James Dyson, born about 1748 is the ancestor of David Dyson, Barry Gasperino, Austin Hilditch, Florence Hutchinson, Maureen Lussier, and Michael and Ruth O’Doherty who have carried out a lot of research into their family. I am most grateful to them for sharing this with me and their thoughts on the origin of this branch of the Dyson family. Their detailed research can be viewed at this link:http://www.legacyfamilytree.ca/odoherty/Names5.htm 

David Dyson is a talented Australian photographer and some of his wonderful panoramic photographs can be viewed and ordered at this link: http://www.daviddyson.com.au/ 

Tantangara, New South Wales      Copyright: David Dyson and reproduced here by his kind permission

There is a tradition in the Australian branch of the Dyson family that they are related to Jeremiah of Willow Hall, the merchant of Lisbon but it has been difficult to establish any link. The English branch discovered that when their relative Rosalie Clarence Dyson (1872 – 1935), great granddaughter of James Dyson born 1748, married Basil Aubrey Holland Woodd on 12 December 1895 at Merriott in Somerset, she received a wedding present from the Rev. Francis Julian Dyson (1864 – 1935), great grandson of Daniel Dyson of Willow Hall.  This may indicate a family relationship between Rosalie Dyson and the Rev. Francis Julian Dyson.

 

Rosalie Clarence Dyson      Copyright: Alan Hughes and others and reproduced here by their kind permission

The link is not in their fathers’ or their grandfathers’ generations so the connection has to be between their great grandfathers. Since Daniel Dyson was the brother of Jeremiah Dyson of Willow Hall, it seems possible that James Dyson born about 1748, was also brother to Jeremiah – that would explain both the story of a link with Jeremiah Dyson of Portugal and the wedding present from the Rev. Francis Dyson. Although there is no mention of James Dyson in the will of Jeremiah Dyson of Willow Hall, this might simply indicate disapproval of a brother who had become brass founder in London. Rosalie Dyson and the Rev. Francis Julian Dyson would thus be third cousins. 

James Dyson born 1748 married first to a Sarah Dyer on 2 December 1771 at St Matthew’s, Bethnal Green. Their known children were Bathsheeba 1772, James 1777 and Thomas 1781.  

Alan Hughes discovered that the registers of Lincoln’s Inn, London record the admission of Thomas Dyson of London, Gent. on 2 February 1818, aged 36, son of James of Hoxton, brassfounder.

James’ wife Sarah died and he married to a Susannah Noden on 1 March 1789 at St Matthew’s, Bethnal Green. Their known children were: Susannah 1790, Henry 1791, Sarah 1792, Mary 1795, William 1798, Edward 1800 and Betsey. 

James was buried on 25 August 1819 at Bunhill Fields in the City of London – the Dissenters Burial Ground. 

It is not feasible in this account to follow the fortunes of all of the children of James born 1748. Instead we will simply follow the career of his son James Dyson born 1777. 

James Dyson born 1777 may have married an Elizabeth Mason in 1800 at St Leonard’s, Shoreditch and the three children baptised there may be their sons – James Warwick Bolton Dyson 1801, Thomas Dyson 1802 and Boulton Dyson 1804 – but we know nothing further about these three. We know for sure, however, thaton 4 April 1808, James Dyson born 1777 married Mary Ann Seabrook at St Clement Danes, London. They had thirteen known children: William Henry 1809, Mary Ann 1810, George John 1813, Mary Ann 1815, James Seabrook 1817, Julia Ann 1818, Sarah Ann 1820, Thomas Arthur 1823, John Carter 1825, Elizabeth 1826, Catherine 1827, Emily 1829 and John Carter 1830. 

James Dyson born 1777 and who was a packer, died at Bethnal Green on 3 May 1840. 

James’ son, Thomas Arthur Dyson born 1803, worked as a woollen printer and married an Olive Russell on 11 November 1848 at Hackney. We only know of one child from this marriage: Thomas A Dyson born about 1848 in Hackney.  Thomas and Olive had emigrated to Lawrence, Essex County, Massachusetts by 1860. The 1880 census shows Thomas Junior as an Iron Machinist Portable Engines, at Lawrence in Essex County married to an Ellen, born in England. They had by that date three children: Herbert A 1874, Olive M 1876, and Walter E 1879. A further child: Frederick E Dyson was born in 1886. 

William Henry Dyson born 1809 married Letitia Sarah Done on 18 Dec 1833 at St Dunstan’s, Stepney.  They had eleven known children, all born in Shoreditch, London. The whole family except William Henry Dyson (born 1834) emigrated to Australia in 1852 aboard the ‘Francis Ridley’ which left England on 16 March and arrived in Australia in July, at the height of the Australian Gold Rush. The family settled at Emerald Hill, then a largely canvas settlement. Today the area is known as South Melbourne.

William Henry Dyson was a printer and his son John Francis Dyson born 1848 established a printing and paper firm  - ‘Andrew Jack & Dyson’ – in Melbourne.

William Henry Dyson died on 9 June 1895 at Melbourne. His wife Letitia had died on 1 November 1871 at Melbourne.

Another of the children of William Henry and Letitia was George Arthur Dyson born about 1835 at Shoreditch. He married Jane Mayall on 1 July 1862 at Geelong. They had eleven children:

William Henry Dyson 1863 – 1864

Edward George Dyson  1865 – 1931

Herbert George Dyson 1867

Elizabeth Mary Dyson 1869 – 1949 who married George Thomas Ovenden

Letitia Sarah Dyson  1871

Frederick Dyson 1873 – 1958 who married Alice Findlow

Ambrose Arthur Dyson 1876 – 1913

Jane Ann Dyson 1878 who married Lionel Lindsay

William Henry Dyson 1880 – 1938

Ethel Annie Dyson 1882 who married Harrison Owen

Jessica Mayall Dyson 1885 – 1963 who married Henry Francis Blake

George Arthur Dyson worked without much success at various gold diggings, but the  gold mining industry was now dominated by large companies who could afford to create deep workings, so George and his family returned to Emerald Hill where he became a dry goods hawker. Although his children received little formal education their artistic and literary talents were encouraged by their mother and three of the children attained international fame. George died in 1924 and his wife Jane in 1930.

We will consider in turn the three famous sons of George Arthur and Jane.

Edward George Dyson was born on 4 March 1865 at Morrisons, Ballarat, Australia. He worked as  an assistant to a travelling draper, as a whimboy in a mine and in a factory in Melbourne. At the age of 19 he began writing verse and  a few years later became a free-lance journalist, contributing to the ‘Bulletin’. His first long novel, which was published in London in 1901 -  ‘The Gold-stealers: a Story of Waddy’ can be downloaded by this link:  http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16903

Cover of book by Edward  Dyson    Source: Matilda - the the literary blog of Perry Middlemass which can be viewed at this link:

http://www.middlemass.org/matilda/

A book of his poems published in 1919  : ‘Hello Soldier: Khaki Verse’ can be downloaded at this link: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16904

 Edward George Dyson married Dorothy Boyes on 9 September 1914 at St George’s, Royal Park. They had one child – a daughter. Edward  George Dyson died at St Kilda in 1931 and Dorothy died in 1975 at Beacon

Edward Dyson about 1937     Copright: National Library of Australia   Ref: nla.pic-an3085155    Photographer: May Moore. Reproduced here by kind permission of the National Library of Australia

Ambrose Arthur Dyson was born on 13 April 1876 at Ballarat. He married Mabel Norah Frazer on 14 December 1912. He had no formal art training and developed his skills by sketching in the streets, but benefited from advice from fellow artist Tom Durlin.

Ambrose produced cartoons for the Adelaide ‘Critic’ and in 1900 he became their chief artist. In 1903 he accepted a post on the staff of the ‘Bulletin’. He also contributed by the ‘Gadfly’, ‘Table Talk’, the ‘Clarion’ and the ‘Sydney Worker’.

Edward Dyson, Wil Dyson, Norman Lindsay and Ambrose Dyson      Source: Matilda - the literary blog of Perry Middlemass which can be viewed at this link:

http://www.middlemass.org/matilda/

Ambrose died on 3 June 1913 in a lunatic asylum in Kew and despite his fame, he reputedly left his wife and son Edward Ambrose Dyson born 1908 penniless and Mabel was forced to take in lodgers. Edward Ambrose became a cartoonist, writer and painter.

William Henry Dyson was born on 3 September 1880 at Ballarat. An elder brother with the same name had died in 1864. William Henry became a great friend of the artist Norman Lindsay and married his sister Ruby Lindsay on 30 September 1909 at Creswick, Australia. They had one child – Betty Dyson who was born in London in 1911.

Wil Dyson at his printing press  Copyright: National Library of Australia and reproduced here by their kind permission.  Ref: nla.pic-an23302330

In 1912, William Henry Dyson was appointed cartoonist-in-chief at the ‘Daily Herald’ and was given freedom to express his own ideas. He was a convinced socialist and fiercely  championed the working man. In 1915, ‘Kultur Cartoons’, the most famous of his seven collected cartoon books, was published.

 Two Women judging a Parade of Men at a Fashion Show    Cartoon by Wil Dyson    Copyright: National Library of Australia and reproduced here by their kind permission    Ref: nla.pic-vn4388349

In December 1916, William Henry Dyson was commissioned by the Commonwealth as the first Australian war artist and was twice wounded on the Western Front. A collection of his compassionate drawings was published as ‘Australia at War’ in 1918.

‘Australia at War - Field Sports’   Drawing by Wil Dyson  Copyright: National Library of Australia and reproduced here by their kind permission

Ref: nla.pic-vn4768690

In 1919, in England, William Henry was devastated when his wife Ruby became a victim of the great influenza epidemic of that year. Back in Melbourne he worked for the ‘Herald’, the Australian ‘Punch’ and ‘Table Talk’.

In 1930, William Henry Dyson returned to England where in 1933 he published ‘Artist Among the Bankers’ – a hostile judgement on world economics and the banker-business. He died suddenly on 21 January 1938 at Chelsea, London.

A collection of about 500 of William Henry’s sketches for the ‘Herald’ is preserved at the Cartoon Research Centre of the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Sources

The O’Doherty and Dyson Family History of Calgary, Alberta        Website of Research by James Anderson, David Dyson, Barry Gasperino, Austin Hilditch, Alan Hughes, Florence Hutchinson, Maureen Lussier, and Michael and Ruth O’Doherty

Dictionary of Australian Artists On-line

Wikopaedia website

Australian Dictionary of Biography On-line

Matilda   - the literary blog of Perry  Middlemass which can be viewed at this link:              http://www.middlemiss.org/matilda/

Upper Willow Hall still retains the name of the manor of ‘The Wylleys’ or Willows in which it is situated which belonged to the Saville family. Some time previous to 1546, William Kinge, a local dyer took out a lease on ‘ The Wylleys’ and he seems likely that he demolished an existing house on the site and built himself a new timbered framed home, known at first as ‘Newhouse’. Members of the Kinge family continued to live at this new Willow Hall for many generations until the 1690s.

Upper Willow Hall, Cote Hill, Halifax    Source: ‘Ancient Halls in and about Halifax’  Arthur Comfort  Published by the ‘Halifax Courier’ about 1913

 The oldest portion of Upper Willow Hall is the work of James Kinge of about 1610. The house was later refronted, probably at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In the 1690s the house was sold to the Wainwright family of Skircote, an Edward Wainwright residing there at the end of the century.

Elizabeth Wainwright, the daughter of John Wainwrightof Willow Hall, married Japhet Lister of Northgate House, Halifax in 1747 and Willow Hall passed, by this marriage, into the Lister family. Japhet Lister let Willow Hall to Thomas Aked who had married in 1751 to Dorothy Dyson, the daughter of Eli Dyson of Clay House.

The tenancy of Willow Hall passed to the son of Thomas and Dorothy Aked, another Thomas who in 1772, bought Willow Hall from Japhet Lister. This Thomas Aked, a merchant, married Barbara Fawcett.

Thomas and Barbara Aked had three sons – the Rev. William Aked who married Mary Fawcett, Joah and Tom.

Joah Waked became a Lieutenant in the 22^nd Regiment of Foot and  was sent to New York in 1780 during the War of American Independence. On returning to England Lt. Aked lived for some time at Willow Hall and in 1783 married a Miss Holdsworth. From letters sent between members of the Lister family in 1783 it appears that it was felt that Lt. Lister had made a mistake in marrying as his pay and means would be insufficient to maintain a wife. Later correspondance refers to probability of Lt. Joah having to go to the West Indies.

It would seem that that the above gloomy predictions were accurate as Willow Hall was sold, sometime before 1791, to a Jeremiah Dyson.

Jeremiah Dyson was a merchant who had lived for many years at Lisbon in Portugal where he was a member of the British Factory. He was not a member of the Clay House branch of the family and there seems to be confusion about his origins. The pedigree which appears in the Burke’s peerage makes no mention of Jeremiah. The first reference made to Willow Hall in this pedigree is in relation to a Thomas Dyson (died without issue in 1827) – of Upper Willow Hall and of Swifts Place. This Thomas is shown as the son of Henry Dyson of Lower Goat’s House. From Thomas, Willow Hall is supposed to have passed to his brother Daniel. This pedigree was based on one drawn up by Pym Yeatman which was published in ‘The Yorkshire Genealogist’. In an abstract of 1917 in  the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, Mr E W Crossley states in relation to this pedigree, ‘unfortunately it is a very indifferent production, and was inaccurate within living memory at the time of its production’.  Mr Crossley was quite correct in his assessment of this pedigree.

The clue to the true ancestors of Jeremiah Dyson of Willow Hall lies in the name given by his brother Daniel to one of his children:  Thomas Fournice or Founess Dyson. This is a strong indication that the mother of Daniel and Jeremiah was a Fourness and indeed we find the baptism of a Jeremiah Dyson on 4 July 1736 at Elland  and that that of a Daniel Dyson on 27 January 1743 at Elland to an Ely Dyson and a Barbara. We further find that an Eli Dyson married a Barbara Fourness on 26 July 1730 at Halifax. Their known children were Eli, Jeremiah 1736, David 1738, Daniel 1743 and Thomas 1745.  It seems likely that they also had a son called James born about 1748 (see later post).

Upper Willow Hall  Photograph Copyright: David Dyson and reproduced here by his kind permission

Why weren’t the Willow Hall branch of the Dyson family clear about their origins? The truth is probably that they were clear and were embarrassed by them. The explanation for this is provided by the research undertaken by a descendant who lives in America which is included in the excellent website of Malcolm Bull – ‘Calderdale Companion’  which can accessed at this link:

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calderdalecompanion/

In an abstract by C Webster published in 1966 in the  Journal  of the Halifax Antiquarian Society  in 1966 it is stated that:

 ‘Eli Dyson Snr. became insolvent in 1766 and was forced to assign his paper  mills in Halifax and all his other properties to his chief creditor, John Edwards of Northowram Hall. Not satisfied with this, Edwards had the old man imprisoned in York Castle for debt. Daniel Dyson, the fifth son, temporarily saved the situation by eloping with Edward’s only daughter, Sarah, and marrying her in Scotland.’ We cannot be sure who was the father of Ely, the owner of the Paper Mills, but it may well have been an Edmund Dyson, born about 1660 at Longwood, who married a Mary Gledhill on 29 January 1690 at Huddersfield. Their son Ely Dyson was baptised on 23 August 1701 at Huddersfield. Edmund’s ancestry is unknown but it probably goes back to the family at Swifts Place.   

We will return later to Daniel Dyson, Ely’s son, shortly but first we need to consider his brothers.

Of Ely Junior we only know that he was of ‘Gatehead’.

Jeremiah, as already mentioned, lived for many years in Lisbon and there is no evidence that he had any children. It was probably his return to England that rescued the fortunes of his family at Halifax. He died at Willow Hall on 20 February 1791 leaving the property to his brother Daniel. (Some accounts state that Daniel was his son – but this clearly impossible given that Daniel married in 1764).

David born 1738 may also have been to Lisbon but lived later at Barnsley.   He married a Martha Hanson on 15 June 1761 at Elland.  About 1800 he purchased Barkisland Hall, at Halifax and also bought land at Abbots Royd. The children of David and Martha Dyson were Samuel 1762 and Barbara 1776 who built a house at Abbots Royd. David Dyson died in 1818 at Barkisland Hall.

Barkisland Hall    Photograph Copyright: John Illingworth 

Source: Geograph website and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Thomas Dyson born 1745 had  lived in Lisbon but nothing further is known of him.

James Dyson, born about 1748, seems likely to have been another of Ely Dyson’s sons, but he is not mentioned in the will of his brother Jeremiah Dyson. This James became a brass founder in Hoxton, London and will be described in a later section.

Returning to Daniel  born 1743 who married Sarah Edwards on 19 July 1764 at Haddington in East Lothian, it is not known how he fared financially in later years. It was not until the death of his brother Jeremiah in 1791 that he inherited Willow Hall. From the baptismal records of their children, Daniel and Sarah lived at Soyland and Ripponden. Their known children were:

Thomas Fournice Dyson 1767 – 1843

Nanny Dyson 1773 – 1848 who never married

Maria Dyson 1775 – 1855 who never married

John Dyson 1777 – 1818

Harriet Dyson 1787 – 1851

Daniel Dyson and  his wife Sarah passed away in 1810.  Under the terms of Daniel’s will of 1799 – Thomas and John, his sons, were to become joint tenants of Willow Hall with Thomas having the power to take the whole estate on payment of £2500 to John. The two brothers, who were merchants,  traded from Willow Hall as Dyson Bros.

Thomas Fournice Dyson had married at Lisbon an Irish girl – Anne Baldwin Sealy on 15 May 1800. At least two of their seven children were born in Lisbon – William Brutton Dyson about 1801 and Elizabeth Baldwin Dyson about 1802. Their other known children were Baldwin Sealy Dyson 1808, John Edwards Dyson 1810,  Richard Daniel Dyson  1814, Sarah Harriet Dyson 1815 who married Sir James Bourne of Hackinsall Hall, Fleetwood, and George William Dyson 1820.  After living for some time  at Willow Hall, Thomas and his family went to live  at Everton in Lancashire.

Harriet Dyson born 1787 married William Moore in 1810 in Halifax. It is ironic that William Moore was the heir to Northowram Hall which had been the home of the John Edwards who had been the cause of the bankruptcy of Harriet’s grandfather.

 After Thomas and his family went to Everton, and Sarah had married William Moore, John Dyson born 1777 continued to live at Willow Hall with his own family and his two unmarried sisters – Maria and Nanny. John had married a Harriet Edwards on 26 June 1804 at Halifax. Their children were:

 Thomas Edwards Dyson 1805 – 1841. He was a Justice of the Peace. 

Jeremiah Dyson 1806 – 1858.  He lived at Willow Edge and was a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant of the West Riding.

Lt. Colonel John Daniel Dyson 1808 – 1875. He was Lieutenant Colonel of the 3^rd Dragoon Guards and served in that regiment for 28 years. He died in London in 1875 and was buried at St Mary’s Church, Wimbledon.

Lt. Edwards Dyson 1810 – 1886 also belonged to the 3^rd Dragoon Guards and had an estate at Denne Hill in Kent. He married Caroline Agnes Jerdan in 1857 in the Marylebone Registration District. They had four children:

Caroline Dyson born about 1857 in Edinburgh who married Marwood Shuttlewood Yeatman in 1881

Edwards Hopton Dyson born 23 January 1858 at Dumbarton in Scotland. He was educated in France, Germany and at Wimbledon School. He then attended Sandhurst and on passing out in 1878 was made 2^nd Lieutenant in the 1^st Battalion of the 24^th Regiment, joining his corps at King William’s Town He took part in the storming of Sihayo’s stronghold in the Barshe Valley  and was killed on 22 January 1879 in the Battle of Isandlwana, Zululand. Lt. Edwards Hopton Dyson is commemorated in a pair of memorial windows in the chancel of the church at Womensfold, Kent  and also the South Africa  Memorial in the Sandhurst Chapel.

Lt. Edwards Hopton Dyson    Photograph copyright:  John Young    Source: ‘They Fell Like Stones’ by John Young and reproduced here by kind permission of John Young and his publishers

The following is an extract from a letter written to the father of Lt. Edwards Hopton Dyson:

 ‘The last person who saw your son and escaped, that I can find, was Captain Essex, 75^th Regiment, Acting Transport Officer. He tells me that just before the Zulu horsa got round our flanks and the last overwhelming rush was made, Dyson was with one section of  his Company, which was in skirmishing order to the left-front of the camp. He gave orders to retire, and I believe, from another witness, that he and all his Company rejoined the main body without loss. The five Companies were then together in a line, giving volley after volley into dense masses of Zulus at only 150 yards range. The men were laughing and chatting, and thought they were giving the blacks an awful hammering, when suddenly the enemy came down in irresistible numbers from the rear; the left and right flanks came in with a rush, and in a few moments all was over.’ 

The Battle of  Isandlwana     Source: ‘The Illustrated London News’ 1879

Richard Godfrey Dyson born in 1863 at Denne Hill and who died in 1879

Rev. Francis Julian Dyson born 1864 at Rotherby Leicestershire who married Mabel Edith Lovell in 1892. The Reverend Francis died in 1935 on the Isle of Wight. His descendants can be traced down to the present day.

John Dyson born 1777 died at Willow Hall in 1818. His wife Harriet died in 1865. The ownership of Willow Hall now seem to have reverted to John’s brother – Thomas Fourness Dyson. When the latter died in 1840 he bequeathed Willow Hall to his son George William Dyson, his  daughter  Sarah Harriet Dyson  and to his married daughter Elizabeth Baldwin Hornby, in equal shares. George William Dyson got into debt and the house effectively became the possession of Joseph Hornby, the husband of his sister Elizabeth, and other Trustees. Eventually the house became the property of Lt. Colonel John Daniel Dyson and on his death it passed to his brother Lt Edwards Dyson.  In 1891 the house was sold by the trustees of the will of the latter, to John Rothery Swaine.

 Interior of Willow Hall   Photograph Copyright: David Dyson and reproduced here by his kind permission

Sources 

 ’The Two Willow Halls: Upper and Lower’  by H P Kendall

Abstract published in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society   1908

‘The Dyson Family Part One’ by E W Crossley

Abstract published in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society   1917

‘Robert Parker – Attorney: Part 1’  by C Webster

Abstract published in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society   1966

‘Calderdale Companion’ – the website of Malcolm Bull

 Burkes’ Peerage

‘The South Africa Campaign of 1878/79’

 Ian Knight and Dr. Adrian Greaves

             

Clay House was the home of the Clay family from 1313 to 1687. It was originally a half-timbered house but it was rebuilt or encased in stone in 1654 by John Clay who called it ‘The New House at Clay Hill.’ 

In 1713, Clay House was bought by John Wheelwright, the founder of Rishworth Grammar School and when he died it became part of the Wheelwright Trust.

Clay House, Greetland            Source: ‘Ancient halls in and about Halifax’     Arthur Comfort     Published by the ‘Halifax Courier’ about 1913

An Ely Dyson was already a tenant of part of the house in 1713, but it is not clear whether he was the first Dyson to live there. In 1713, Ely Dyson took out a tenancy if the whole house, subletting half the property to Richard Ramsden.

This Ely Dyson was born in 1683 at Sunnybank, the son of Ely Dyson (1654 – 1706) and his wife Jennet Rooke.  This family were descendants of the Dyson family of Upper Swifts Place at Soyland.

Ely born 1683 married Rose Ramsden of Siddal Hall on 14 April 1707 at Saxton in Elmet.

Ely and Rose had a large family:

John Dyson 1708 – 1761 who married Frances Wilkinson in 1735

Mary Dyson 1711 – 1768 who married William Thompson on 11 May 1732

Jeremiah Dyson 1713

Jeremiah Dyson 1714 – 1749  who was educated at Goats House School, the expenses being paid by the Wheelwright Trust

Henry Dyson 1715

Abraham Dyson 1720 – 1757 who was educated at Goats House School, the expenses being paid by the Wheelwright Trust

 Eli Dyson 1722 who married Susannah Hall

Betty Dyson 1726  1727

Sarah Dyson 1726 who married the Rev. John Harrison on 27 September 1753 and remarried to Thomas Sunderland on 20 April 1768

Dorothy Dyson  1728 who married Thomas Aked on 5 November 1751 at York Minister and lived at Willow Hall, Cote Hill, Halifax (see later section)

George Dyson about 1730 – 1731

Marie Dyson 1731.

Ely Dyson born 1683 was a Trustee of the Wheelwright Trust. He died in 1734 at Clay House, his wife Rose having died the previous year.

The eldest son of Ely and Rose, John Dyson born 1708 inherited the tenancy of Clay House  and was a Trustee of the Wheelwright Trust. He married Francis Wilkinson in 1735. John and Francis had four children:

Mary Dyson 1736 - 1762

Frances Dyson 1737 – 1796 who married Thomas Lambert of Elland Hall,

Elizabeth Dyson1740 - 1764

John Dyson 1746  - 1791

John Dyson born 1708, died in 1761. His wife Frances died in 1768.

John Dyson born 1746  was too young to be appointed a Trustee of the Wheelwright Trust when his father died but was subsequently appointed as such when he was 26. John born 1746 was a trustee of the Rochdale, Halifax and Elland Turnpike Road Trust  and in 1786 he was one of the four trustees given responsibility for the construction of a toll collector’s house at  Brow Bridge.

John married Mary Gorton of Gorton Hall near Manchester on 27 December 1769 in Manchester Cathedral. The children of John and Mary were:

Mary 1770 – 1781

Thomas 1772 – 1773

Frances 1775 – 1782

John 1777 – 1819

Thomas Dyson (later known as Thomas Holland) 1779 – 1835

Margaret Dyson 1782 – 1786

Richard Dyson 1786 – 1787.

 John Dyson died on 24 April 1791 and the tenancy of Clay House passed to his son John born 1777. who became a Trustee of the Wheelwright Trust  when he reached the age of majority. 

John Dyson born 1777 married Elizabeth Pollard of Stannary Hall, Halifax.  He died on 23 February 1819.

The children of John and Elizabeth were:

John Dyson born 13 March 1800 became of Judge Advocate General of the Bengal Army. He  married Jane Hind Jennings and died on 23 May 1851

George Dyson born 3 March 1802  became a solicitor in Halifax and from 1839 was the Coroner for the town. He died 11 Dec 1874

Thomas Dyson born 15 December 1803 who married Mary Jennings on 5 June 1834 at All Souls, Langham Place, London.

Mary Dyson born 15 November 1805 who died 20 October 1826.

Henry Dyson born 25 January 1809.

Dr. Francis Dyson born 15 November 1810. he is believed to have studied medicine at Cambridge 9 although he is not listed in the alumini) qualifying as a surgeon and apothecary. He also practised as an accoucher. He married Sarah Jane Atkinson and they emigrated to Australia where he was a member of the BMA (Australia).but disappeared in 1860. Sarah  remarried to a James Douglas but there is a record  of a Francis Dyson  interred in Wallsend in the early 1900s  and since this is where Sarah died in 1903  it is possible that after James Douglas died, Sarah met up again with Francis Dyson.Their children were Eliza born about 1838 in Middlesex, George who was lost at sea and Frank born 1859 at Coleraine, Victoria. He married Majorie Isabel Maulseed Duncan in 1902 at Parmatta, New South Wales.  Frank died in 1937 in North Sydney.

Charlotte Dyson was born on 1 January 1812 and died on 25 January 1812.

Charles Dyson born 3 October 1813.

Arthur died born 22 January 1815 and died 20 May 1819.

Lucy Dyson born 15 October 1816 who died 9 January 1817.

It would appear that the Dyson tenancy of Clay House ended when John Dyson’s widow Elizabeth remarried to Patrick Agnew on 28 September 1824 at Elland. She died on 25 September 1839 at Ashfield Cottage, Hatfield.

Clay House, Greetland      Photograph Copyright: Humphrey Bolton  

Source: Geograph website and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

  Sources: 

‘Dr Francis Dyson’ – story on ancestry.co.uk.

‘Clay House, Greetland’ by A T Longbotham

Abstract published in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society 2 October 1934

‘Ancient Halls in and about Halifax’ by Arthur Comfort

Published by the ‘Halifax Courier’ about 1913.

‘Calderdale Companion’ – website of Malcolm Bull.

Sunnybank is located at Greetland which is on the western outskirts of the town of Elland, just south of Halifax. The house was named ‘Sunnybank’ by Thomas Wilkinson, (1438 - 1480) the Vicar of Halifax, but was previously called Over Nabroyd.  

Sunnybank is believed to be the oldest house in Calderdale and dates back to 1290.

 

 

Sunnybank   Source: Ancient Halls in and around Halifax     Arthur Comfort      Published by the ‘Halifax Courier’ about 1913

The house is associated with John de Elland who was killed in 1353 during the ‘Elland Feud’. In 1546 it was bought by Henry Saville of Bradley Hall and was rebuilt about 1577 by a member of the Saville family.

Externally it retains its original form as a half-timbered building although the wattle and daub panels have been replaced by stone. Internally the house has been greatly altered, converting it into two dwellings.

It is not clear who was the first of the Dysons to live at Sunnybank, nor how long it remained one of the Dyson family homes. The only Dyson occupants about whom we can be certain are Ely Dyson (1654 – 1706) and his son Abraham (1679 – 1747)

Ely Dyson was the grandson of Abraham Dyson (1563 – 1621) of Swifts Place. Ely’s father was Samuel Dyson (1604 – 1686) who married Maria Fielden on 22 August 1637 at Elland church. Ely married a Jennett Rooke and died at Sunnybank in January 1706.

Ely and Jennet had a large family: Abraham 1676- 1679, George 1677 – 1679,  Abraham 1679 – 1747, Mary  1681 – 1722,  Ely 1683 – 1734,  Samuel 1686 – 1710, Margaret 1688 – 1690, Jeremiah 1690 – 1729, John 1692 – 1694, George 1695 – 1697.

As the burial dates above show, many of these children died young.

Mary born 1681 married Richard Ramsden of Siddal Hall on 10 Dec 1705 at St Martin’s, York.

Ely born 1683  went to live at Clay House, Greetland  and is described in a later section.

Jeremiah born 1690 went to live in London where he had a house or an office in Bartholomew Close, West Smithfield. His son, another Jeremiah became a politician and was Clerk to the House of  Commons in the reign of George III.  Jeremiah the politician is described in a later section.

The second Abraham born 1679 continued to live at Sunnybank where he died in 1747. Abraham married Dorothy Hanson.

The known children of Abraham and Dorothy were Ely 1706, Samuel 1708, Abraham 1711 and Mary 1713.

Ely, the eldest son, went to live at Bartholomew Close, London where he died in 1776  and it is not known  whether his brother Samuel or his brother Abraham continued to live at Sunnybank,

 This one-time Dyson family home is at Rishworth, about six miles south west of  Halifax town centre.  There are records of the house dating back to 1577 when it was in the possession of an Edmund Firth. It was rebuilt in the mid eighteenth century. 

The house appears to have originally belonged to the Firth family and was known as ‘Over Oakes’. It appears to have come to the Wheelwright family when George Firth married Dorothy, the widow of Michael Wheelwright in April 1656. We also know, however, that the will of 1663 of Simeon Dyson of Swifts Place, Soyland,  conveyed to his son Henry, the messuage of Lower Goat House, in tenure of James Houldroyd. This presumably refers to ‘tenancy rights’ rather than ownership.

 

 

Lower Goat House    Source: ‘Ancient Halls in and about Halifax’    Arthur Comfort     Published by the ‘Halifax Courier’ about 1913

Henry Dyson born 1636, son of Simeon  appears to be the first of the Dysons to have lived at Lower Goat’s House. Henry was a Quaker and the transfer to him of rights to the messauge of Lower Goats House depended on Henry being ‘conformable and deserving’.

Henry Dyson married Maria Ramsden on 21 January 1660. They are both named in a list of recusants of 1669. In 1689, at Barnsley Sessions, Henry was one of those who petitioned for Lower Goat House to be licensed as a Quaker Meeting House. In January 1695, Henry and others petitioned that the house of Robert Duckworth in Halifax should be licensed for worship there.

Henry and Maria had nine known children:

Timothy 1662

Daniel 1664 – 1718 who married Sarah Smith in 1714 at the Quaker Meeting House, Leeds

Simeon 1666

Easter 1667

Jeremiah  1668

John 1670

Esther 1673 who married Timothy Brogden in 1707

Martha 1675

Henry 1678

Henry born 1636 died on 6 December 1708 and his wife Maria died on 20 December 1717.

Of the male children of Henry and Maria we only know what happened to Jeremiah and Henry.

Jeremiah born 1668 married a Mary Tillotson on 8 July 1719 at the Harwood Wells Quaker meeting House. Their known children were Sarah, Esther 1720 who married John Holden in 1740, Simeon  1721 who married Betty Gledhill on 18 September 1748 at Elland,  Henry 1723, Jeremiah 1725 and Daniel 1728. By 1725, Jeremiah and Mary were living at Soyland. Jeremiah died in 1737.

Henry born 1678 married Mary Overend in 1719. Their children were:

Simeon  1720 – 1792 who married Sarah Mallinson on 22 June 1746 at the Quaker Meeting House, High Flatts, Yorkshire.

Henry 1723 – 1785

John 1725 – 1784 who married Martha Mallinson on 13 January 1745 at Halifax.

Samuel 1729

Samuel 1731

Daniel   1734

It would appeared that the Dyson family moved out of Lower Goat House in 1724, when the owner John Wheelwright died (son of the Michael Wheelwright referred to earlier)and under the terms of his will a school was established there. John Wheelwright was a collector of salt duties and a local landowner. His endowment provided for the education of 20 boys and girls, children of the workers on his estate.

In 1725 a school building was erected and Lower Goat House was then used for boarding pupils and staff. The school building, now the chapel of the greatly expanded Rishworth School, is built of ashlar with a stone slab roof. It consists of five bays of double chamfered, mullioned and transomed windows of eight lights. A tablet on the wall of the building is inscribed:

 ‘John Wheelwright of North Shields in Northumberland, Gentleman, Founded and endowed this School For the Education of his Tenants Children for ever. Anno Domini 1725 Semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque sunt’ 

The Original school at Rishworth, now the Chapel of the enlarged school    Photograph Copyright: Alexander Kapp    Source: Geograph website and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link:    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 A fine new school building was erected in 1824/25. 

The Dyson connection with the school continued for several generations after they had moved from Lower Goat House – a Dyson being a member of the Wheelwright Trust in each generation. The first intake to the school included one of the sons of Ely Dyson of Clay House and later on, in 1731, Ely’s son Jeremiah was sent to Clare College, Cambridge for four years,  at the cost of the Wheelwright Trust.

The 1871 and 1881 censuses show an Eliza Dyson working as an English Mistress at Rishworth Grammar School. Eliza, who was born in about 1838 in Middlesex, was a member of the Dyson family of Clay House, Halifax. She died at the age of 53 in the Halifax Registration District.

The Dyson family of Lower Goats House continued to thrive elsewhere and the line of John Dyson born about 1725 at Lower Goat House, can be traced down to the present day.

 Sources: 

Research by Gordon Dyson of Manchester

‘The Dyson family Part  2’  by E W Crossley   Abstract published in 1918 in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society

‘Clay House Greetland’   by A T Longbotham   Abstract published in 1934 in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian  Society

‘Calderdale Companion’ – the website of Malcolm Bull

‘Ancient Halls in and about Halifax’    Arthur Comfort       Published by the ‘Halifax Courier’ about 1913

‘From Weaver to Web’ – online visual archive of Calderdale History

  

In this post we turn our attention to Soyland, a small village a few miles to the west of Halifax and some five miles as the crow flies to the north of Linthwaite.  At Soyland is Upper Swifts Place - the earliest that we can definitely  identify of the fine houses which were homes to the Dysons of Halifax. There is no known Dyson connection with the house known as ‘Lower Swifts Place’ 

E. W. Crossley, in a paper on the Dyson family describes the Dysons of Soyland as:

  ‘a typical yeoman family…. Occupiers of small parcels of land, or at the most of a few acres. After a while by dint of industry and thrift they became the owners, under the Lord of the Manor, of small tenements, which as time wore on, they gradually and substantially increased both in extent and number. At length, by their shrewd business acumen, their wealth so increased that they became prominent among their neighbours as owners of land. They traded, in their capacity as clothiers and merchants, in the great metropolis.’ 

The land around Soyland was only suitable for the grazing of sheep so most of the farmers supplemented their income by woollen cloth weaving. Several beautiful weavers’ cottages still exist at Soyland.

Some of these weavers eventually became merchants, buying finished woollen cloth and selling it not only locally but in places as far away as London  where they had stalls at the annual cloth fair at St Bartholmew’s, West Smithfield, held every year on 23 – 25  August. As the trade developed a weekly cloth market was established at Blackwell Hall, Bassington Street, London. Some of these merchants were members of our Dyson family who became very wealthy.

 

Soyland    Photograph Copyright: Mark Anderson   Source: Geograph website and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link:    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

As the name suggests, Swifts Place was originally the home of the local Swift family but they had moved elsewhere by 1488 when a Christopher Dyson bought rights to the house. In 1490 Christopher Dyson took out a 46 year lease.  We know little of Christopher except that his wife was an Agnes. He was probably born about 1472 or a little earlier. It is not known whether he was the first Dyson to live at Swifts Place.  Christopher and Agnes had two known children – Henry and John.

 Turning first to John who would seem to have been the younger son, he had a large number of children: Agnes, Elizabeth, George, Gilbert, Johanna, Peter, Rosamond and John. We known  very little of what became of these children. Gilbert married an Elizabeth and they had a daughter also called Elizabeth whilst John who was baptised at Elland on 23 October 1575 married  a Sarah Denton on 10 August 1590. Their children included a Robert, possibly born about 1623 and I would like to think that this was the same Robert who had a son John baptised at Staveley, Derbyshire on 15 February 1664, thus founding the branch of the Dyson family to which I belong – but I have no proof of this. 

Source: Halifax Antiquarian Journal

Turning now to the elder son Henry born about 1529, he married an Alice and inherited Swifts Place. He was buried at Elland on 16 August 1573 and Alice was buried there on 30 January 1577. Henry and Alice had two known children – Alice and Thomas. Thomas inherited Swifts Place and married a Christabell. He was buried at Elland on 5 December 1577 and Christabell was buried there on 6 May 1602. 

 

The known children of Thomas and Christabell were Grace, Jane, Johanna, Christabell (1559),  Abraham (1563), John 1568 and Richard (1574). As the eldest son, Abraham inherited Swifts Place. He married an Alice.  Records show that in 1613 Abraham bought a messuage in Soyland and this was probably Swifts Place. Abraham was buried at Elland on 22 June 1621. Alice died in 1643. 

The known children of Abraham and Alice were Abraham (1598), Susannah (1600), Thomas (1602), Simeon (1603), Samuel (1604), and Martha (1606).  Abraham married a Dorothy Crowder in 1626 and their daughter Dorothy (born 1627) married Jeremy Bentley was the first MP for Halifax. Thomas married a Sarah Dyson from Huddersfield  and they had a called named William. Simeon inherited Swifts Hall and will be described below. Samuel married Maria Fielden in 1637 and they had a large family. What happened to Martha is unknown but her sister Susannah married a Richard Townsend. 

Source: Halifax Antiquarian Journal

Returning to Simeon Dyson – he married Martha Firth on 10 February 1625 at Elland.  A year earlier he had either rebuilt Swifts Place or encased it in stone. The initials of  SMD for Simeon and Martha Dyson, are still  to be  seen on a stone in the wall. Simeon was also responsible for installing a magnificent fireplace.  

Simeon and Martha had a large family. Their known children were:  

Susannah (1626) who married a Henry Riley. 

Simeon 1628 who pre-deceased his father and had three known children – Simeon, (1654) Martha and Mary.  It was Simeon (son of Simeon born 1628 who inherited Swifts Place under the will of his grandfather. 

Martha (1630) who married Edmund Tattershall of the Hollins, Warley. 

Abraham (1632) Joseph (1634) whose children were Elizabeth and Martha. 

Henry (1637) who married Maria Ramsden and went to live at Lower Goat House. Henry’s branch of the family will be described in later post) 

Jacob (1637) 

Mary (1639) who married a Thomas Bates

 Samuel (About 1640) The last Dyson to own Swifts Place was Simeon (born 1654) the son of the Simeon born 1628. He married Ester Clayton on 29 Sept 1678. Their known children were Hester, Hester and Simeon. Simeon born 1654 sold Swifts Place in 1690 to a member of the Hoyle family (probably Elkanah Hoyle). In 1698 Elkanah Hoyle had the house rebuilt or remodelled. Thus ended over two hundred and eighteen years of known occupancy of Swifts Place by the Dyson family. 

Sources: 

‘Upper Swift Place in Soyland’   Hugh K Kendall Halifax Antiquarian Society Journal  6 June 1915 

‘The Dyson Family Part One’   E W Crossley Halifax Antiquarian Society Journal  2 October 1917 

As explained in an  earlier post, there was only a chapelry at Linthwaite prior to 1838, the town being in the enormous parish of Almondbury which also included the whole of the town of Huddersfield. The parish registers of the  church at Almondbury, available on the International genealogical Index include innumerable Dysons from the beginning of the registers onwards. From these records I have been able to draw up the early trees of two major families – that of John Dyson and that of Edmund Dyson.  

It is not possible to tell from the registers whereabouts in the parish the members of these families lived, but undoubtedly they were close kin to the Dysons of Linthwaite and Soyland described earlier. 

 

Weavers’ Cottages at Almondbury     Photograph Copyright; Sue Trescott   

Source: Geograph website and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

The tree of John Dyson who was born about 1535 can be traced down to a great granddaughter who was baptised at Almondbury in 1609. This tree is reproduced below.

 The tree  of Edmund is, however, too large to show in chart format.He was born about 1530 at Almondbury. The name of his wife is unknown.  Edmund and his wife had fourteen known children according to the parish registers. These were John 1557, Elizabeth 1558, Agnes 1559, Joan  1560, Edward 1561, Anthony 1562, Humfri 1563, Edward 1565 who married first Isabella Marsden and then Elizabeth Cuttell, Joan 1566, Elizabeth 1567, John 1568, Jana 1569, Elizabeth 1570 and Edmund 1575. 

The descendants of Edward born 1565 and his second wife Elizabeth have been researched and placed on the internet. Their later descendents moved to Penistone and can be traced for many generations.

There seems to be general acceptance that the Dyson family originated at Linthwaite near Huddersfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The majority of those with the surname Dyson are from the West  Riding of Yorkshire and research by Professor Bryan Sykes of Oxford University ¹ has shown that the majority of the Dyson males from the West Riding whose DNA he sampled, had an identical or very similar Y chromosome structure, indicating a commonancestor.  By calculating the number of mutations which had taken place in the Y chromosomes, it seemed that the common ancestor had lived about 27¹₂  generations ago. Allowing 25 years per generation, this common ancestor would have been living about 1314.  George Redmonds, an expert on the surnames of the West Riding ² suggested that this common ancestor was likely to be a John Dyson who is named in the records of Wakefield Manor Court in 1316, and who is known to be the son of a Dyonisia of Linthwaite near Hudderfield who was a cattle stealer and who is named in the records of Wakefield Manor Court in 1280 and again in 1306.

This Dyonsia was married to a Peter Mallesheved (of Moleshead, Golcar, across the river from Linthwaite) and who also had a daughter known as Agnes Dyedokter who was living at Rastrick in 1330. ³ Linthwaite is a small town alongside the river Colne, about four miles south west of Huddersfield.  It was only a chapelry in the parish of Almondbury until 1828 when Christ Church was built. The earliest Dysons would thus have been baptized, married and buried at Almondbury church.

 The place name ‘Linthwaite’ (pronounced ‘Linfit’) is  Old Norse. It means ‘Clearing where flax is grown’.⁴ The Vikings settled in Yorkshire between 876 and 880 and Linthwaith could have been founded by them, but it is just as likely that the settlement already existed and was renamed by the invaders. A pre-Viking settlement would have been inhabited by Angles from Angeln in Schleswig Holstein at the base of the Danish peninsula, but intermingled with the Angles would have remnants of the previous Celtic population – members of the Brigantes tribe. It is thus impossible to determine the earliest origin of the family which became known as ‘Dyson.’ 

The Wakefield Manor Court Records for 1286 refer to Dyonisia de Mallesheved with  John and Adam her brothers, seizing ten cows and driving them to Dyonisia’s pound in Croslande. The Dyson home was thus somewhere in the Crosland area which lies to the south of Linthwaite. Dyonisia and Peter would appear to be sheep and cattle farmers and would seem to be well-to-do since even at this early period the family were already apparently accumulating the lands and properties which enabled them to acquire the status of yeomen later on.

South Crosland near Linthwaite   Photocopyright: Humphrey Bolton        Source: Geograph website and reproduced here under the terms of the site licence which can be viewed ot this link:

Dyonisia’s son was known both as John Dyson of Lyntwayt and as John de Langeside. After quite a search I discovered that in the 13^th century Langsett was known as Langeside. Langsett is in the parish of Penistone, and is twelve miles south east of Huddersfield. We can be quite sure that this is the correct location of ‘Langside’ as  records show that on 18 May 1367, in a quitclaim, Henry de Birley gave all rights in the messauge of Bromheved in Hallamshire to John de Langside.⁵  Broomhead  was located  just to the south of Langsett, and was in the Chapelry of Bradfield in the parish of Ecclesfield.

Langett Moors   Photograph Copyright: John Fielding    Source: Geograph Website  and reproduced in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link:  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A quitclaim is a term used to describe a document by which a person disclaims any interest in a piece of property and passes that claim to another person. Quitclaim deeds were often used when transferring properties to a relative.

I know little about Henry de Birley, except that he was a franklin (i.e. a freeholder not of noble birth but with extensive property), that he made his will on 1 May 1391 was buried on  21 June 1391 at Ecclesfield church.

John de Langside transferred his rights to trustees who in turn in 1369 transferred these rights to William son of John de Hunshelf and Agnes his wife. Later on, William’s sister, another Agnes, married John Wilson who was the heir to the Broomhead estate. ⁶ The author of the article in which this information appears states that there must have been some family connection between John de Langside and John de Hunshelf. Since we know, however, that John de Langside’s sister was an Agnes, it seems very probable that she  had married John de Hunshelf and that John de Langside was giving properties rights to his nephew William.

The Wilson line at Broomhead prospered and  during the reign of Charles I, Christopher Wilson rebuilt the house in contemporary style. This house was unfortunately demolished in the 1980s.

 John de Langside had a son called John as the records show that William, son of John de Hunshelf was to pay rent for Broomhill Manor to John, son of John de Langside, or to his sisters.⁷ 

The next Dysons who can be traced at Linthwaite are Adam Dyson and his son John. Whilst we cannot be certain  where Adam Dyson fits into the early tree, for the sake of simplicity I have shown him in my chart as the grandson of John de Langside. In his history of Almondbury, published in 1882 ⁸ Charles Augustus Hulbert states that in the reign of Edward III (1327 – 1377)  John Brockholes granted the messuage of Over Brockholes or Bank End to John Dyson, son of Adam Dyson of Lynthwaite.

Mr Hulbert speculates that John, son of Adam Dyson, may have been the occupant of the old house called ‘The Kitchen’ , attached to Linthwaite Hall but nearer to Slaithwaite  ‘where the family of Dyson remained until about 30 years ago (i.e. about 1850) when the last member – a blacksmith of eccentric character – expired.’ ⁹ Just south of Lingards, Slaithwaite, is an area called ‘Kitchen Clough’ which would seem to be the location of the house to which Mr Hulbert refers. This location is quite close to Linthwaite Hall. There is no evidence that the Hall itself was ever occupied by the Dyson family.

Kitchen Clough, Slaithwaite    Photograph Copyright:  Sue Trescott    Source: Geograph Website and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Also living at Linthwaite during the reign of Edward III, in the area called ‘Hoyle House’ was a Jenkyn Dyson about whom I know nothing further.

Far away from Yorkshire, at Inkberrow in Worcestershire, a Dyson family was well established by the 1470s when a Henry Dyson who lived at Nobury Manor in Inkberrow, built or rebuilt the tower of Inkberrow Church. ¹⁰This Henry was probably born about 1440. Since the manor house at Nobury was in ruins in the 1390s, the father of Henry must been responsible for the building of the new manor house on a site closer to Inkberrow church.

The Dysons of Inkberrow used a crest and coat of arms which was identical to that used later on by the Dyson families at Halifax. The earliest Dyson  I have traced in Worcestershire was a John Dyesone who paid 9d at Terdebigge et Bentleye in the Lay Subsidy of 1327. No Dysons, however, are mentioned in the Lay Sunsidies for Worcestershire of 1332/3, 1340, 1346 and 1358. If the Dysons of Inkberrow are descended from the Dysons of Linthwaite then the migration of a member of the family to Worcestershire must have taken place during the reign of Edward III. On my chart I have shown a speculative link to Adam Dyson of Linthwaite.

The Tower of Inkberrow Church     Photograph copyright: Phillip Halling   Source: Geograph website and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link:    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

The next early Dysons to be traced at Linthwaite are a John Dyson who was living in 1492 and an Edward Dyson at Crosland, living in 1545. These Dysons are mentioned in the Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield.

The Dysons spread out rapidly from Linthwaite into the surrounding area, but many families remained in the town itself and in the neighbouring town of Slaithwaite. Of course boundaries  will have changed over the years, but the following figures give a general idea of the vitality of the Dyson family in their original heartland:

Year	Linthwaite	Slaithwaite	Total
1851	101	49	150
1861	152	137	289
1871	243	124	367
1881	290	117	407
1891	254	103	357
1901	294	121	415
1911	279	291	570
2010	141	73	214

I am most grateful to my cousin, Hazel Wells (nee Dyson) of Garrowby who first drew my attention to the research of Professor Bryan Sykes, and to Gordon Dyson of Manchester for his research into the Wakefield Manor Court Rolls which has provided an outline of the early Dyson family at Linthwaite.

No doubt a researcher with easy access to the archives at Halifax, Huddersfield and Wakefield could discover more about the early Dysons in the Linthwaite area, but at least we now have an outline of their history.

Notes

1 ‘Adam’s Curse’ by Bryan Sykes  Bantam Press 2003 page 198

2 Ibid

 3 ‘History of Brighouse, Rastrick and Hipperholme’ J Horsfall Turner   Published by Thomas Harrison and Sons  Bingley 1893 page 72

4 ‘Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names’ Eilert Ekwall

Oxford Clarendon Press 1964

5 ‘On the Origin, descent and the alliances of the family of Wilson of Bromhead’   Rev. Joseph Hunter   Article in ‘Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal’ Volume V  1879

6 Ibid

7 Ibid

8 ‘Annals of the Church and Parish of Almondbury, Yorkshire’   Charles Augustus Hulbert  Longmans  London 1882

9 Ibid

10 Jeff Dyson’s website on the Dysons of Worcestershire    http://www.dyson-family-of-worcestershire.co.uk/

  

The Dyson family is believed to originate at Linthwaite near Huddersfield, and gradually spread into the surrounding area and up to Halifax. This is the storyof a famous polician who was a Dyson from Halifax.

 One of the most eminent members of the Dyson family of the West Riding of Yorkshire was undoubtedly the Right Honourable Jeremiah Dyson who was Clerk of the House of Commons during the reign of George III.  Far from being the ‘son of a tailor’ as Sir Robert Walpole allegedly claimed, Jeremiah Dyson was in fact the son of a very wealthy clothier merchant of Halifax and London.

 

Jeremiah Dyson about 1760  painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds Source: Wikimedia Foundation  

The majority of those with the surname Dyson are from the West Riding of Yorkshire and research by Professor Bryan Sykes of Oxford University has shown that the majority of the Dyson males from the West Riding whose DNA he sampled, had an identical or very similar Y chromosome structure, indicating a common ancestor.¹    By calculating the number of mutations which had taken place in the Y chromosomes,  it seemed that the common ancestors had lived about 27¹₂ generations ago. Allowing 25 years per generation, this  common ancestor would have been living about  1314. George Redmonds, an expert on the surnames of the West Riding suggested that this common ancestor was likely to be a John Dyson who is named in the records of Wakefield Manor Court in 1316,¹ and who is known to be the son of a Dyonisia of Linthwaite near Hudderfield who was a cattle stealer and who is named in the records of Wakefield Manor Court in 1280 and again in 1306. This Dyonsia was married to a Peter Mallesheved and also had a daughter known as Agnes Dyedokter who was living at Rastrick in 1330.² 

Dionysia’s descendants thrived and spread out widely around Linthwaite, some of them establishing themselves at Soyland, a few miles to the west of Halifax where Jeremiah Dyson’s first definite ancestor, a Christopher Dyson, was living in the latter part of the fifteenth century.

E. W. Crossley, in a paper on the Dyson family³  describes the Dysons of Soyland as:

 ‘a typical yeoman family…. Occupiers of small parcels of land, or at the most of a few acres. After a while by dint of industry and thrift they became the owners, under the Lord of the Manor, of small tenements, which as time wore on, they gradually and substantially increased both in extent and number. At length, by their shrewd business acumen, their wealth so increased that they became prominent among their neighbours as owners of land. They traded, in their capacity as clothiers and merchants, in the great metropolis.’

Jeremiah Dyson’s grandfather, a direct descendant of Christopher Dyson of Soyland, was a  Ely Dyson (1654 - 1706) who married a Jennet Rooke. Their son, Jeremiah Dyson (father of the Jeremiah of the House of Commons), was baptised at Elland in 1690.  He married an Elizabeth. We can be confident that this tree is correct as E W Crosley states that from Jeremiah born 1690 descend the Dysons of Golders Hill and Petworth ⁴ and it is known that Jeremiah of the House of Commons owned Golders Hill (at Hampstead, London), later on.

Jeremiah Senior and Elizabeth had two known children: Sarah and jeremiah born about 1822.  By 1729 when Jeremiah Senior died, they were living in London, probably at Bartholomew Close, Smithfield, although this may have been Jeremiah’s place of work.

 

Click to enlarge

Smithfield Gate St Bartholomew The Great 

 Source: ‘The Records of St Bartholomew’s Priory and the Church of St Bartholomew The Great’

E A Webb Oxford University Press 1921

Jeremiah Junior (or Jeremiah as he will be simply termed hereafter) used part of his legacy to study medicine for two years at the University of Edinburgh. He continued his studies at the University of Leyden In Holland where it seems that his studies were in Civil Law.  He matriculated at Leyden on 4 October 1742.⁶  During his studies, Jeremiah Dyson became great friends with the poet Mark Akenside with whom he shared a house in Holland.

 

Mark Akenside              Source: ‘Poetical Works of Mark Akenside’ 

Published by William Pickering  London 1835

On his return to London, Jeremiah was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn and obtained a post as a subaltern clerk in the House of Commons. He now purchased a house at Golders Hill, Hampstead where his friend Mark Akenside could live. When his medical practice at Hampstead failed, Jeremiah  provided a house in Bloomsbury for the poet and ‘with an ardour of friendship that has not many examples’ [Dr Johnson]  provided him with an allowance of £300 a year.⁷ 

In 1748, Nicholas Hardinge resigned as Clerk to the House of Commons and Jeremiah Dyson purchased the post for £6000. Despite buying his own post, Jeremiah condemned such procedures and he appointed all his subordinates on their merits. He appointed John Hatsell as Clerk Assistant without payment, forgoing the £3000 that Jeremiah might have realised by sale of this post.⁷

Jeremiah Dyson also refused to sell the Clerkship when he retired from that post in 1762.

The Speaker and the Clerks of the House of Commons in the time of Sir Robert Walpole

Source: ‘At the Sign of the Barber’s Pole’ by William Andrews   Published at Cottingham, Yorkshire 1904

Digitalised by Project Gutenberg

The office of Clerk of the House of Commons ‘is nearly six hundred and fifty years old. He or she is the principal adviser of the House, its committees, the Speaker and other occupants of the Chair and of members individually, on the practice and procedure of the House and the formal and informal rules which govern its everyday activities. The Clerk sits at the Table of the House, strategically sited close to the Speaker’⁸  

On 11 June 1756 Jeremiah Dyson married Dorothy Dyson at the Church of St Bartholmew the Great, West Smithfield, London. The witnesses were (Ely Dyson, Dorothy Dyson’s father) and Mark Akenside, (Jeremiah’s friend.) Dorothy was Jeremiah’s first cousin once removed. She was baptised at Elland, Yorkshire on 12 December 1706, the daughter of  Ely Dyson and his wife Deborah Holme.

 

The Church of St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, looking east

Copyright: John Salmon     Reproduced from Geograph in accordance with the terms of that website which may be read at this link:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Marriage certificate of Jeremiah Dyson   Copyright: Church of St Bartholomew the Great and reproduced here by kind permission of the Parish Office

In his ‘Ode on Recovering’ Mark Akenside commemorated the marriage of Jeremiah and Dorothy:

‘While around his sylvan scene

My DYSON led the white-winged hours

Oft from th’ Athenian academic bowers

Their sages came; oft heard our lingering walk;

The Mantuan music, warbling o’er the green, -

And oft did Tully’s reverend shade,

Though much for liberty afraid,

With us of letter’d ease or virtuous glory talk.

 But other GUESTS were on their way,

And reach’d, ere long this favour’d grove;

Ev’n the celestial progeny of Jove,

Bright VENUS! with her all-subduing son,

Whose golden shaft most willingly obey

The best and wisest. As they came,

Glad HYMEN waved his genial flame,

And sang their happy gifts, and praised their spotless throne. 

I saw, when through yon festive gate

He led along his chosen maid,

And to my friend with smiles presenting said: 

‘Receive that fairest wealth, which Heaven assign’d

To human fortune. Did the lonely state

One wish, one utmost hope, confess?

Behold! she comes t’ adorn and bless;

Comes, worthy of thy heart, and equal to thy mind.” ‘ ⁹

Jeremiah and Dorothy had eight known children: Henry, Jeremiah (1757), Elizabeth (1758), Dorothy (1760 who died in 1778), Francis (1761 who died in 1769), George (1764), Charlotte (1767 who died in 1782) and Frances (1769).

Before proceeding to Jeremiah’s career in the House of Commons, consideration should be given to his coat of arms and crest. The coat consisted of a shield divided vertically – the left side being gold and the right being blue, with a half-eclipsed golden sun superimposed. The sun would appear to a a pun on Dyson – i.e. ‘dying sun’. The crest consisted of a pascal lamb with a golden ring, on a green mount.

 

It is not clear how the Yorkshire Dysons acquired these arms and crest. They are first referred to as the arms of an Elizabeth Dyson, an heiress at Gunston in Staffordshire in the time of Elizabeth I. (The sun in this coat of arms is not elipsed).¹⁰ We do not know who Elizabeth was but we know that about 1552 a Margery Dyson, daughter and heir of Robert Dyson of Inkberrow, Worcestershire, married  William Fowke of  Gunston. ¹¹ 

This coat of arms (but with the sun eclipsed and with the addition of the crest described above) was attested on the Heralds Visitation of Staffordshire in 1663/4.The depiction of the coat and crest in the published pedigree is the one on which I have based the coat and crest below.¹²  

 The existence of early Dysons in Worcestershire came as a complete surprise to me. There was a John Dyesone who paid 9d in the Lay Subsidy of 1327 at Tardebigge in Worcestershire, but no Dysons appear in Worcestershire in the Lay Subsidies of 1332/3, 1340, 1346 0r 1358. It is fun to speculate that the John of 1327 was Dyonisia’s son cooling his heels a long way from Yorkshire after a further brush with the law. By about 1400, however, a Dyson family was well established at Inkberrow in Worcestershire where they  built a new Manor House and about 1470 built the church tower. The first of this family we can put a name to was a Henry Dyson who lived in the new Manor House and who was the ancestor of a very large family which still  continues today.¹³ 

It seems very likely that the Worcestershire family obtained  the coat of arms before the Yorkshire family and that the latter adopted it later on.  It was certainly used by the Dyson family branch at Clay House, Greetland, Halifax in the latter part of the eighteenth century¹⁴ and also by the branch at Willow Hall, Cote Hill, Halifax.¹⁵

I would like to think that the Worcestershire Dysons were a very early offshoot of the Lithwaite family but it is possible that they were indigenous to Worcestershire and that the Yorkshire Dysons simply made use of an existing coat of arms and crest without any  official right to do so.

 I now turn to the career of Jeremiah Dyson. Initially he was regarded as a Whig but when George III came to the throne in 1760 he began to side with the Tories  and his closest associates were within the group known as ‘the King’s Friends’. In 1762 Jeremiah resigned the Clerkship to enable him to take a more partisan role in politics. From 1762 to 1768 he was MP for Great Yarmouth, from 1768 to 1774 he was MP for Weymouth and from 1774 until his death in 1776 he was MP for Horsham. ¹⁶ 

Jeremiah held a number of high offices – for a short period in 1761 he was a Commissioner to execute the Office of the Keeper of the Privy seal, from May 1762 to April 1764 he acted as Joint Secretary to the Treasury and Secretary to the First Lord and from 1768 to 1774 he was a Lord of the Treasury. In March 1774 he obtained the post of Cofferer of the Household and was also appointed to the Privy Council.¹⁷ 

Although amongst his colleagues there was general agreement as to Jeremiah Dyson’s great knowledge of parliamentary forms and precedents, he was not liked by all.  The Marquis of Rockingham, whilst Premier, found Jeremiah to be a thorn in his side with his frequent criticisms and this came to head on 3 June 1766 when Jeremiah opposed the consideration by the House on that particular day of a message from the Crown regarding  a settlement for the Princess Caroline Matilda who was about to be married to the King of Denmark. Rockingham subsequently asked the King to dismiss Jeremiah Dyson but George III was unwilling to do this.^{16  19}

Jeremiah consistently opposed liberal proposals. He was against the repeal of the Stamp Act and supported Lord North’s measures against the American Colonies. ¹⁷ 

In his ‘Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham’, George Thomas, Earl of Albemarle made vitriolic comments about Jeremiah Dyson:

 ‘Among the most active opponents of the repeal of the Stamp Act was Mr Jeremiah Dyson, member for Great Yarmouth, and one of the Lords of Trade. He was one of those parasitical persons who serve governments a little, and disgrace them much. He was by birth a tailor, by education a Dissenter, and, from interest or vanity, in his earlier years a Republican. But he was not a person whose conscience at any time stood in the way of his preferment, and his republicanism speedily yielded to more profitable investments in politics. He was a quick, shrewd man, with a cool head and a prompt tongue, and an atrabilious temperament, that made him impatient of repose and obscurity. He entered Parliament with a character for holding anti-monarchical opinions, although he was at the time “secretly sold to Lord Bute.” For some time he was supposed to be a staunch supporter of George Grenville, but when the Grenvillian horizon became overcast, Jeremiah tacked to windward. Shortly after this desertion, having assumed a bag instead of a tye-wig, Lord Gower aptly remarked, “It was because no tie would hold him.” Whatever party he espoused, Dyson’s habits of business, skill in parliamentary forms, specious demeanor and general courtesy, rendered him a serviceable adjunct; nor, though he possessed neither fancy nor eloquence, was he by any means contemptible as a speaker and pamphleteer. But the best of his good gifts was his accommodating conscience. He was a ready-made ‘King’s friend,’ even before he attracted the royal notice.” ¹⁹ 

Charles: Marquis of Rockingham

Source: ‘Pictorial Fieldbook of the Revolution’  Benson J Locking  Published 1850

Digitalised by Project Gutenberg

Although the above paints rather an unpleasant picture of Jeremiah, we must assume a certain amount of bias in the comments made George Thomas - the biographer of Lord Rockingham – who was Jeremiah’s enemy.

A very different portrait of Jeremiah Dyson is provided by a letter of 17April 1744 from his friend Mark Akenside at Leyden:

 ‘Believe me, my dear, my honour’d friend, I look upon my connection with you as the most fortunate circumstance of my life. I never think of it without being happier and better for the reflection. I injoy, by means of it, a more animated, a more perfect relish of every social, of every natural pleasure. My own character, by means of it, is become an object of veneration and applause to myself. My sense of the perfection and goodness of the Supreme Being is nobler and more affecting. It is that good, that beauty  with which my mind is fill’d, and which serves as a sacred antidote against the influence of that moral evil which is in the world, when it would perplex and distress me. It has the force of an additional conscience, of a new principle of religion: nor do I remember one instance of moral good or evil offer’d to my choice of late, in which the idea of your mind and manners did not come in along with the essential beauty of virtue and the sanction of the divine laws to guide and determine me. It has inlarg’d my knowledge of human nature, and ascertain’d my ideas of the oeconomy of the universe. In whatever light I consider, with whatever principle or sensation I compare it, it still continues to receive strength from the best and highest, and in return confirm and inlarge them’. ¹⁸

In February 1770, Jeremiah Dyson was  granted a pension on the Irish List of £1,500 a year for his own life and that of his three sons, but on 25 November 1771 there was a fierce debate about this in the Committee of Supply of the Irish House of Commons and the pension was condemned by 107 ayes to 106 noes and Jeremiah’s name was  struck off the list. ¹⁷

 During the debate the following scathing remarks were made by Henry Flood: ‘

Who does not know Jeremiah Dyson Esq? We know little of him, indeed, otherwise than by his name on the Pension List. There are others who know him by his actions. This is he who is endued with those happy talents that he has served every administration, and served every one with equal success – a civil, pliable, good-natured gentleman who will do what you will, and say what you please – for payment’ ¹⁹

Rt. Hon. Henry Flood

Source: ‘The Story of Ireland’ Hon. Emily Lawless with some additions by Mrs Arthur Bronson 1896

Digitalised by Project Gutenberg

Jeremiah Dyson by this time was suffering from ill health and in October 1774 he was seized with a stroke of the palsey and withdrew from the business of the House.  In  about 1765 Jeremiah had purchased  a large estate at Stoke Park near Guildford and it was there that he passed away on 16 December  1776. His wife Dorothy had died many years before on 16 December 1769. A white marble monument in the church of St John The Baptist at Stoke next Guildford commemorates Jeremiah, his wife Dorothy, three of their children and Elizabeth the wife of his son and heir, Jeremiah. ¹⁶

Memorial to Jeremiah Dyson and members of his family  Church of St John the Baptist, Stoke next Guildford

Copyright: Parish Office of Stoke next Guildford and reproduced here by their kind permission.

A man of great talent and skills, a friend of George III, the poet Mark Akenside, and the novelist Samuel Richardson amongst others, Jeremiah Dyson undoubtedly had many failings but  he was perhaps not so very different from the politicians of our own  times. We have read much about him from the view point of his enemies, but, as attested by Dr Samuel Johnson, to his own friends he was both loyal and generous and Jeremiah deserves to be remembered alongside the many other distinguished members of the Dyson family of Halifax and Huddersfield. 

Notes

1 ‘Adams Curse’ by Bryan Sykes  Bantam Press 2003  page 198

2 ‘History of Brighouse, Rastrick and Hipperholme’ J Horsfall Turner

Published by Thomas Harrison and Sons  Bingley 1893  page 72

3 ‘The Dyson Family’  Part 1   E W Crossley  Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society  1917 page  289.

4 The Dyson Family’  Part 2   E W Crossley  Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society  1918 page  184

5 The Will of  Jeremiah Dyson of Bartholomew Close, Smithfield

The National Archive      Cat. Ref: Prob  11/635

6 ‘Index to English Speaking Students who have graduated at the University of Leyden’   Edward Peacock    Index Society

Published by Longmans and Green  London  1883

7 ‘Dictionary of National Biography’  Volume 16

Oxford University Press

8 ‘The Clerk of the House’  Factsheet G16  General Series

House of Commons Information Office  October 2006

9  ‘Life, Writings and Genius of Akenside with some account of his friends’   Charles Bucke

Published by John Cochrane and Co.  London 1832

10 ‘The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales’ Sir Bernard Burke    Published by Harrison of Pall Mall  1884

11 ‘Fowke Pedigree’ at stirnet.com  

12 ‘Staffordshire Pedigrees based on the Visitation of William Dugdale  1663/4’   Gregory King  page 77    Published by the Harleian Society Volume 63   1912

13 Jeff Dyson  http://www.dyson-family-of-worcestershire.co.uk/

14 ‘History of Halifax’ page 200   Watson

15 ‘The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales’ Sir Bernard Burke    Published by Harrison of Pall Mall  1884

16 ‘Dictionary of National Biography’  Volume 16

Oxford University Press

17  Article by William Prideaux Courtney published in 1888, from the website www.historyhome.co.uk

18 ‘Life of Akenside’ by Rev. Alexander Dyce, within ‘ The Poetical works of Mark Akenside   Published by William Pickering   London 1835

19 ‘Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham and his Contemporaries’

George Thomas Earl of Albemarle 

Published by Richard Bentley   London 1852

Although this blog is primarily concerned with the Watmough - Watmer - Watmore - Whatmore family I am finding it difficult to find new material. If you have a story suitable for this blog, please do send in  to me ( in Microsoft Word format) with any relevant pictures for which you hold the copyright or which the copyright holder has given permission for the picture(s) to appear on this blog. Please send pictures in jpeg format. Stories should not feature living persons nor be of a nature to cause embarrassment or distress to possible readers. Many thanks

Rhys D Dyson Whatmore  rhyswhatmore@btinternet.com

Over the next few weeks I shall be posting stories about the Dyson family of the West Riding of Yorkshire. My paternal grandmother was Mary Ann (Polly) Dyson born about 1876 in Sheffield. Hopefully these stories will be of interest to members of the Dyson family but I hope that others readers will also enjoy them. We start with a murder!!  This story also appeared in the ‘Sheffield Star’ issue of Saturday 20 March 2010.

Many of the older residents of the City of Sheffield will know the story of Charles Peace and how he murdered a man in cold blood at Banner Cross, Sheffield in 1876. Few residents, however, will be able to name the victim – Arthur Dyson. This is his story.

Arthur Dyson was baptised on 6 October 1828 at Tinsley, a couple of miles east of Sheffield. His father was a Henry Dyson who had married Eliza Bingham on 22 November 1827 at Chesterfield. The family appears to have been well-to-do as Henry Dyson is described in the censuses as a Land Agent and Valuer and a Farmer of about 250 acres. The family were able to afford to send two of their sons to boarding school as in 1841 Arthur and his brother William were pupils at a school run by a William Wright, at Steel Bank, Crookes.

The Firs at Tinsley - The childhood home of Arthur Dyson

Image from the collections in the Sheffield Local Studies Library.

Published by the kind permission of the Head of |Leisure Services

From the website: http://www.picturesheffield.com/

 

 In 1851 Arthur Dyson was at home with his parents at Tinsley. He is described in the census as a Civil Engineer and Surveyor.

 Sometime after 1851, Arthur emigrated to the United States where he worked as a Civil Engineer on the railways. In 1866, he married an English girl called Katherine, at Cleveland, Ohio. In 1873 their son William H Dyson was born at St Louis in Missouri. Arthur and Katherine may have had other children, but these do not show up in the later UK censuses. 

Eventually the Dyson family decided to return to England arriving back in late 1873 or early 1874. Arthur obtained a post with the North Eastern Railway. 

In the story of Charles Peace as published in the ‘Penny Dreadful ‘Famous Crimes Past and Present’ edited by Harold Furness  (Volume 1 Issue 1) there is a description of Arthur Dyson: 

‘In person he was a striking figure, over six feet in height, straight as a lath, with black hair and eyebrows, and piercing eyes which twinkled like beads in his face. Indeed, his height was a standing joke among his fellows, and it was found necessary in the office in which he worked to procure a special table for him at draw at, since he was unable to make use of that provided for the general draughtsmen. He was haughty, reserved and shy, and was generally considered by his fellow-employees to have descended from a higher station in life. He was a gentleman, a man of honour and of culture, and he often found it difficult to forget the fact, though at times it escaped his memory that the true gentleman is courteous to all. Those who knew him best say that he was sensitive to a degree, and that in company with congenial souls was one of the most charming men who could be met, but in the presence of his intellectual inferiors his charm was lost – dried up, as it were’

 From the same source is a description of Kathleen Dyson: 

‘… plebeian to her very soul, course, unintellectual, the very one whom naturally he [Arthur Dyson] would most scorn, for the hawk does not mate with the dove, nor the eagle with the owl. She came from the lower ranks of the people, and it was always a matter of wonder to his colleagues why he married her. She had neither charm, wit nor beauty; her figure was awkward, her conversation witness.’ 

The rest of this account can be read at this link:http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2008/11/charles-peace-i.html 

The above description of Mrs Dyson may, however, be far from accurate, as in another account she is described as ‘an attractive woman, buxom and blooming, dark-haired and about twenty-five years of age.’ The above is taken from ‘A Book of Remarkable Criminals’ by H B Irving published in 1918 by Cassell and Company. This source forms the basis of the rest of the story I am retelling here. The book itself can be read on-line or downloaded at this link: http://www.archive.org/details/bookofremarkable00irvirich 

The Dyson family had moved into a terraced house in Britannia Road, Darnall, Sheffield, but little did they know that Charles Peace, the picture frame maker, who lived two doors away with his wife and daughter, was secretly a cat burglar.  

To begin with the Dyson and  Peace families got on well together, but this changed when Arthur Dyson became aware of the attentions to his wife being paid by Charlie Peace.  Charlie was later to swear that Kathleen Dyson had been his mistress but where is no way to verify this. It is known, however, that she had been photographed with Charlie, that he had given her a ring and that they had made visits together to music halls and public houses. It is unclear what attraction Charlie could have had for Arthur’s wife. He is reputed to have been a short little man with scanty hair and a malignant expression, although in the only known photograph of him, dating from 1864, he appears reasonably personable.

Photograph of Charlie Peace in 1864

Copyright: ‘Sheffield Star’ and reproduced here by kind permission

of the Deputy Editor

 As the months went by, Arthur Dyson became more and more exasperated with the situation and in June 1876 he threw into Peace’s garden a card on which was written, ‘Charles Peace is requested not to interfere with my family’. About this time, Arthur Dyson lost his job with the railway after failing to appear at a station to which he had been sent on duty. As this is completely out of character, it would seem that Arthur could by now think of little else but the relations between Peace and his wife. 

 

Charlie Peace stalking Mrs Dyson 

Drawing by Cyclops from ‘Famous Crimes Past and present

Vol 1 Issue  1 From ‘Yesterdays Papers’ blog by John Adcock :

http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2008/11/charles-peace-i.html

 

In July 1876, Peace tried to trip up Arthur Dyson in the street and that same night he came across Mrs Dyson in the street and threatened to blow out her brains and those of her husband. 

 This was too much for Arthur Dyson who took out a summons against Peace and a warrant for his arrest was issued. Charlie Peace and his family fled to Hull. Whilst living there he travelling to Manchester to commit a burglary during which he was nearly caught. In escaping, he fired at and killed a policeman. Charles also paid visits to Darnall, where he was seen lurking near the Dysons’ home. 

In desperation, Arthur Dyson sought somewhere far from Darnall for his family to live, and found a house at Banner Cross on the far side of the city. On moving into their new home on 29 October 1876, the first person they saw outside was Charlie Peace.

 

 The Dyson’s home at Banner Cross

The house is to the right of the alleyway in which Arthur Dyson was murdered.

Copyright: The ‘Sheffield Star’ and reproduced here by kind permission of the Deputy Editor.

Later on, when Arthur Dyson passed Charlie in the street, the latter took out a revolver, but Arthur ignored him and passed on. Arthur Dyson would have done well to have observed the manner of Charlie Peace on this occasion. The latter was now full of grievance and agitation at Arthur Dyson for having had to leave his home in Darnall. 

Things came to a head on 29 November 1879. Charlie Peace had spent all day drinking at Eccleshall, close to Banner Cross. At six o’clock in the evening he made his way to the home of the Vicar of Eccleshall, a Reverend Newman, to whom he told the story of his grievances. Charlie Peace claimed that Arthur Dyson intended to take further proceedings against him. If only the Vicar had taken some sort of effective action at this point the subsequent murder might have been prevented. As it was, the Vicar simply exacted a promise from Peace that he would not go near the Dysons that night. Peace’s feelings of anger and vengeance lured him back to the Dysons home, and by eight o’clock in the evening he was watching the alleyway beside the house. Soon Mrs Dyson appeared and Peace confronted her, holding his revolver. Hearing voices, Arthur Dyson appeared. Peace fired two shots – first hitting the lintel of the passageway door, the second striking Arthur Dyson in the temple. He died some two hours later. 

The Murder of Arthur Dyson  An Illustration  by Cyclops from ‘Famous Crimes’ Vol 1 Issue 1. Copyright: Evans-Skinner Crime Archive Ref: ES7 and reproduced here by their kind permission  From the website:

http://www.historybytheyard.co.uk/

Arthur Dyson, aged 48, was buried on 2  December 1876 at All Saints Church, Eccleshall.

 I shall not recount the story of the subsequent arrest, trial and execution of Charlie Peace – it can be found in the sources already referred to – and this is, after all, the story of Arthur Dyson. 

After the murder, Katherine Dyson returned to Cleveland, Ohio, presumably leaving her son, William H Dyson and any other children she may have had, back in England. The following report from the New York Times of 10 March 1879, gives us some insight into her character: 

Mrs Arthur Dyson’s Drunken Spree

Cleveland March 9 

‘Mrs Arthur Dyson, whose husband was murdered by the notorious English criminal, Charles Peace, returned on Saturday to her home in this city from England, where she had been to testify in the trial of Peace. She has been in the habit of drinking to excess since the murder of her husband, and her friends have kept a close watch upon her  on that account. Today being pleasant, she desired to walk abroad, and was accompanied by her niece, some 12 years old. As soon as she was fairly away from home she began visiting saloons, where she treated everybody with whom she came into contact, and was having a good time generally until she became drunk and quarrelsome, when she was arrested and locked up in the nearest police station. She had nearly $100 in her pocket, and was elegantly dressed. During the afternoon she became sober, and was released on bail. She is a fine-looking woman and evidently well educated.’ 

William H Dyson, aged 9, the only known child of Arthur and Katherine Dyson was at school at Potter Street, Worksop, Nottinghamshire in 1881. In 1891 he was a ‘Mining Engineer (Pupil)’ in lodgings at Eckington, Derbyshire.  In 1901, aged 19, William was living with his uncle William Dyson at Tickhill, Yorkshire. William is described in this census as a ‘Mining Engineer.’ William H Dyson does not appear in the 1911 census, but I have been unable to trace his death. Perhaps he emigrated and started a new life far away from Sheffield and the tragic memories the city must have had for him. 

I now turn to the ancestors of Arthur Dyson.  

 

Arthur’s father, as already explained, was a Henry Dyson who was baptized on 18 February 1802 at Tinsley and married in 1827 Eliza Bingham (born about 1803 at Tinsley). Henry lived all his life at Tinsley and died there in 1864. Eliza continued to run the farm at Tinsley after Henry’s death but by 1881 she had gone to live at Beech Hill Road, Eccleshall where she died in 1882.

 Arthur’s grandfather appears to have been another Arthur Dyson who was baptised on 1 January 1766 at Tinsley and who married a Mary Genn on 13 October 1800 at St Peter’s, Sheffield (now the Cathedral). Arthur and Mary Dyson had three known children – Henry (1802),  Jane  (1804) and Emma (1814).

 Emma Dyson married an Edward Bingham on 9 March 1835 at Tinsley.  One of their children was the distinguished Colonel Sir  John Edward Bingham who was born on 27 July 1839 at Ranmoor, Sheffield.  He married Maria Fawcett on 9 March 1863. They lived at West Leas, a large Victorian house at Ranmoor Sheffield which is now the Ranmoor Parish Centre.

West Leas, Ranmoor – the  home of the Bingham Family

 Copyright: Ranmore Parish Centre and reproduced here by their kind permission

They had one known child – Sir Albert Edward Bingham born in 1869 at Ranmoor.  John Edward Bingham was the nephew of Henry Hall who joined with George Walker in 1848 to form the prestigious Sheffield silverware and cutlery firm of ‘Walker and Hall’ (now part of Mappin and Webb). John Edward Bingham became Manager of this firm and continued in this position until his death when his son took over as Manager.  

 John Edward Bingham commissioned the ‘Bingham Yorkshire Field-Firing Trophy’ which weighed 1,500 ounces of gilded silver and reputedly cost £800. The trophy was won in 1912 and again in 1913 by the Brighouse Volunteers. The competition was then suspended and the trophy was displayed in the local museum at Brighouse until the 1940s but has not been seen since that time.   

Source: ‘Walker and Hall’ catalogue

John Edward Bingham also  presented the ‘Bingham Challenge Shield’ to the Yorkshire Volunteers.

Source: ‘Walker and Hall’ Catalogue

 John Edward Bingham, who was created a baronet in 1903, was an Honorary Colonel of the West Riding Divisional Royal Engineers and commanded the First West Yorkshire Royal Engineers for 17 years.  He served as Master Cutler of the Company of Cutlers of Hallamshire in 1881, a post that his son also held in 1918. John Edward Bingham was also a leading Sheffield Protestant and Orangeman , speaking on many platforms over the years. In 1912, at the age of 73, he went specially to Boston in America to put a peace resolution to the Congress of the International Chambers of Commerce. Colonel Sir John Edward Bingham passed away on 18 March 1915 in the Marylebone Registration District, London,

 To return to the ancestors of the Arthur Dyson who was murdered – his great grandfather was a Thomas Dyson who married a Mary Kirk on 11 June 1765 at Tinsley. Mary Kirk was baptised in 1744, so Thomas Dyson was probably born about that date as well. There seem to be no Thomas Dyson baptised in Sheffield or Tinsley in the 1740s, but there is a record on the International Genealogical Index of a Thomas Dyson born about 1741 at Staveley, Derbyshire. The baptism of this Thomas does not in fact appear in the Staveley Parish registers, but obviously someone possesses evidence that a Thomas Dyson was born thereabouts in the 1740s. The Dyson family of Staveley, which is my own branch of the Dyson family, is described in some detail in earlier posts.  

The Staveley branch of the Dyson family appears to have been founded by a Robert Dyasson who had his son John  baptised at Staveley on 15 February 1664. This Robert is described as ‘a traveller’ and I have speculated that he was a member of the Dyson family of Swifts Place, Soyland, near Halifax. The next Dysons to appear in the Staveley  registers are a Peter Dyson baptised in 1702 and a Thomas Dyson baptised in 1705. These were the children of a John and Elizabeth Dyson of the Forge. This John would appear to be the grandson of Robert Dyasson.  The parish registers of Tinsley show that a John Dyson married a Ruth Snydall on 6 January 1722 and this John seems to have been of ‘Forge’ Derbyshire. Whilst this could mean any forge in the county, in fact there is a John and Ruth Dyson at the Forge in Staveley in the 1730s and 1740s. Their link to Tinsley is provided by a removal certificate of 1744 of a John Dyerson, his wife Ruth and their children from Staveley to Attercliffe (the next parish to Tinsley).  If John Dyson’s settlement rights were in Attercliffe, he must have been born or lived there and in fact we know that John and Ruth had a son William baptised at Tinsley on 21 July 1723. There is thus a clear link between the Dysons at Staveley and those at Tinsley. Thomas Dyson, the great grandfather of the Arthur Dyson cannot be the son of John and Ruth as they had a son called Thomas baptised in 1735, but I think it very likely that Arthur Dyson’s ancestor Thomas was the son of one of John’s brothers – Peter born 1702  or Thomas born 1705 at Staveley. 

In this last section of the story I will turn to the known  siblings of Arthur Dyson. These were Henry John Dyson born 1829, William Dyson born 1831, Frances Ann Dyson born 1833, Eliza Mary Dyson born 1834, Agnes J Dyson born 1838 and Henry Hall Dyson born  1842. 

Henry John Dyson appears to have died young as his parents baptised a further son as Henry Hall Dyson in 1842. 

 William Dyson never married and his sister Agnes lived with him after the death of their mother, acting as housekeeper. In 1871 William Dyson had taken over the running of Manor House Farm, Tinsley, which was adjacent to the family farm which was still being run by his mother. By 1881, however, William was running Goldthorpe Farm at Hodsock, Nottinghamshire – a farm of 420 acres employing 9 men. They were still there in 1891 but by 1901 William had retired and had gone with his sister to live at Tickhill in Yorkshire.  William died between 1901 and 1911.  Agnes was at Highland Grove, Worksop in 1911, living on private means. She died in 1921 in the Worksop Registration District. 

Frances Ann Dyson married John Ismay Fisher in 1879 in the Eccleshall Bierlow Registration District.  In 1881 they were living at Harworth, Nottinghamshire where John was a farmer of 520 acres, employing 4 men.  John died in 1886. In 1891, at the time of the census, Frances Ann was visiting her cousin Charles H Bingham, at Eccleshall. Francis Ann Dyson died in 1900 in the Doncaster Registration District. 

Eliza Mary Dyson was living with her mother at Eccleshall at the time of the 1881 census, but I not been able to trace her thereafter. Henry Hall Dyson married Rosa Willott in 1871 in the Scarborough Registration District. Their children were Henry Lewis (1875 Sheffield), Lawrence (1879 Sheffield – a late registration ?) and Mary Theodora (1879 Worksop).

 Henry Hall died in 1879 in the Worksop Registration District. In 1881 and 1891 Rosa Dyson, Farmer, was with her three children at Castle Farm, Worksop (500 acres employing 8 men and three boys). In 1901 the family were at Ashville, Worksop. Rosa was living on her own means, Henry Lewis was an Estate Agent’s Clerk and Lawrence was a Bank Clerk. Rosa died in 1914 in the Worksop Registration area. A Lawrence Dyson of the right age died in 1943 in the Penistone Registration District. What became of his siblings is not known. 

At least two films were made about Charlie Peace. ‘In 1905 ‘The Life of Charles Peace’ was issed. This was a ten minute film directed by William Haggar. All the characters were played by ‘ members of his family. In 1949  ‘The Case of Charles Peace’ was issued. This was directed by Norman Lee. The role of Charles Peace was played by Michael Martin-Harvey, that of Arthur Dyson by Richard Shayne and that of Katherine Dyson by Chili Bouchier. Charles Peace must have been depicted in the film as a very smartly dressed character because when the film was shown at local cinemas in the Smethwick area  it became the custom to say to any male who was unusually smartly dressed – ‘Who do you think you are? Charlie Peace?’ This custom still exists in the Smethwick area

So we come of the end of the story of Arthur Dyson. His family seem to have been both talented and wealthy and their story is quite a remarkable one. If any reader has further information about this family I would be pleased to hear from them.  

Rhys D Dyson Whatmore      rhyswhatmore@btinternet.com