Ashenhurst, John Talbot (d. 1818), public notary and Volunteer, practised at 2 Exchange Alley, Dublin, from the mid-1770s until the mid-1780s, when he moved to 33 Dame Street. In 1780 he was a lieutenant in the union light dragoons, a Dublin city Volunteer corps; eventually he rose to be a major. He became well respected in Volunteer circles and was active in support of the demand for parliamentary reform, serving as joint secretary to the national convention of Volunteer delegates held in Dublin (November 1783) and secretary to the radical reform congress (1784–5) as well as to the Reform Club of Ireland (1786). In October 1791 he signed the Dublin Volunteers’ address that referred to ‘the philanthropy of that great and enlightened nation’ – France. On 24 February 1793 his Volunteer corps was challenged by the police; the following month all corps were effectively suppressed. He was a member of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen and advertised in the radical Press (1797–8). When a large number of Dublin citizens of various political views met at the Royal Exchange on 18 September 1810 and called for ‘a repeal of the act of union’, he was one of those elected to a committee of nine to draw up a petition to parliament.
Ashenhurst dealt, apparently on a large scale, in mortgages and government securities; he was secretary to the Dublin Insurance Company (c.1785–c.1813) and then agent to the London Phoenix Insurance Co. On the formation of the Dublin stock exchange in 1799, he became its first president. He was made a freeman of Dublin in 1811 and died at ‘an advanced age’ at his house in Dame Street on 19 March 1818. In an obituary he was described as ‘an upright, kind-hearted, brave and amiable man’. Regarding his family nothing has been ascertained.