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quite a comfortable income. His wife referred to a "shop" which may have been his business premises in Oxford Street. His own father appeared to have died sometime in the 1820s. They appear to have had no children of their own although they referred to two nieces, Eliza and Mary Ann. Eliza was married to a "good Man" and was comfortably settled with three children, but Mary Ann was afflicted with a husband who was a foreigner and was came home "intoxicated using bad language" and had "no idea of doing either well for himself or her" and they had two surviving children having lost one. According to Mrs Hancox, Thomas Hancox was afflicted with some "nervous disorder" which was less violent than when Thomas Hassall knew him and that he was very restless and change of scenery seemed to be the best remedy he could find. This meant little journeys to Wales and other districts.
There seems to be some connection between the Hancox and Cover families which would explain a further link in the connections between the missionaries who went to Tahiti. One of the missionaries was Reverend James Fleet Cover who had strong ties of friendship with the Hassalls until he returned to England. One of the letters in the Hassall Collection was written by Thomas Hancox to Rowland Hassall on 6 March 1800 in which, among news of other friends and family, he says:
"... April 97 Mrs Cover was delivered of her second son which our dear Mother was their which was the last labour she was at..."
Very little else is known about Elizabeth Hassall's family. Rowland and Elizabeth Hassall had two sons born in England, Thomas in 1794 and Samuel in 1796.
Rowland and Elizabeth Hassall were both devout people. A family story handed down suggests that he had become so because he had "almost died of cholera and came close to being mistakenly nailed into his coffin! He tells the story of how he had revived, sat up in his coffin and vowed to serve God in some way in thanks for his rescue." Another version of the story of Rowland Hassall's near death experience was provided by his great grandson, Archdeacon George Spencer Oakes, who received the story from Mrs C.A. Campbell, of Dandenong, Victoria, a granddaughter of Rowland Hassall:
"When he was 17 years of age, our grandfather had a serious illness. There was an epidemic of black measles, of which his brother died, and he himself lay as dead for three days, and was measured for his coffin. He knew all that was taking place, and tried to speak, but could not. They placed him in the coffin, and were just about to close down th elid when he opened his eyes. It was this circumstance that decided him to devote his life to the service of God."
Rowland Hassall and his wife were "called under one sermon" by Reverend George Burder, a leading preacher of the Congregational church and under his influence became active members of the West Orchard Congregation. Burder had no regular training for the ministry but was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church at Lancaster in 1778 becoming a traveling

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