Author: Elliott, Ebenezer
Biography:
ELLIOTT, Ebenezer (c. 1748-1822: ancestry.co.uk)
He was the father of Ebenezer Elliott, q.v., the Corn Law poet, and the son of Robert Elliott (or Eliot), a whitesmith of Newcastle upon Tyne. In his memoir the younger Ebenezer Elliott gives his grandmother’s surname as “Sheepshanks” but in fact she had the less picturesque name of Margaret Shanks; she married Robert Elliott at All Saints, Newcastle, on 22 Apr. 1740. They were non-conformists and no baptismal record has been located for their son, Ebenezer, but his age at death was given as 74 which would fit with a birth year of 1748 (not 1760 as in the ODNB). He was apprenticed to a company of ironmongers, Landell and Chambers, in Newcastle before becoming a clerk at the ironworks of Walkers of Masbro’ (or Masbrough) in Rotherham. He married Ann (Nancy) Gartside, daughter of Joseph Gartside of Ozzins, in All Hallows church, Kirkburton, on 11 Oct. 1778. Ann signed the marriage record with her mark. She suffered from persistently poor health but the couple had eleven children, including Ebenezer whose memoir describes his father—sometimes known as “Devil Elliott”—as expressing very strong religious and political views in his popular monthly Sunday sermons. Elliott identified himself as a Calvinist of the Berean sect. He ended his working life as an employee—and possibly a co-proprietor—of Clay and Co., an iron foundry. Elliott died at Honley, Yorkshire, and was buried on 15 July 1822 at St. Mary’s. (ancestry.co.uk 6 May 2024; findmypast.co.uk 6 May 2024; ODNB [for Ebenezer Elliott the younger] 6 May 2024; John Watkins, The Life, Poetry, and Letters of Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer [1850])