This pair of spectacles belonged to the first Congregationalist minister in Australia, William Pascoe Crook (1775-1846). He began his career in domestic service, moved on to tin metal working, then sailed to the South Pacific to begin mission work under the aegis of the London Missionary Society. The mission ship Duff sailed from Woolwich in 1796 with thirty missionaries on board, seventeen of whom disembarked in Tahiti. Crook, however, went to the Marquesas Islands, having to remain there alone after John Harris, who was supposed to join him, refused to remain there. According to the 1799 account of the Duff’s voyages compiled by First Mate William Wilson, Crook informed the captain shortly after arrival that he “was encouraged by the reception they had met with, thought the chief had behaved exceedingly well…and though there was not the same plenty here as at the other islands, he had no objections to stay, as he never before nor since his engagement had comforts in view.”* Crook spent several years in the Marquesas Islands, where he compiled a dictionary of the local language.
After returning to London where he married Hannah Dare, Crook and his wife came to Sydney in 1803, where Samuel Marsden engaged him to open Australia’s first boarding school in the church at Parramatta.
When Governor Bligh was deposed in 1808, so was the chaplain Rev. Henry Fulton. Crook was made acting chaplain, a role he briefly shared with William Cowper until Fulton was reinstated in 1810. Crook went on to establish the first Congregational church in his schoolroom, earning the disapproval of several missionaries, because he was administering communion although he had never been ordained. Marsden was asked to intervene.
Crook stepped down from active duties as schoolmaster, and travelled around the Sydney region holding evangelistic meetings. After deciding to recommence mission work, he sailed for Tahiti in 1816 and remained there until his return to Sydney in 1830. He helped found the Temperance Society and the Australian School Society, as well as leading a Congregational church in South Head. He died in Melbourne in 1846^.
The spectacles were donated to the Samuel Marsden Archives by a descendant of Crook, former Archbishop of Sydney Rev Dr Peter Jensen. The measuring glass, mortar ; pestle and magnifying glass are Jensen family heirlooms which are supposed to have also belonged to Crook, and may have been used at his school in Parramatta. Wilson’s account of the Duff’s voyages can be found in the Australiana Rare collection.
* Wilson, William. A missionary voyage to the southern Pacific Ocean : performed in the years 1796, 1797, 1798, in the ship Duff, commanded by Captain James Wilson : compiled from journals of the officers and the missionaries ; and illustrated with maps, charts, and views, drawn by Mr. William Wilson, and engraved by the most eminent artists ; with a preliminary discourse on the geography and history of the South Sea Islands ; and an appendix, including details never before published, of the natural and civil state of Otaheite ; by a committee appointed for the purpose by the directors of the Missionary society. London: printed for T. Chapman by T. Gillet, 1799. ^Niel Gunson, ‘Crook, William Pascoe (1775 -1846)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/crook-william-pascoe-1935/text2311, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 15 April 2016.
