Where there is no date given, these are facts attached to an approximate period of time.

1860

• Initiated into the Minerva Lodge [Masonic, in Dagger Lane]

• Commissioned a statue of Queen Victoria, to honour her visit to the town in 1854. Made from a single block of flawless Carrara marble, by sculptor Thomas Earle, a fellow member of the Minerva Lodge. ZCP paid him £100 deposit.

• Purchased 37 acres of land to the west of Beverley Road for £7,400, and donated 27 acres of this for a "People's Park", the first public park in Hull. He attached conditions to this gift, i.e. that the town would be responsible for laying out the park, including an inner gas lamp lit road. 10 acres retained around the edge for development.

• 27th August: grand ceremony/fete where he handed over the deeds to the parkland, and planted the first tree, a Wellingtonia gigantica, with a ceremonially inscribed spade. Sumptuous displays (the poster gives a comprehensive taste) with 40,000 people transported in from the whole of the North of England by trains with special fares and boats; fireworks, then lavish banquet at the Royal Station Hotel in the evening, accompanied by many speeches (all documented in Smith).

• 28 August: festivities continued, Charles and Mary Pearson (the two oldest children) each planting a tree (Thujopsis borealis, and "another mammoth tree" (= Wellingtonia?) respectively.

• The Park laid out over the next 2 years, including a huge ceremonial gateway (its iron gates bearing the Pearson crest - demi-lion rampant, holding "mullet" (=star) between paws; motto: Providentia fido [I trust in Providence])).

• Address: large house on Beverley Road

• Much public praise as "the people's friend and the working man's benefactor"

• Parted company with his business partner, James Coleman.

• Much business carried on from London address: Intercolonial Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. Ltd, 41 Moorgate Street, London

• Initiated fundraising to restore Holy Trinity, Hessle (Hull)

1861 - 62:

• Elected to second Mayoralty

• Became Commandant of the Hull Volunteer Artillery Corps

• Caused new Town Hall to be started, estimated cost of £20,200 (built on site occupied by present Guildhall - opened in 1866)

• 27^th January: As Mayor, "turned the first sod at Stoneferry" to inaugurate the start of the new town waterworks.

• March 1862: Announced to Council that he would present the Queen Victoria statue to the town.

• Augmented his fleet by buying six steamers on credit (including the Modern Greece), persuaded by Messrs Overend, Gurney and Co. who were owed a lot of money by a Greek shipowner, Stephanos Xenos, and wanted to place his ships (their security) in a more secure position. ZCP had already borrowed money from this firm to buy the "Cherosonese" and repaid it, so he had the credibility they needed. Evidence that he was cautious/nervous about this transaction, but talked into it as it suited them. Seen in retrospect as naive by some - greedy by others.

• Sitting in Mayoral seat while Sculcoates cotton mill closed due to American Civil War (the southern ports, blockaded  by the Yankees, couldn't export their cotton); many people out of work and destitute in Hull.

• Decided to use his now-large fleet of steamers to sell arms and equipment to the Confederates, taking the risk of breaking through the Federal blockade. Hoped both to open up the cotton route and also to make a profit out of his new ships-on-credit. Views differed as to which of these two was the highest motivator for his gun-running.

• Bought several cargoes of arms, ammunition and ironmongery, much on credit, and sent them across the Atlantic, using agent(s), e.g. Bermuda-based businessman John T. Bourne to help plan to run the blockade.

1862, Summer

• One of his ships, the "Indian Empire", destroyed by fire while she was being refitted in the Thames. As she was out of the Victoria Dock/dry dock where she was insured, he failed to get any insurance money, despite a court case (21st November, 1863).  He had agreed to sell her for £35,000, so lost this money.

• Successive ships were captured/sunk by US Federal Naval vessels in the blockade around this time. Lost about 10 in all (t.b.c.), including the Modern Greece, fired on and run aground by USS Cambridge and USS Stars and Stripes.

• These disasters landed him in huge debt almost overnight.

1862, August - December

• Huge effort, by selling his other considerable assets, including his house in Beverley Road, to avoid the ignominy of bankruptcy, but by the end of 1862 it was clear that bankruptcy was inevitable. He was determined to pay his creditors in full: "I do resolve that if the estate does not paid 20/- in the pound I shall devote a portion of my future earnings to pay in full all the creditors in Hull" (personal letter, 6th October, 1862)

• Resigned as Mayor and from all the charity boards he stood on, though there is evidence that he was hoping to stave this off in the immediate aftermath (letter to Town Clerk, 6th August, 1862)

• Much evidence that some people who previously acclaimed him while in power now abandoned him, some even gloating (Schadenfreude!), and he had to cope with this alongside struggling to sort out his finances: "I have no doubt that I shall again rise, but whether Hull is then my future home, all will depend upon the people themselves. If kinship and sympathy is shown me, that of course will encourage me to come again and work for my family and the town. But it would be very unpleasant indeed for me to live among a people who had known me as prospering and who had no respect for me in adversity" (personal letter, 6th October, 1862)

• He valued the few people who stood up for him: "I am exceedingly obliged for your kinship and shall as long as I live remember it and teach my children to remember that you were one of my best friends ..(...)....... it is in adversity when a man's friends are tested." (personal letter to Mr. Richardson, fellow councilor, 6th October, 1862)

• Birth of Eveline Rose, fourth daughter)

1863

• The case is prepared for the Bankruptcy Court, taking a long time due to massive sums of money and huge complexity (not least, dealing with the American Prize Courts, and cases by individual crew members for unpaid wages until they finally were returned to England after being displaced by the Federal Navy off the US coast). Many adjournments.

• Queen Victoria's statue completed, but now unable to be paid for by Zachariah, so Alderman Moss paid for it on behalf of the town.

• October: Victoria's statue is installed, but Zachariah is neither mentioned nor present, being deeply disgraced at this particular time in his "fall from grace".

• Address: 1 Grosvenor Terrace, Beverley Road (this terrace is now (2004) a lapdancing club - 95-97 Beverley Rd!)

1864

• Bankruptcy case held in the London Bankruptcy Court, January - April. Total debts = £648,435. Commissioner Goulburn found he was liable on two of the four charges, and gave him his discharge in six months, but did not send him to debtor's prison. Had he succeeded in his gun-running, is was said at his trial that he would have become the richest shipowner in England.

1864 - 1891

• Lived quietly at 2, Elm Villas, second in row of four terraced houses, in the north east corner of the Park (now 63 Pearson Park), with his family and only one servant/maid

• He obtained employment as a ship's surveyor. Some evidence that he was working with (for?) his son, Charles, who is listed in the Hull Directory as trading from 6, Manor Street as a "shipbroker and commission agent". [Was he unable to trade, being once a bankrupt???]

• His disgrace appears to have ameliorated as time goes on (e.g. he is publicly acclaimed at a function in 1875)

• Evidence from letters and speeches that he continues to work for the good of Hull and its Trade.

1882

• 9th August: All Saints , Sculcoates: marriage of Emma Jane to Bruno Adolf von Holmfeldt, University student, son of Adolf von Holmfeldt, officer in the German army.  They had three sons, Eric (born 1883), Arnold, and Otto, all born abroad. The marriage ended in disaster, as he was cruel to her. Despite her antipathy towards divorce, she walked out on him, returning to England with her three sons, changing the whole family's name back to Pearson.

1890

• Death of Mary Ann

1891

• 29th October: Death of Zachariah Charles, "gentleman" from "inflammation" (register of deaths). Buried in family grave plot in Spring Bank Cemetery, with his wife, baby son, and Robert Gordon Coleman [was this Mary Ann's brother???].

• Generous obituaries in local press.

• 12th November: auction of all his household effects in order to let the house

1894

• The entrance avenue to Pearson Park renamed "Pearson Avenue"

1896

• An appeal launched for the Zachariah Pearson Memorial Fund

1897

• A marble bass relief of Zachariah Charles Pearson's head (sculptor: William Day Keyworth (jr)) attached to a prehistoric granite (iron-stone?) monolith in Pearson Park.

1940-5

• Gates to Pearson Park removed (during this period unnecessary iron-work throughout the country was collected to contribute towards the war)

1962

• A violent storm exposes part of the "Modern Greece", one of ZCP's ships that was sunk by the Federal Navy. Port Fisher (North Carolina) starts to salvage artefacts, mainly guns and ammunition.

1970s

• Avenues Residents Association formed, later becoming the Avenues and Pearson Park Association in 1974.
• Decorative urns from the top of the Pearson Park arch removed

2004

• ZCP's grave located in Spring Bank Cemetery, and cleared of ivy by John Collier, a Confederate sympathiser, on behalf of the Confederation of Allied Europe States, and Confederate flags planted around the grave.
  
  

Marian Shaw

August 2004

People and organisations that have been useful in compiling this Fact File:

Collier, John, Lt. Commander, Confederate States of Allied Europe/ British Command.

Credland, Arthur, Keeper, Hull Maritime Museum, Hull

Dent, Harry- family

Deverell, Liz and others at the Local Studies Library, Hull

Diaper, Robin, Curator, Guildhall, Hull

Hodkin, Phyllis- family

Ketchell, Christopher, Local History Unit, Hull College, and Pearson Park Society

Leaver, Paul, City Archive Office, Hull

Pearson, Arthur- family

Pearson, George - family

Registry Office, Hull

Stafford, Dick- family

Taylor, Martin, Archivist, City Archive Office, Hull

Watkins, Gareth, Geneologist

Whipkey, Elizabeth, Civil War historian, Hodgenville, KY, USA

Data collected from, inter alia:

Archived letters

Archived plans

Census records

Contemporaneous accounts

Genealogical data bases

Heraldic books

Hull directory

Lists of monuments

Local newspapers (Meadley Index)

Maritime records

Pearson Park Society newletters

Private publications

Websites (various)