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[Picture]
Rowland Hassall's house on the corner of George and Charles Streets, Parramatta.
From Brook, J., and Kohen, J.L., The Parramatta Native Instituion and the Black Town, A History.

Hassall supported Marsden's view of an Evangelical presence in the colony and was not
disposed to support dissent for dissent's sake. He did much to promote ''Calvanistic Methodism'' in
the district which later embarrassed his son-in-law, Walter Lawry, and other more strictly Wesleyan
preachers who became more and more prominent and continued the itenerant mission. Nevertheless
they remained on good terms with him and refrained from undermining his work until after he had
died. Hassall remained loyal to and corresponded with the London Missionary Society and offered
support to its members when they visited the colony58 and helped others of them, particularly
William Shelley, whom he sheltered when Shelley arrived almost destitute in the colony from Tonga
some years after Hassall. On the other hand he wrote deploring the conduct of Edward Main, one
of the former missionaries who had come to Sydney with him on the Nautilus. Main's behaviour had
deteriorated the colony, he had a drinking problem, he lived in an adulterous association and owed
money to many including some of his fellow missionaries. He applied to Captain Wilson, again in
Sydney in 1800 in the Royal Admiral, to be taken on as a missionary again but his fellow
missionaries, including Hassall and William Shelley, wrote that they would not support his
application because of his intolerable conduct.59

Rowland Hassall maintained close correspondence with the missionaries who remained in
Tahiti and later when he established his store he began to supply them with goods such as, tools, boat
building materials, material, thread, butter and including, incredibly, guns and ammunition. Brother

58 Ibid.
59 Lockley, Lindsay G., ''Edward Main'' in Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and
Proceedings, Vol.9, No.3, August 1961, p.111.

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