Tolliss and Berger Family Tree

A major figure in the the life of Tavistock in the 1820s and1830s. A banker and ironmaster, he had the reputation of anunderstanding employer, and was also a generous benefactor ofthe new Poor Law Workhouse above Bannawell Street. As a pi oneerof such ventures as gas lighting and road improvements, as atireless worker for improved housing, schools, and libraries,and as a sturdy champion of the temperance cause, he was muchadmired. He was described as " a Liberal to the core of heartand mind", and his reforming zeal led him to parliament, wherehe represented Tavistock from 1835 to 1843. His daughter, theauthoress Mrs Rundle Charles, remembered "his humour,tenderness, kindliness, and clear keen intellect", and claimedthat he was "free from selfish aims and ambitions. His opponentssaw him as a dangerous rabble-rouser. Wilson, the Duke ofBedford's local agent, thought that he was only concerned to"satisfy his ambition to become a popular charactor". In the1840s his business affairs turned sour and his enemies closed inon him. He finally moved to London to live with his daughter,"torn away by circumstances", as she records it, " from all theinterests of his busy, honoured, useful life". She describes, ina tantilising passage, receiving into her home after herfather's funeral in 1864, "the man who, of all the world, hadwounded and injured him most".Living with son in law 1861