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Elizabeth Hassall was part of a closely knit group of women who
''Brought affection and compassion to their role of free wives; who made their
contribution to the King era and helped mark it as something new, because, for the first
time, the number of women was great enough to give the community, though still small and
extremely primitive, a balance and stability it had not possessed before''.108

Her courage in going to the Tahiti with her husband and her encouragement of her family
as they prospered reveal a remarkable woman. Like her husband who kept up his contact with
missionaries in Tahiti she kept up a correspondence with their wives. She heard about their children
and the deaths of some of the women. She gave them advice to them through Mrs Nott recommending
the use of caster oil as it seemed to be the best medicine and could easily be made in Tahiti.

[Picture]
Landing of the missionaries by the ship Duff at Tahiti, 1796. Elizabeth Hassall is believed to be the woman nursing
her second son, Samuel Otoo, and her son, Thomas, is believed to be the child standing in the foreground. The painting
was ''The Cessation of Matavaiia'' by Robert Smirke, done in 1829 as a gift to Captain Wilson of the Duff.
From London Missionary Society, A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean, 1796-1798.

Details about the painting, ''The Cession of Matavai'' by Robert Smirke, were provided by
Archdeacon Spencer Oakes in his article, ''Rowland Hassall. A Pioneer Colonist'' in the Sydney
Morning Herald of February 1928. Oakes referred to the line engraving made of Smirke's painting
which was authorised by the London Missionary Society and executed by Bartolozzi.
''In the picture, Samuel is seen as an infant in his mother's arms, Thomas, aged 3, is
standing by his son, Otoo, in whose favour he abdicated. Both Otoo and his queen are borne
on men's shoulders. The aged priest in front is ceding the district of Matavai to the

108 Heney, Helen, Australia's Founding Mothers, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1978, p.149.

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