[AAA] Rev James Samuel Hassall (1823-1904)

James Hassall was born on 12 October 1823 when his parents were living at Newlands in Parramatta. He commenced his schooling at the famous King’s School, Parramatta, in April 1832, only three months after it started. There – at the house of his aunt Eliza (Hassall) Walker where the school was first situated – his companions included the sons of the explorers John Oxley, Major Lockyer and Gregory Blaxland.

The King’s School was named after King William IV who, along with Archdeacon (later Bishop) Broughton and the Duke of Wellington, used their influence with the British Government to order its establishment.

After leaving the King’s School, he was tutored at home with his sisters by first a governess and then a tutor, John McKenny. He then attended Rev Robert Forrest’s school at Campbelltown with two of the Nortons, two Oxleys and G.F. Macarthur.

As he grew older he enjoyed the company of an extended family and often visited those who had grants in the Boorowa area. There he spent time with his cousins, Tom and Jim Hassall, sons of his uncle Samuel Otoo Hassall, with whom he had played when he was a child when he visited his uncle at Macquarie Grove on the Nepean River. He also spent school holidays at Hannibal Macarthur’s place, The Vineyard, later called Subiaco.

There were many journeys undertaken with his father, who spent long hours in the saddle. One of these was overland to Port Stephens in about 1839.

In 1845, with his brother, George, he trained under the Rev Robert Allwood, first at St James’ Parsonage Sydney, and then at Lyndhurst College Glebe, a college for divinity studies which had been founded by Bishop Broughton.

In 1848 James was ordained and appointed to St Peter’s, Cook’s River. This was a widespread parish embracing Newtown, Botany, Cook’s and George’s Rivers, Petersham, George’s Hall and Canterbury. As well he was chaplain of the Benevolent Asylum which was situated near the present Redfern Railway Station.

In 1849 an incumbency was offered to him at O’Connell Plains, near Bathurst, where his father still owned property. But he chose instead to go to Bungonia where there was a large stone-built parsonage and his salary was £300 per year. Bishop Broughton gave him £25 for removal expenses.

At the time his neighbours included his aunt and uncle, Ann and Robert Campbell (Wingello). Only a few years earlier, his aunt Susanna and William Shelley had also been living there at Grampian Hills.

The move to Bungonia was not without its difficulties. The bullock team carrying his furniture was delayed for six weeks by floods and James was forced to live with his servant, Jamie Cambeane, in a virtually empty parsonage.

As a bachelor for his first year there, James Hassall started to engage in the business of the parish, which mostly entailed long rides on horseback to visit station properties. During that year he rode nearly 6000 miles. He always stayed several days at each place he visited and his visits included many hours spent in shepherds’ huts and talking to the shepherds as they guarded the flocks in remote areas. After his marriage his wife often accompanied him on these visits.

In the parsonage grounds he grew wheat and oats so that he could feed his family and keep his horses in good condition. He was so highly thought of in the district that he was often helped with the harvesting by his neighbours, not all of whom were members of his flock. He became quite expert at killing his own sheep.

While he was at Bungonia, James was visited by Rev W.B. Clarke, the Colony’s first geologist, who was on a tour of inspection of the southern goldfields. They went to the nearby Bungonia Caves, entered the Drum Cave and James showed him a crevice which Clark measured at 700 feet deep by counting the time it took for a rock to hit the bottom.

On 19 June 1850, while he was living at Bungonia, he was married by his father at Cobbitty to Frances Anna Marina Emma Dixon (born 1 January 1826), the youngest daughter of Capt Francis Dixon, whose wife was Lt John Oxley’s sister. Frances was brought up by the Oxleys after her parents died while she was young. It is ironical that James and Frances later built a home in Brisbane (which they called Matavai) overlooking Oxley Creek – named after her uncle, who discovered the Brisbane River. Oxley’s son later married James’ sister, Harriet.

Their first two children were born at Bungonia, but they moved from Bungonia partly because the gold rushes made it difficult to get servants and James worried that his wife and growing family would have no protection when he was away on his travels around the countryside.

The family moved to Berrima, where he built the beautiful Holy Trinity church (known as Hassall’s Church) which survives to this day.

While in Berrima, one of his duties was to be chaplain at Berrima Gaol. The superintendent there was William Small, who he described as a great disciplinarian. Hassall left his own recollections of the gaol and wrote of some of the attempts by prisoners to escape. One story was that he was travelling in a trap along the Bargo Road towards Picton when he gave a tramp a lift. The tramp said that he had just been released from Berrima Gaol and wished to tell him of a plot by prisoners to escape which he had not been able to tell the gaoler for fear of reprisals by other prisoners. Apparently the cooks in the kitchen were cutting a hole in the back of the oven through the gaol wall. James acquainted the gaoler of this, the hole was discovered, and the cooks were replaced.

James went to Queensland at least twice in the 1860s as he and his brothers, George and Charlie, bought a property at ‘The Flinders’, which seems to have worsened the financial problems of which he often wrote.

In 1873, though, James went to Queensland to live, first to Ipswich and then Oxley, where he and his wife helped buy a bell, communion service and large harmonium for their new church, St Matthews.

After about five years he became the minister at Sherwood, a Brisbane suburb. The original church deteriorated and was replaced by a wooden structure in 1893, the same year as a major flood which affected the cemetery. This wooden church lasted until 1921 when it was destroyed by fire and all the church records were lost. James stayed there for 20 years until he retired in 1899 and was given a huge send-off attended by all the Brisbane church dignitaries and his appreciative congregation.

It was there, living at Corinda in his house called Matavai after the bay in Tahiti where his grandparents and father had landed in 1797, that he wrote his famous memoirs, ‘In Old Australia’. The house was later demolished and is now the site of a High School.

James died at Corinda on 25 September 1904 aged 80 and his widow, Frances, died on 12 September 1907 aged 81. They were buried in the Sherwood Cemetery.

James and Frances Hassall had the following eight children: