loft. When Saturday and his group did appear, Thomas stepped from his house with a gun and said he would shoot any who came forward. He told them that if they settled their differences, he would shoot a bullock for them for a feast. This offer was accepted and the members of the warring tribes enjoyed a merry feast together.

At Llambeda Thomas built a small chapel which he called Salem Chapel and held regular services there.  His Salem chapel remained a centre of worship for many years and in 1835, presumably to regularise its use as such, Bishop Broughton announced that he had set aside £80 for O’Connell Plains Chapel on “condition that Mr Hassall will secure its being permanently set apart as a place of worship”.  It became, appropriately, St Thomas.

Thomas also preached in a barn at Kelso which had been opened as a church in 1825.  Thomas acted as locum tenens for Rev John Espy Keane, who had been appointed to the Holy Trinity parish in 1825 but had returned to Sydney in 1826.  Thomas remained at Kelso until 1827 and during that time opened a parochial school.

In March 1827 he was appointed to the Cowpastures, a new parish which he described as “Australia beyond Liverpool”.  He stayed with his brother Samuel at Macquarie Grove looking for a suitable property on which to build before purchasing from the estate of Charles Hook (who had been the partner of Thomas’ former employer, Robert Campbell, at Sydney Cove) the large 1100 acre estate at Cobbitty which he named Denbigh and which became his headquarters.  He paid £1500 for the property.  Ironically, Hook and his wife had also stayed with Samuel at Macquarie Grove while their house (which was to become Denbigh) was being built in 1818.

In 1828, when his clerical salary was £255, Thomas built Heber Chapel on his 150-acre grant in Cobbitty called Pomare Grove (named after the chief of Tahiti) which backed onto the Nepean River.  This chapel was named after Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta, who was responsible for the Australian church until 1836 when William Grant Broughton became the Bishop of Australia.

The Heber chapel was built using bricks and timber Thomas had brought with him to build a home, which were surplus to requirements after he bought the established Denbigh property and added the ‘Hassall wing’.  The chapel, which was dedicated by Rev Samuel Marsden on 30 November 1828, still stands and has been recently restored.  It served until the present St Paul’s church was built in 1842.  When Bishop Broughton consecrated the church on 5 April 1842, Thomas was absent due to illness.  Legend has it that, as no flag was provided for the ceremony, Anne Hassall improvised one from her large, plaid carriage rug.

At first Thomas’ extensive parish included Goulburn and Illawarra.  Known as the ‘Galloping Parson’, his circuit included Cobbitty, Berrima, Bong Bong and Goulburn, a route which often took him over the Abercrombie Ranges.  He was a good bushman and always rode good horses, very safely in what he described as his “easy chair”.  It is said that, except on two occasions when there were accidents, he never missed a scheduled service at any of these places in 40 years.  Along the way he stayed in homesteads and performed marriages and christenings as he went.

He built churches all around his district and created new parishes which were in time settled – All Saints’ at Sutton Forrest (1830), St Thomas’, Mulgoa (1836), School House, Camden (1838), Narellan School Church (1839), St Mary Magdelen Church, South Creek (1840) and of course, St Paul’s in Cobbitty (1842).  Most of these were consecrated by Bishop Broughton.

In 1833 he was relieved of the Goulburn charge when Rev John Vincent was appointed to All Saints.

Then in 1838 St Thomas’, Mulgoa, through  the efforts of Thomas’ life-long friend, George Cox, was made the centre of another parish under Rev T.C. Makinson.  The Cox family – George, Henry and Edward, the three sons of Lt Cox – played a huge role at Mulgoa, providing the rectory grounds and the church grounds on which the old stone church was built, and they are all buried there.

By 1840 his circuit had been reduced to Heber Chapel, Cabramatta, Vermont, Glenderuel and Mulgoa Forest in Cumberland County and Camden, Stonequarry and The Oaks in Camden County at a salary of £250 per year. In August 1843 he received the degree of Master of Arts from the Archbishop of Canterbury on the recommendation of Bishop Broughton, who held him in high regard.

Like other members of his family, Thomas was financially affected by the 1840s depression.  He was a shareholder in the Bank of Australia, which collapsed in 1843, and was forced to sell several properties.

Thomas was also a keen farmer and woolgrower, having received land very early in his life.  As early as 1814 he was receiving Government cattle both as routine issue and on credit which could be paid in kind and in 1817 his name was on the list of free settlers to receive land at Bringelly, even though he himself was in England at the time.

As his pastoral interests developed, he became widely and affectionately known, especially among squatters, stockmen and shepherds.  His knowledge of rural pursuits was recognised when he became a committee member of the Agricultural Society of New South Wales at the Society’s inaugural meeting in July 1822.  He joined with other pastoralists to petition the British Government to remove an import duty of 3d per pound on Australian wool into England on the grounds that the Australian wool industry was just beginning and could not yet compete with already established European countries.

He farmed at O’Connell Plains near Bathurst, Denbigh, and also had a cattle station, Mulgowrie, near Crookwell, where the stockman, a man called Marks, was a strong, well-known character who lived in the substantial stone house equipped with port holes in different places so that his wife could load and fire guns at bushrangers such as Witton and Reynolds who never came.  Mulgowrie was sold in the 1840s.

Apart from the nickname of “Galloping Parson”, he was also known as the “Squire of Denbigh”, although his parishioners knew him simply as Thomas.

One of Australia’s first bush parsons, he knew well the districts of Nattai, Burrogorang, the Mulgoa and Illawarra.  He was described as an “exemplary and diligent” chaplain providing  “temporal relief, and spiritual instruction” during an influenza epidemic in 1836.

In theology he was a strict Evangelical and co-operated, perhaps because of his upbringing, with Methodists and Dissenters, although it is said that he stood in awe of his father-in-law and never argued with him.  His religion was practical rather than theological.  He wrote tracts such as ‘Jemmy Mullins, the little Irish Sailor Boy’ and, while his father may not have been very successful with the convicts years earlier, Thomas had a remarkable record of conversions among the new settlers.

Thomas became a magistrate after having carried out jury duty when he was quite young in 1815.

Many convicts were assigned to Thomas over the years and it seemed that he was most careful and benevolent in his treatment of them.  He applied for the mitigation of the sentences of four of them in 1822.  He supported Jane Boar’s petition for the remission of her sentence in 1823 and argued that women from the Female Factory should be allowed to attend church to have their children christened.

In other ways he supported people in trouble.  He petitioned for indulgence on behalf of Joseph Cunningham in 1825, donated money to help Ann Curtis after her brewhouse was destroyed, bought a house, for which he was reimbursed, for the Secretary of the Female Orphan Institution, and supported John Watson’s petition to attend Divine Worship.  It must have been difficult for him when he had to take William Vale to court for failing to pay rent for property he leased from Thomas and also when William Brady was convicted for stealing from him.

In 1826, when Thomas purchased Denbigh, there was a half-finished house on it built by the previous owner, Charles Hook.  When finished, the house was similar to an Indian bungalow (Hook had lived in India), having two large rooms in the front and a spacious verandah.

At first Thomas employed Aboriginal people to burn off the dead timber on his property and when they had finished a day’s work Anne Hassall provided them with a huge meal of soup, hasty pudding, hominy, vegetables and ‘sugar-bag’, which was made from empty sugar bags soaked in a bucket of water.

Denbigh became a large establishment, almost like a scattered village, with a carpenter (who finished the house for Thomas and then stayed for 50 years), blacksmith, shoemaker, dairy man, gardener, brickmaker and schoolmaster living there in houses made of rammed earth.

Between 12 and 20 convict servants worked from 6am in the summer and from 8am in winter until sundown. Wheat was grown and sold at 8 shillings per bushel, hay at £8 per ton. Horses sold at £60 to £70 each. The convicts were supervised by a Scottish overseer who called them to work in the morning by the sound of a large bullock horn.  A vineyard and orange grove flourished in the rich soil and in the grape season a watchman guarded the grapes from local boys.

A story of one of Thomas’ assigned servants was told by his son, James. Connor, a coachman, was well trusted by the family and was very quick-witted.  Once Anne Hassall returned from Sydney leaving her trunk behind and it was sent on later by dray.  On arrival it was found that the trunk had been broken into and its contents stolen.  Connor was sent to investigate and found strips of material outside a dressmaker’s shop which he recognised as belonging to his mistress.  He called the police and the shop owners were arrested.  He fell from grace, however, when he was found to have stolen horses and sold them.  As a result, Connor was given seven years on Norfolk Island.

There was some concern expressed in the colony that the clergy were abusing their positions and not carrying out their pastoral duties properly.  Those with farming interests were singled out and it was decided to limit the land owned by clergy to 80 acres.

But in January 1828, Thomas petitioned Lord Bathurst for a further land grant.  In his petition he described how he had inherited land and stock from his father and that he was also responsible for looking after the property and stock of his mother and three sisters.  He mentioned that he had already received two grants of land, one of 230 acres and one of 800 acres and on that he depastured 300 head of horned cattle, 20 horses and 2000 breeding sheep.  He also said that he kept at least 30 servants of the Crown.  He stated that he had received ‘two geographical miles’ from Sir Thomas Brisbane with the promise that if he kept convicts and improved the land he could expect to receive more.  Sir Thomas Brisbane had left before the pledge could be honoured, so Thomas appealed to Bathurst saying that he had spent not less than £1000 on improvements.  He also mentioned that for his mother and sisters he had to provide pasturage for 35 horses, 600 head of horned cattle and 3500 breeding ewes and that would have been more if £5000 worth of ewes had not died because of poor pasturage and much more would have been lost without the assistance of his brother-in-law, Rev William Walker, who was able to offer temporary pasturage.

In October 1829 Governor Darling wrote a report on the interests of the clergy and about Thomas, who held 1280 acres, he wrote:

“The case of Revd. Thos Hassall is different. He inherited some land and considerable herds and flocks from his father and became possessed of more by Marriage, the usual method in this Colony where money does not prevail of making settlement on wives and children; and it would be unjust and cruel in the extreme to prevent them from reaping the benefits where the country does not admit of any other provision, added to which, Mr Hassall is a very prudent young man, lives in great retirement, and does his Clerical duties with the greatest decorum and punctually throughout a very large District, and entirely to my satisfaction; nor have I had any instance of negligence… I feel no reluctance in granting Mr Hassel one [license] to the extent he requires…”

Other business interests pointed to a prosperous man. He was able to contribute enough funds to purchase the upper stained-glass windows in the new church of St John’s at Parramatta which was built in 1855 to replace the original building with which he had been so closely associated in his younger days.

It was said that Thomas named Denbigh in memory of Rev Robert Cartwright who had been born at Denbigh in Shropshire and had been the resident chaplain at the Hawkesbury in 1810. He had been one of Thomas’ customers when Thomas worked in the merchant’s office in Sydney.

Stories of Denbigh point to it as a happy place. James Hassall remembered that “birthdays were strictly observed, and games of all kinds thoroughly enjoyed.  Our uncle James Hassall of Matavai who was very fond of young people, was often the life and soul of our meetings”.

There was a very strong social life for the Hassalls in the district.  They were particularly friendly with the Cox brothers, George at Winbourne, Henry at Glenmore and Edward at The Cottage, later Fernhill, all sons of William Cox who built the road over the Blue Mountains and who had pastures on the Bathurst Plains. In fact it was at George Cox’s house, Winbourne, that Thomas started to feel ill before he died, having “received a chill” on his way there. He rode home from visiting George Cox and died several days later, on 29 March 1868.

He was buried, in line with his wishes, “on the familiar pathway between the vestry and the Heber Chapel” at St Paul’s, a path he had strode with such dedication for four decades.

In his will, Thomas left a great deal of land to the church, including an extra acre for the burial ground, 37 acres between the church and the river and 82 acres on the main road where the present stone rectory was built two years after his death.

Throughout their lives Thomas and Anne were devout people.  Anne, as her descendant, the noted historian Manning Clark, wrote:

“… had ‘an interest’, as she put it, in God, so that one day she might be ‘accounted worthy to join that glorious society above’. God was her insurance policy for the award she coveted, seeing her loved ones ‘through all eternity’”.

Thomas throughout his life continued to ask God for the answers:

“Each morning and each night he offered up his ‘heartfelt acknowledgments’ to Almighty God for all the great benefits he had received at His hands.”

Always highly regarded, Thomas epitomised the best qualities of a generous and pious man.

“No flogger he, no dark side to his heart.  Belief and love came naturally to him. He never tormented himself with doubts about whether he would ever be forgiven, whether there was anyone who could forgive him – he had no need of forgiveness.  On his death-bed he expressed no longing to be forgiven.  He did not ask the members of his family to forgive him, or tell them he was confident God would forgive him.  He knew Christ had opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers – he was about to enter that kingdom”.

Six hundred people representing a cross-section of the New South Wales community packed St Paul’s for his funeral, such was the love felt for this great pioneer.  There is the story of a farmer in an outlying area who was seen standing by the road in his best Sunday suit on the morning of the funeral.  When asked where he was going, he said he could not attend the funeral and so was merely paying his respects to his good friend.