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(1821 -- 1903)
William Chaney was an itinerant astrologer and journalist who was born in a log cabin in Chesterville, ME. He was nine when his father died and he along with his young sisters were sold as laborers to another farmer. At sixteen, he escaped and went to sea where he worked many different jobs including some time in the Navy. Chaney was an intellectual who supported astrology and humanitarian ideals.
Over the next years, Chaney traveled and worked many different jobs, not keeping any for long. He tells in his book, Primer of Astrology and Urania, that in 1857 he lost everything that he possessed and was penniless. In 1866, he befriended Dr. Luke Broughton
(click here for Broughton's
Memorial), who had come to the United States to popularize astrology, however it was Chaney who would accomplish this.
In 1869, Chaney went out West leaving his wife behind in New York. In 1871 and 1872, he lived in Salem, Oregon where he met Flora Wellman of Seattle. In late 1873, he spent the winter in San Jose, CA where he lectured, taught and practiced astrology. In the summer of 1874, he received a letter from his wife saying that she had divorced him. Chaney married again in 1874 and this marriage lasted about a year.
Even though Chaney did not approve of Flora’s interest in Spiritualism or her séances and lectures on the subject, their business became successful. In addition, she gave piano lessons for extra money. At the same time, Chaney gave lectures on astrology, astronomy and astro-theology. Spiritualism became very popular in San Francisco during the 1870s and so did the Chaneys. It is unknown if the Chaneys actually ever married, however when Flora became pregnant in 1875, Chaney abandoned her and denied being the baby’s father.
Chaney and Flora’s son, John ‘Jack’ Chaney, was born on January 12, 1876 in San Francisco, CA. Flora married John London during the same year and young Jack was given her last name. Jack London went on to become one of America’s best-known writers. One of his most notable books is Call of the Wild.
Several months prior to his death and while is good heath, he had predicted his death and arranged for his funeral.
W.H. Chaney
Originally published in Mercury Hour, April 1999 (100th Edition)
I first lectured on America’s first-born astrologer (b. 1821 in backwoods Maine) at UAC in Washington, D.C. Chaney was editing newspapers, writing, practicing law in Ohio when he encountered astrology. He moved to NYC for special tutoring by Dr. Luke Broughton. Chaney and Broughton were persecuted and jailed for practicing astrology, but Broughton was recognized as a proper gentleman, since he headed the NY Medical Society, and was released. Chaney, a self-styled curmudgeon and very contentious, languished without trial in the Ludlow Street jail for over six months. When Chaney set up his own practice, advertising that he had been a student of Broughton, Broughton felt that Chaney was trading on Broughton’s name and was very much out of joint about it.
But Chaney did not linger in New York. He moved west to practice in San Jose and San Francisco and in Portland. In San Francisco he lived in the same boarding house as did a lady from Ohio whom he had met at the home of a Mayor of Seattle who was his client. This lady found herself pregnant, and of the men around her chose Chaney as the father. Chaney denied this all his life, saying he was physically incapable of fathering offspring. She tried to commit suicide, publicly blamed Chaney for insisting she have an abortion and for disassociating himself from her. Chaney was exonerated by local authorities, but the story was picked up by Abigale Dunniway, pioneer newspaper publisher in Oregon, who refused to acknowledge that Chaney had been exonerated.
The child, however, turns out to be Jack London who wrote Call of the Wild and is an acclaimed American literary figure. London was born on the day before Chaney’s 55th birthday, and the two charts are worth study,
the similarities are quite patent. After his problem in San Francisco he moved to Salem and Portland, Oregon, where for ten years he was suing and countersuing Dunniway who was not as peerless a character as she insisted other people be.
Eventually he moved back to St. Louis where he had previously lived, published a Primer of Astrology which came out in small pamphlet lessons, and moved to Chicago where records show that he operated an astrology school at two locations prior to his death in the early 1900’s. At the time of his death he was toothless, blind and deaf. As an astrologer, he was a very public figure, available always to lecture on any topic at any symposium, an early environmentalist and conservationalist, even in the 1880’s looking to the immediate onset of the Age of Aquarius. He made a great hobby of sending off for publicly advertised horoscopes and then taking astrologers to task for the mistakes they made in delineating his chart. He had a long running feud with Raphael’s stemming from a book order for which he paid and the fact that they would not give him a refund for part of the order they never filled, and he took Raphael’s to task for continually predicting the death of Queen Victoria in the face of her continued life.
I have enjoyed studying Chaney’s Primer as much as Broughton’s Elements of Astrology. Indeed, he is a marvelous precursor of Al H. Morrison. For your further study, Chaney’s data is January 13, 1821, 11:31 PM LMT, Chesterville, Maine, 44N33, 70W06. This is the birth data Chaney used for himself. Jack London, January 12, 1876, 2:00 PM LMT, San Francisco, California, 37N47, 122W26.
Sources include A Pictorial Life of Jack London by Russ Kingman who explores the origins of London and his parents, and Dr. Luke D. Broughton’s Elements of Astrology.
Click below for his
birth and death charts:
William Chaney's Birth
and Death Charts
A good source on Chaney's life and works is James Holden and Robert Hughes' book Astrological Pioneers of America (AFA, 1988), which you can buy at http://www.astrologers.com/shop/search.php?terms=astrological+pioneers
BIRTH AND DEATH INFORMATION BIRTH DATA: William Chaney was born on January 13, 1821 at 11:31 PM/LMT in Chesterville, ME. Birth Data has been taken from Astro-Databank.
DEATH DATA: William Chaney died on January 8, 1903 in Chicago, IL of an unspecified cause. Death Data has also been taken from Astro-Databank.
Memorials A-K, Continued
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CREDITS: First memorial written by Arlene DeAngelus. The second memorial written by the
late Joseph Silveira deMello and submitted
by Karen Christino. Web page created by Liz Houle with
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