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to sell it at about £1 an acre to people who were anxious to invest their n=money in land - a considerable profit on land which he had judged to be worth only 5 shillings an acre two years before. To compensate his wife, Fanny Hassall, for the loss of her share in the Braidwood property he arranged to give her a thousand acres with some improvements on it, given him by his father, at Camden in return for her share. He also received occasional financial help from his father who, among the large amount and variety of property held by the extended Hassall family, had bought a house in Parramatta in 1854 which would eventually be owned by James Hassall.

Several attempts had been made to establish schools in Berrima and James Hassall took up the challenge and converted his stables into a school for girls from as far away as Bendemeer as well as his own daughters who were taught there. Presumably the boarders lived in the Hassall househol. Hassall's interest in his sons' education led to his being a member of a committee set up at a meeting on 28 February 1868 to re-open the King's School after a temporary closure. Others on that committee included some of his close associates - Charles Campbell, J. M. Antill, E.M. Betts, Chales Oakes, George Rouse and, interestingly, George Thorne of Ipswich.

Hassall's interest in education was evident as he establised schools in other parts of his parish including one at Bowral. His wife's cousing, John Norton Oxley, owned most of the land on which Bowral was built and in 1859 after a survey had been carried out he informed Hassall that a reserve for church, schoolhouse and personage as well as for a glebe of 43 acres 3 roods had been set aside. In 1861 Bishop Barker laid the foundation stone of a building, designed by J.N. Oxley and built by local residents, which was to be both curch and school. The school was run by a Denominational Board which included Hassall, but when the first teacher resigned in 1867, Hassall initiated a move to convert the Denominational School into a Public School. He arranged for the appoinment of a teacher to be transferred from Cobbitty after the school was conveyed to the Council of Education in 1868.

One of Hassall's duties included being chaplain at Berrima Gaol. Hassall left his own recollections of the gaol and wrote 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 met a tramp to whom he gave a lift. The tramp said he had just been released from Berrima Gaol and wished to tell him of a plot to escape which he had not been able to tell the gaoler for fear of reprisals by the other prisoners. Apparently the cooks in the kitchen were cutting a hole in the back of the oven through the gaol wall. Hassall acquanited the gaoler of this, the hole was discovered and the cooks were replaced.