Robert Augustus Hyndman I

Father of John Beckles Hyndman and Catherine Elizabeth Hyndman, husband of Elizabeth Christian Hyndman and grandfather of H.M. Hyndman (each of whom q.v).

1. H.M. Hyndman, founder of Britain's first Marxist party the Social Democratic Federation, said that his grandfather had at one period 'been compelled to play the violin in public houses' but had prospered from extraordinary profits made in buying up estates in Demerara from alarmed Dutch citizens at the time of cession to Britain and from 'the ordinary profits of his plantations being steadily forthcoming on a large scale from the beneficial toil of his well-nourished negroes.'

2. At his estate Rome in Demerara, death of Robert Augustus Hyndman, member of His Majesty's Council of Dominica July 24 1814.

3. The ODNB entry for H.M. Hyndman says 'Robert Augustus Hyndman, his grandfather, made a fortune by land speculation in Demerara, and developed West Indian connections through trade, marriages, and local politics.'

1. H.M. Hyndman, The record of an adventurous life (London: Macmillan, 1911), p. 1, 2-6.

2. Gentleman's Magazine (July-December 1814) Vol. 84 Part 2 p. 498.

3. Chushichi Tsuzuki, ‘Hyndman, Henry Mayers (1842–1921)’ ['socialist leader'], Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34088, accessed 8 Dec 2014]