19th century astrologer William H. Chaney was from Bangor, Maine, practiced law in West Virginia, may have become a District Attorney in Iowa, and finally studied astrology with Dr. Luke D. Broughton in Manhattan. He practiced astrology for the rest of his life, moving to the west coast, then St. Louis. Chaney finally ended up in Chicago, married six times along the way, enlightened many students, wrote some books and published, including his own calculation of an American ephemeris. He admitted to being a difficult personality. 
Al H. Morrison believed he was the reincarnation of Chaney, feeling that the two lives and personalities had many parallels. Chaney is known today as the father of the author Jack London, and Al even felt that London’s chart was similar to his own son’s.
San Francisco astrologer Joseph Silveira deMello (1925-2004) researched Chaney’s life, and his profile of Chaney from The Mercury Hour was published on the Astrologer’s Memorial. Since that website is no longer easily accessible, I’m reposting it here.
W.H. Chaney by Joseph Silveira deMello
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. (Chaney’s chart on Astrodatabank) 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.
Originally published in Mercury Hour, April 1999 (100th Edition)
Joe deMello’s chart on Astrodatabank
DeMello’s tribute on the Astrologer’s Memorial at the Internet Archive
Some more on Dr. Broughton and Chaney’s legal problems in New York City
I collected the work of Al H. Morrison and he talks a bit about Chaney in The Best of Al H. Morrison
Many have researched Chaney’s life due to his connection with Jack London. He was a fascinating character, and here are some links to more about his life:
Sonoma State University: Jack London Online — William Chaney
Encyclopedia.com: William Henry Chaney
StrangeNewEngland.com: William Henry Chaney — the Strange Journey of Jack London’s Father