Mary ROUSE [7646]

  General Notes:

Journeys in Time:
Mary Rouse
Eldest daughter of free settler, Richard Rouse (1774 -1852) and his wife, Elizabeth, nee Adams (1772-1849).
Born 13 January 1799 in England.
Mary emigrated to NSW with her parents in 1801 on board the Nile. Her mother was pregnant at the time of their departure and this second child, John Richard, was born during the voyage. (Margaret Catchpole was among the convicts on board and it is believed that she acted as midwife later she was employed by Richard Rouse as overseer of his farm at North Richmond).The Rouse family arrived in the colony on 14 December 1801 and were granted 100 acres at North Richmond (on the Hawkesbury River) by Governor King in March1802. In July 1805 Rouse was appointed Superintendent of Public Works (at Parramatta) and the Rouse family moved to a house opposite the gates of Government House, Parramatta. This placed them in close contact with a succession of governors (King, Bligh, Macquarie) in their vice-regal occupancy of the official residence.

In 1813, Thomas Hassall (1794 - 1868) set up the first Sunday school in Australia in Parramatta, and Mary Rouse appears to have been employed as an assistant in teaching at this school.

At some time c.1817 -1818 she became a maid servant in the employ of Elizabeth Macquarie; in a letter from Mary Hassall to her brother Thomas, who was in London studying for the ministry, she wrote: "Miss Rouse went to live in Sydney with Mrs Mcquarie [sic] to take care of her son, in her we lost a nice teacher but I have got hopes of her returning soon, it is my opinion she would not have gone but her parents wished her to marry Mr.Chisolm, he is now married to Miss Bowman."Mary Rouse was listed among the Governor's entourage to Newcastle in 1818, and clearly she was in attendance as a governess to Lachlan Macquarie Jnr. who at that stage would have been almost four and half years of age.

Mary Rouse married Jonathan Hassall (brother of Thomas) on 22 November 1819 at St John's Church in Parramatta; and thereafter, Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie engaged Theodore Bartley, aged 16, as a tutor to their son Lachlan. Jonathan Hassall died on 13 December 1834, aged 37, when Mary was pregnant with their eighth child. This infant, Elizabeth, was born after her father's death (but only lived for four days), Mary Rouse did not remarry, and died on 15 December 1883, aged 84.

Primary Sources:
Hassall Correspondence (Mitchell Library, Sydney: ML Ref: A1677 p.514)

Secondary Sources:
Ritchie, John, Lachlan Macquarie: a biography. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1986 p.164.
Thornton, Caroline Rouse, Rouse Hill House and the Rouses. Nedlands, WA. Caroline Thornton, 1988. p.50.

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Mary married Jonathan HASSALL [7647] [MRIN: 2564] about 1819 in St. John's, Parramatta, Nsw. (Jonathan HASSALL [7647] was born about 1797, died in 1834 and was buried in St. Matthew's, Windsor, Nsw.)

  Marriage Notes:

Married by Rev. Samuel Marsden.