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Jonathan Priestman

Jonathan Priestman (1786–1863) was an English Quaker businessman and minister in Newcastle upon Tyne. He was a major shareholder in the Consett Iron Company,[1] a director of the Great North of England Railway,[2] and one of the founders of the Northumberland and Durham District Bank that failed in 1857.[3] He was the father of the reformers Margaret Tanner and Anna Maria Priestman, and father-in-law of the Radical politician John Bright.

Life

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He was born on 29 April 1786 at Malton, North Yorkshire, a younger son of David Priestman and his wife Elizabeth Taylor, a Quaker minister.[4][5][6][7]

Priestman was educated at Ackworth School in 1800–1801.[5][8] He was an apprentice in the family tanning business in Malton.[6]

Tanning business

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David Priestman was the fifth of seven sons of John Priestman (born 1708), who learned tanning from William Richardson of Ayton in Cleveland, and his wife Ann Marshall of Aislaby. His sister Hannah married Henry Richardson (1740–1808) of Whitby.[7][9]

Henry's brother John Richardson (1733–1800), a strict Quaker preferring to associate with others of the Society of Friends, had a tannery, in the Low Lights area of North Shields, near the staithes for coal.[10][11][12] He was the father of the minister George Richardson, the fourth son.[13]

John Richardson's tanyard passed on to his son Henry (died 1827), who adopted some of the orphaned children of the marriage of his sister Elizabeth (died 1820) to Joseph Procter (died 1817), so that the business came into the Procter family.[11][14][15] Other family members developed a Newcastle tannery, in the Newgate area.[11]

Jonathan Priestman moved to Newcastle in 1808, to work as a tanner with his Richardson cousins.[6][16] Around 1812 Priestman went into partnership with William Richardson, as leather dressers.[17] William Richardson (born 1771) was the third son of John Richardson, and married as his first wife Sarah Priestman of York.[18] In 1827 Richardson & Priestman were in business at 66a Newgate Street, Newcastle, as tanners and other trades.[19] In 1834, Priestman's bark mill on Low Friar Street, making the tanning agent, burned down.[20]

A Tanneries Directory for 1867 shows Priestman & Son in Newcastle, J. & J. Priestman in Malton, and John Richardson Procter at Lowlights, North Shields, with Edward & James Richardson at Elswick.[21]

Later life

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In 1848 Priestman bought Benwell House.[22]

Banking

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At the time of the panic of 1857, the Northumberland & Durham District Bank, in which Priestman was one of the founding shareholders in 1836, suffered suspension of payments and financial collapse. There were major repercussions for local industry, and in the Quaker community.[23][24]

Priestman then played a part in transitional arrangements. Initially a private bank trading as Hawks, Grey, Priestman & Co. was set up by a group of the shareholders. It proved untenable in the light of the liquidation process of the failed bank. Priestman then took the initiative of bringing in the bankers Thomas Hodgkin and John William Pease (1836–1901) of the Pease family, both Quakers. The resulting bank Hodgkin, Barnett, Pease and Spence & Co., set up in 1859, achieved stability.[25][26] The industrial consequences included the revival of the Derwent & Consett Iron Company, which went under with the Northumberland & Durham, as the Consett Iron Company.[26]

Associations and interests

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Priestman was a temperance campaigner, the first President of Newcastle's Moderation Temperance Society.[27] He had interests in the Castle Garth infant schools, and the orphanage in Newcastle's Brunswick Square.[16] In 1823 he was on the committee of an abolitionist group, the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Society for promoting the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.[28] He joined the national committee of the League of Universal Brotherhood, a peace movement,[29] and was on the Newcastle committee for the British and Foreign Bible Society.[30] At the end of his life he was concerned with relief for the Lancashire Cotton Famine, and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.[16]

In his early years in Newcastle, Priestman kept up an extensive correspondence with his Richardson cousins.[31] Letters survive to him from Elizabeth and Hannah Richardson, two of the younger daughters of Henry Richardson and Hannah Priestman, his first cousins. Priestman sent them copies of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's weekly The Friend, and extracts from the Eclectic Review about Anna Seward's work.[32][33] He subscribed to The Friend through Coleridge's supporter William Wray, an attorney in Malton.[34]

Family

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Priestman married Rachel Bragg (1791–1854) in 1814.[4][31] She was one of two daughters of Hadwen Bragg (died 1823) from Cumberland, a draper in Newcastle who married Margaret Wilson, a Quaker minister.[35][36] The columnist "W. W. W." (Old Newcastle Tradesmen) stated that Priestman was known as the "handsome Quaker". The couple had six daughters and three sons.[4] Rachel died in 1854, on a visit she made with Jonathan to Irish Quakers, at the home of the minister Richard Allen (died 1873) outside Waterford.[16][37][38]

Of the sons, David, born 1824, died young in 1825.[40]

  • Hadwen Bragg Priestman (1820–1884) married in 1860 Emily Jane Slagg.[40]
  • Jonathan Priestman II (1825–1888) married in 1852 Lucy Ann Richardson, daughter of Jonathan Richardson (1802–1871) and his wife Ann Robson.[40][41]

Jonathan Priestman II

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Priestman's engagement to Anna Deborah Richardson, sister of Elizabeth Spence Watson who married his close friend Robert Spence Watson, was broken off in 1850.[42] A memoir of Anna Deborah, in which Elizabeth appears as Lizzie, was written by her brother John Wigham Richardson.[43] Their father was Edward Richardson (1806–1863), leather manufacturer, the second son of Isaac Richardson, eldest son of John Richardson of Lowlights and brother of John Priestman I's partner William Richardson.[44][45] They were therefore close relations, unlike Priestman's wife Lucy Ann Richardson. Her family had originally been in Kingston-upon-Hull, moving to Whitby and then Sunderland. Her family home was in Benfieldside.[46] The couple had two sons and three daughters.[47]

The affairs and failure of the Northumberland & Durham District Bank were of concern to the younger Jonathan Priestman, since his father-in-law Jonathan Richardson had been its original manager in 1836, and then a director.[48] The impact of the failure on the local Quaker community was serious: the Newcastle Meeting investigated the conduct of six Friends closely connected with the bank, Jonathan Richardson was singled out for blame in the press, and his children, apart from Lucy Ann, resigned from the Meeting. Her husband Jonathan Priestman II suffered financially, having to leave his house at Shotley Bridge and move with his family back to the family home in Benwell.[49]

In 1864, Priestman was appointed joint managing director of the newly-formed Consett Iron Works company, with David Dale.[50] Subsequently, he was a coalowner.[51]

Notes

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  1. ^ Newcastle upon Tyne Council (1889). Newcastle Council Reports. p. vi.
  2. ^ Tomlinson, William Weaver (1914). The North Eastern Railway : its rise and development. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Reid. p. 291 note.
  3. ^ Phillips, Maberly (1894). A History of Banks, Bankers, & Banking in Northumberland, Durham, and North Yorkshire: Illustrating the Commercial Development of the North of England, from 1755 to 1894, with Numerous Portraits, Facsimiles of Notes, Signatures, Documents, &c. E. Wilson & Company. p. 281.
  4. ^ a b c Foster, Joseph (1871). The Pedigree of Wilson of High Wray & Kendal, and the families connected with them. private circulation. p. 54.
  5. ^ a b Boyce, Anne Ogden (1889). Records of a Quaker Family: the Richardsons of Cleveland. S. Harris & Company. p. 96.
  6. ^ a b c Holton, Sandra Stanley (March 2005). "Family Memory, Religion and Radicalism: the Priestman, Bright and Clark Kinship Circle of Women Friends and Quaker History". Quaker Studies. 9 (2): 162.
  7. ^ a b Boyce, Anne Ogden (1889). Records of a Quaker Family: the Richardsons of Cleveland. S. Harris & Company. p. 265.
  8. ^ Ackworth School (1879). List of the Boys and Girls Admitted Into Ackworth School During the 100 Years from 18th of 10th Month, 1779, to the Centenary Celebration on the 27th of 6th Month, 1879, Compiled from the Official Registers. Centenary Committee, Ackworth School. p. 49.
  9. ^ Boyce, Anne Ogden (1889). Records of a Quaker family: the Richardsons of Cleveland. London: S. Harris & Co. pp. xiv and 84.
  10. ^ Boyce, Anne Ogden (1889). Records of a Quaker Family: the Richardsons of Cleveland. S. Harris & Company. p. 69.
  11. ^ a b c "Richardson's Tannery". twsitelines.info. 26 May 2021.
  12. ^ Newcastle upon Tyne Council (1848). Newcastle Council Reports. p. 59.
  13. ^ Reynolds, K. D. "Richardson, George (1773–1862)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/23554. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  14. ^ Boyce, Anne Ogden (1889). Records of a Quaker family: the Richardsons of Cleveland. London: S. Harris & Co. p. 71.
  15. ^ Richardson, George (1850). The Annals of the Cleveland Richardsons and Their Descendants, Compiled from Family Manuscripts, Etc. Privately printed. pp. 65–66.
  16. ^ a b c d Steel, John William (1899). A Historical Sketch of the Society of Friends "in Scorn Called Quakers" in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1653-1898. Headley Brothers. pp. 153–154.
  17. ^ "Printed statement concerning the forthcoming partnership of William Richardson and Jonathan Priestman, leather dressers". calmview.twmuseums.org.uk.
  18. ^ Richardson, George (1850). The Annals of the Cleveland Richardsons and Their Descendants, Compiled from Family Manuscripts, Etc. Privately printed. p. 64.
  19. ^ Parson, William (1827). History, directory, and gazetteer of the counties of Durham and Northumberland, by W. Parson and W. White. p. 70.
  20. ^ "History of Low Friar Street, Co-Curate". co-curate.ncl.ac.uk.
  21. ^ The Tanneries directory of England. 1867. p. 12.
  22. ^ Greaves, Ian (15 March 2024). Lost Country Houses of the North East. Amberley Publishing Limited. p. 95. ISBN 978-1-3981-0688-8.
  23. ^ O'Donnell, Elizabeth (28 October 2014). "Deviating from the Path of Safety: The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth Century Quaker Meeting". Quaker Studies. 8 (1): 75–76. ISSN 1363-013X.
  24. ^ Phillips, Maberly (1894). A History of Banks, Bankers, & Banking in Northumberland, Durham, and North Yorkshire: Illustrating the Commercial Development of the North of England, from 1755 to 1894, with Numerous Portraits, Facsimiles of Notes, Signatures, Documents, &c. E. Wilson & Company. p. 335.
  25. ^ The Monthly Chronicle of North Country Lore and Legend. Walter Scott. 1891. p. 250.
  26. ^ a b Kirby, M. W. "Pease, John William Beaumont, first Baron Wardington (1869–1950)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/47702. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  27. ^ Maunder, George; Garrett, Charles; Stephenson, Thomas Bowman (1884). The Methodist Temperance Magazine. S.W. Partridge. p. 213.
  28. ^ Society for Promoting the gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) (1823). Declaration of the objects of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Society for promoting the gradual abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions. p. 3.
  29. ^ Ceadel, Martin (1996). The Origins of War Prevention: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1730-1854. Clarendon Press. p. 386. ISBN 978-0-19-822674-1.
  30. ^ Auxiliary British and Foreign Bible Society, Newcastle upon Tyne (1825). Sixteenth report. p. 2.
  31. ^ a b Boyce, Anne Ogden (1889). Records of a Quaker Family: the Richardsons of Cleveland. S. Harris & Company. p. 110.
  32. ^ Boyce, Anne Ogden (1889). Records of a Quaker Family: the Richardsons of Cleveland. S. Harris & Company. p. 99.
  33. ^ Boyce, Anne Ogden (1889). Records of a Quaker Family: the Richardsons of Cleveland. S. Harris & Company. pp. 21–22.
  34. ^ Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (8 December 2015). The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 4 (Part II): The Friend. Princeton University Press. pp. 452 and 467. ISBN 978-1-4008-7496-5.
  35. ^ Jubilee Exhibition (1887–1891). The Monthly chronicle of North-country lore and legend [microform]. Newcastle-on-Tyne: Published for Proprietors of the Newcastle weekly chronicle by W. Scott. p. 36.
  36. ^ Holton, Sandra Stanley. "Priestman, Anna Maria (1828–1914)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/57830. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  37. ^ Lewis, Enoch; Rhoads, Samuel (1854). Friends' Review: A Religious, Literary and Miscellaneous Journal. J. Tatum. p. 777.
  38. ^ The Annual Monitor. Executors of the late William Alexander. 1873. p. ix.
  39. ^ Taylor, Miles. "Bright, John (1811–1889)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/3421. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  40. ^ a b c Foster, Sandys Birket (1890). The pedigrees of Beakbane of Lancaster; Bragg of Netherend; Clapham of Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Harrison of Grassgarth; Waithman of Lindeth. London: W.H. and L. Collingridge. p. 150.
  41. ^ Burke, Bernard (1882). A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland. Harrison. p. 1869.
  42. ^ Crawford, Elizabeth (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. Routledge. p. 776. ISBN 978-1-135-43402-1.
  43. ^ Richardson, John Wigham, ed. (1877). Memoir of Anna Deborah Richardson, with extr. from her letters. Newcastle upon Tyne: For private circulation, printer J. M. Carr.
  44. ^ Baker, Anne Pimlott. "Richardson, John Wigham (1837–1908)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/48151. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  45. ^ Richardson, George (1850). The Annals of the Cleveland Richardsons and Their Descendants, Compiled from Family Manuscripts, Etc. Privately printed. p. 63.
  46. ^ O'Donnell, Elizabeth (28 October 2014). "Deviating from the Path of Safety: The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth Century Quaker Meeting". Quaker Studies. 8 (1): 70. ISSN 1363-013X.
  47. ^ The pedigree of Wilson of High Wray & Kendal, and the families connected with them. private circulation. 1871. p. 55.
  48. ^ Phillips, Maberly (1894). A History of Banks, Bankers, & Banking in Northumberland, Durham, and North Yorkshire: Illustrating the Commercial Development of the North of England, from 1755 to 1894, with Numerous Portraits, Facsimiles of Notes, Signatures, Documents, &c. E. Wilson & Company. p. 336.
  49. ^ O'Donnell, Elizabeth (28 October 2014). "Deviating from the Path of Safety: The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth Century Quaker Meeting". Quaker Studies. 8 (1): 75–79. ISSN 1363-013X.
  50. ^ Jeans, James Stephen (10 March 2024). Pioneers of the Cleveland Iron Trade. BoD – Books on Demand. p. 201. ISBN 978-3-385-37088-3.
  51. ^ Seyd and Co. (1874). The Newcastle district and Hull commercial list [afterw.] The Newcastle & Hull district commercial list. p. 51.
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