Chartist Ancestors
What did your family to in the revolution?

Millions signed the three great Chartist petitions of 1839 to 1848. Thousands were active in those years in the campaign to win the vote, secret ballots, and other democratic rights that we now take for granted.

Chartist Ancestors lists many of those who risked their freedom, and sometimes their lives, because of their participation in the Chartist cause. The names included on the site are drawn from newspapers, court records and books of the time, from later histories and other sources.

I would like to thank the many historians, researchers and the descendents of those associated with Chartism who have helped with this site since it was launched in 2003.

Mark Crail, Editor

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© Mark Crail

Brief lives
Biographies of the neither rich nor famous

Many people have come across a Chartist in their family tree. Some of the following biographies have been contributed by their descendents. If you would like to submit a biography or link, please email the editor. I would be delighted to hear from you.
Mark Crail, Editor, Chartist Ancestors

This page has biographical information on the following Chartists:
Edmund Stallwood
Anthony Cavalier
Horatio Wood
Gerald Massey
Mary Holberry
George Binns
David Morison
Joseph Constantine
James Grassby

Edmund Stallwood 1810-66
Best known as the London correspondent for Feargus O'Connor's Northern Star from 1843-50, Stallwood (pictured right) was active before and after the Chartist era, and spent more than a decade at the heart of Chartism. Born at Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire, the son of a labourer, he came to notice as a member of the committees of the National Union of the Working Classes and of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, where he formed the Lodge of Operative Gardeners. Stallwood married Mary Blackshaw at St James Church, Westminster, in 1831, and the couple had at least six children while living in Hammersmith and later Fulham. Stallwood was a London delegate to the Chartist Convention of 1842, and the following year succeeded Thomas Wheeler at the Star . A supporter of the Chartist land plan, Stallwood was awarded two acres at Charterville in 1848, but does not appear to have taken them up. From the mid-1840s, he was also a member of the Fraternal Democrats established by George Julian Harney to build links with like-minded democrats elsewhere in Europe . This would later form the basis of the Chartist left wing, and influenced by Karl Marx would develop a socialist programme – “the Charter and something more”. Stallwood was one of the first subscribers to Harney's Red Republican newspaper in 1850 and announced his departure from the Star in an advert placed there. He was sufficiently important within the Chartist movement at this point to feature as the subject of a portrait given away with Reynolds's Political Instructor. In 1855, Stallwood left London for Gillingham in Kent , where he would spend the rest of his life. He remained active: acting as secretary to a committee looking into the necessity for and powers of a board of health, and speaking at meetings of the Liberal Party, the Board of Guardians and of dockyard workers. He died on 14 December 1866 at 9 Saxton Street , Gillingham.
Based on information supplied by Pamela Hurley (nee Stallwood), the great great granddaughter of Edmund Stallwood.

Anthony Cavalier, 1807-1864
Anthony William John Cavalier was born in Stepney, London. At the age of 17, a year after the death of his father (a silk-weaver), he married 15-year-old Maria Bourne at Stepney Church. Anthony set up as a sugar baker/refiner on Upper Union Street, Hull, but by 1843 the family had moved to Nursery Street, Sheffield, a short walk from the new Wicker railway station, and Maria set up in business as a milliner. By 1848 the Cavaliers had traded up to larger premises at Washford Bridge, Attercliffe, Sheffield :
The two words Sugar House are printed conspicuously across the ER property on the 1853 Ordnance map. At some time between 1845 and –48, Anthony Cavalier had established himself here as sugar refiner.
(Vine GR, The Story of Old Attercliffe)
It may be that their son Samuel Cavalier, born in Sheffield a year after the death of Samuel Holberry, was named in memory of the town's iconic Chartist leader. In November 1849 Anthony Cavalier stood as Chartist-backed candidate for the town council, despite opposition and a “dirty tricks” campaign stirred up when he expressed political allegiance to Isaac Ironside. Samuel Jackson, Attercliffe nailmaker, raised the issue at a public meeting at the Town Hall:
There was a strong feeling created against Mr Ironside in Attercliffe, and use was made of his name in a placard... to prejudice the burgesses against their (the Chartist) candidate, Mr Cavalier.
The placard, reported the Sheffield Independent, pilloried Ironside as “the pretend people's friend”, and continued:
Will you, then, vote for Cavalier, who goes to the Council pledged to support Ironside, your calumniator... ?
The next evening a “numerous meeting” of the Ecclesall ward burgesses opened at the Bazaar hotel, South Street (the Moor):
... for the purpose of nominating Mr Anthony Cavalier, of Attercliffe, sugar refiner, as a fit person to represent the ward in the Town Council. . . In reply to a question, Mr Cavalier said he was opposed to church-rates. In fact, he was so disgusted with the cant and hypocrisy which he witnessed among the generality of teachers and professors of religion, that he never attended any place of worship... He had been a Radical all his life, and was as strong a Chartist as any in the room.
(Sheffield Independent, Nov 1849)
The show of hands concluding the meeting was “unanimous in favour of Mr Cavalier”. The polling booths opened for the municipal elections, and he was duly elected. Cavalier's two-year term of office spanned an eventful period for Sheffield: just two weeks later the town was mourning the loss of Ebenezer Elliott, Corn Law Rhymer.
Francis Cavalier, their eldest son, married Catherine Arnold, schoolteacher and daughter of Sheffield razor-maker John Arnold, in May 1847. Francis subsequently set out for Australia in the ‘gold rush' excitement of 1852-53, soon followed by his three brothers, his sister and his mother Maria. Anthony returned to Sculcoates, Hull , and in due course took up with a common-law wife, a Margaret Hall from Surrey, and the couple had two daughters, Clara and Caroline, in 1857 and 1859. Clara Cavalier (known as Lillian) would become an actress, drawn to the London stage, where she married into London 's literary ‘high society'. Anthony Cavalier, after a stint as a marine store-dealer, resumed work as a sugar refiner, but his health soon deteriorated and he died with a jaundice illness in 1864.
Contributed by Anthony Cavalier's great great great great grandson. Jim Walker

Horatio Wood, 1805-1849
I remember the grave of the Leeds Chartist Horatio Wood in Hunslet Cemetery (“Horatio Wood Solicitor”) from when I was a boy. It was rather grand but the monument was removed in the early 1970s. He was born Horatio Nelson Wood in 1805, and married Sarah Bower in 1828. Although he won election as a Chartist candidate to the Leeds Improvement Commission in 1842, in the 1830s he hadn't voted much, and in the 1847 general election he voted for the Whig and Tory candidates but not the Radical. Wood died on 13 September 1849 on the same day as his wife. There was an obituary in the Leeds Mercury. They died of cholera. The wife was the daughter of Alderman Bower, and Wood's business was at 3 Bower Yard just off Briggate, Leeds (Briggate being the main street in Leeds). I went there in 1999, and think that his office building is still extant. I guess that the Bowers were a powerful local family. There are a lot of their graves near where Wood is buried. Why did he support the opposition after being a Chartist? By 1847, as well as a solicitor's business, he also owned a counting house at Neville Wharf in Leeds. In the 1841 census he lived at 84 Hill House Place with three servants as well as his family. Around 1848 he moved to Holbeck Lodge – which was, I suspect – a rather grander place. Alas, Holbeck was a centre of the 1849 cholera epidemic. I guess he got very rich, abandoned radical politics, and then got very unlucky.  As far as I know, he was baptised as Church of England. but was buried in unconsecrated ground. This suggests possible religious issues. Or maybe they just buried cholera victims as fast as they could, wherever they could. So here's a nice Leeds bourgeois, who maybe played with a bit of fire and then withdrew...
Contributed by Paul Crowther

Gerald Massey, 1828-1907
Although he came in late upon the Chartist scene, Massey nevertheless played an important role in assisting George Julian Harney in the production of the Red Republican and then Friend of the People followed by The Star of Freedom . This continued until the schism between Harney and Ernest Jones whose People's Paper caused its demise. Massey may have contributed some poetry or short articles for Harney's earlier Democratic Review , but most of these were anonymous, and attribution can not be confirmed. He also lectured on Chartist and social themes in London.
Contributed by David Shaw, author of Gerald Massey: Chartist, Poet, Radical and Freethinker (London, Buckland, 1995).
More about Gerald Massey on the Minor Victorian Poets website.

Helen Macfarlane, c1820 - unknown
Born in Scotland around 1820, Helen Macfarlane's early life remains a mystery. However, it is known that she was in Vienna in 1848, and that the experience of revolution and counter-revolution had a profound effect on her. Returning to England, she made contact with the left wing of the Chartist movement, and in 1850 began writing for the monthly Democratic Review and the weekly Red Republican – both edited by George Julian Harney. Macfarlane lived in Burnley, Lancashire, and knew Frederick Engels, who was in Manchester. On behalf of Karl Marx, Engels commissioned Macfarlane to translate the Communist Manifesto from German to English. This she did, the first English version of what Harney called “the most revolutionary document ever given to the world” appearing in serial form in the Red Republican . Although much of Macfarlane's version remains familiar, its opening phrase is eye-catchingly different to the generally known version today. In place of the “ A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism ”, she gave us: “A frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe. We are haunted by a ghost, the ghost of Communism.” Macfarlane continued to write for Harney, using the pen name Howard Morton. Among other subjects she celebrated an incident in July 1850 when workers at Barclays and Perkins brewery on London's Bankside chased the visiting Austrian field-marshal Baron Von Haynau, who had brutally oppressed the Hungarians in 1848, and attempted to drown him in a barrel of beer. Macfarlane disappears from public life in 1851 as abruptly as she burst upon it, leaving no further trace of her life.
Based on articles written for the Ethical Record and Workers' Liberty by David Black, whose biography of Macfarlane was published in 2005, and reproduced here with his permission.

Mary Holberry c1817 – 1883
Mary Cooper was one of at least five children born into a working class Attercliffe household. In the autumn of 1838, at 19, she married Samuel Holberry, who was then becoming active in Chartism in Sheffield, and both appear to have been involved in a plot to seize the town hall. Samuel and Mary were arrested, but after two days’ questioning, Mary was released for lack of evidence. Samuel, however, was tried and sentenced to four years imprisonment at York. Despite the death of their son, also Samuel, Mary campaigned and petitioned for her husband’s release – to no avail, he died in June 1842 as a result of appalling prison conditions. Mary remained an active Chartist, joining a picket line in support of a miners’ strike in 1844. The following year she married again – this time to Charles Pearson, publican of the Seven Stars on Trippet Lane. The couple had six children. Samuel died in 1877, and Mary six years later. She is buried in the grave originally bought by Sheffield Chartist Association for Samuel.
Based on a report published in the December 1999 edition of Undertakings, newsletter of the Friends of Sheffield General Cemetery.

George Binns, 1815 – 1847
Born in Sunderland on 6 December 1815, George Binns was one of 15 children. His father (also George) was a Quaker and successful draper, and the young George worked in the family business before he and James Williams opened a bookshop in 1837. The following November, the partners founded the Sunderland Chartist Association, and their bookshop became a centre of radical activity in the town. In July 1839, after the failure of the first Chartist petition, both men were arrested for sedition. Tried at Durham the following August, they were convicted and sent to prison for six months. A huge gathering greeted Binns on his return to Sunderland after his release in January 1841, and he was elected to the national executive of the National Charter Association. After an unsuccessful attempt to re-enter the drapery business, Binns emigrated in August 1842 to New Zealand. He got work supervising a whaling establishment in Nelson, but was sacked after becoming embroiled in a public row over the sale of shortweight bread. Defending himself against accusations that he was “a Chartist ringleader”, Binns wrote to the Nelson Examiner: “When I came to New Zealand, it was after I had suffered imprisonment, sacrificed my business, and lost the good-will of relations, in an endeavour to free my country; and I was and now am desirous of atoning, in some measure, for my past hostilities, by a life of "peace and good-will" here. I did not expect the word Chartist would be employed against me as a term of reproach in a distant land like this. We are all united here by a community of interests, and though I am not ashamed of my principles, yet I should never render myself obnoxious by their intrusion upon others. I have nothing to do with Chartism in New Zealand, and my past enthusiasm might have been forgotten where there is no grievance to redress and no enemy to our weal.” Although he had hoped to return to England, Binns was left in serious financial difficulties by the collapse of the whaling business in 1844. Although he subsequently found work as a baker, he died of consumption on 5 April 1847, aged just 31. An obituary in the Northern Star of 5 February 1848 remembered him as “a handsome high-spirited, talented, true-hearted man - every inch a Democrat”.
Based on an entry in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography by Herbert Roth, updated 16 December 2003.

David Morison, 1814 - 1865
David Morison was born in Perth Scotland on 10 February 1814, and married Janet Niven in Glasgow on 18 September 1835. David was active as a Chartist, and a trade unionist. He was an engineer (a metal worker in today's terms). He was arrested in the Plug Plot Riots in Manchester in August 1842, and charged with sedition, and causing a strike. In the ensuing court case at the Lancaster assizes, he and others, including Feargus O'Connor, were convicted, but due to a technical error in the indictment not sentenced. One story that survives in the family memory has it that the police came looking for David and broke into the house and made a very thorough search, with out finding him. As they were leaving, his wife, Janet, called out after them, "You forgot to look in the teapot!" David was also involved in the Great Lock Out of 1852, when the Amalgamated Society of Engineers were on strike for many months. It was this event that caused him and his family to leave Britain on 30 June 1852. To stay meant signing a document renouncing his union, in order to get work, and he and 27 other engineers chose not to. On board the ship "Frances Walker" they formed the first Australian Branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. In the late 1830s and early 1840s, David worked at Nasmyth and Gaskill's Bridgewater Foundry in Patricroft, Manchester, and later for the Great Western Railway at Swindon in Wiltshire. In Sydney the Morisons lived around Balmain and Glebe and Pyrmont. At the time of his death on 11 June 1865, David was working at an engineering shop called, Halliday and Morison at 16 Erskine Street Pyrmont. Charles Halliday was one of the 27 engineers that came out with David.
Contributed by David Morison's great great grandson, Robert Morison, PO Box 345 Toowong, 4066, Australia
email robert.morison@dva.gov.au or grayson.morison@uq.net.au

Joseph Constantine c1828 - 1914
Joseph Constantine was born near Manchester England possibly in the town of Tyldesley around the year 1828. In 1848, he was one of the leaders of the Chartist troubles in Manchester when Constable James Bright was shot and killed. He and Joseph Radcliff were tried at the Liverpool assizes in December 1848 and sentenced to transportation for life. According to records he had two visits from his wife and children before leaving England and was classified as an exemplary prisoner. On 17 August 1849 he sailed from London aboard the "Adelaide", arriving in Hobart on 29 November 1849. Joseph was registered as convict 1669 (Adelaide), and his trade give as spinning fitter. He was sent to the police barracks at Hobart . There, a "Ticket of Leave" was waiting for him, but his application for free passage to Tasmania for his wife and children was refused. Three days later he was sentenced to 18 months' hard labour in the quarry gangs of Port Arthur for trying to abscond aboard the schooner "Flying Squirrel". He was released after five months and allowed to enter private service as a pass holder before being given another Ticket of Leave in July 1855. Joseph was granted a free pardon on 24 February 1857, but the sad fact was that he never returned to England and his family. A few years later Joseph is found working as a stone mason at Winchelsea between Geelong and Colac, where he was married to Henrietta Jennings (supposedly the music teacher to the Governor of Victoria's children) and had started a family. Joseph died in 1914 in Brunswick.
Contributed by Joseph Constantine's great, great grandson Christopher Constantine
There is more information about Joseph Constantine at First Families.

James Grasby or Grassby c1805-1860
James Grassby was born in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He became a joiner and moved to Hull, where he married Mary West at Holy Trinity Church on 22 May 1831. The family lived at a succession of addresses in the docks area of the town for more than a decade, during which time James became involved in the Chartist movement. In 1842, as the plug plot riots or general strike broke out across Staffordshire and Lancashire, Grassby was attending a Chartist meeting in Manchester. He and other delegates moved to put themselves at the head of events, encouraging those on strike to demand the Charter in addition to their original objective of a reversal of cuts in wages. When the strike collapsed, Grassby and 58 others were put on trial at Lancaster assizes charged with inciting strikes, riots and disorder. He was one of those found not guilty. Three years later, the family was in London, where Grassby's name begins to appear regularly in the Chartist Northern Star newspaper. He was a member of the committee appointed to raise funds for Eliza Ann Jones, the wife of the Newport Chartist William Jones; and by 1848 was secretary of the elections and registration committee. Grassby also joined the Fraternal Democrats, becoming president and treasurer of what was in effect the socialist faction of the Chartist movement. Grassby was elected to the National Charter Association executive on March 10 1849 to fill a vacancy. After chairing a conference at the end of that year to aimed at reorganising the Chartist movement, he was re-elected to the provisional and then permanent executives. In 1851, when the left took control of the Exectutive, Grassby became its general secretary. From here on there is no further record of his life - or death. However, his wife Mary was to die in Glasgow in 1879.
Contributed by James Grassby's great, great, great grandson Mark Crail

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