ABERDEENSHIRE, SCOTLAND
My interest in the Henderson family history began with a visit to Jeff Henderson around 1986. Jeff is Richard Henderson's son and the great grandson of Thomas and Sarah Henderson.
Before I left Jeff gave me two photocopied pages. On these pages are written the dates and places of birth of Thomas and Sarah Henderson nee Hamilton and eleven of their children. I can't recall where Jeff said the information came from.
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Entries in Henderson Bible |
According to the first entry, Thomas Henderson (1820-1858) was born at Dalgatie castle in Scotland.
Not surpringly this got my attention. I was keen to find out more about Thomas and how he came to be born in a Scottish castle.
The State Library of Victoria holds shipping records for many of the ships that sailed to Australia in the 19th century. Reference to the Henderson family can be found in, Applications for a Free Passage to South Australia 1836-1841.
According to these records the family arrived in South Australia on the ship the Coromandel in 1837. Thomas Henderson was 36 years old and a horticulturalist. (Gardener) His address prior to embarkation was Langcliffe, near Settle in Yorkshire. There is no mention of his wife apart from the entry; 'Marital status M.36 F. 37.' I took this to mean that Thomas was 36 years old and his un-named wife was 37. Very few of the married women were named on the passenger list. Thomas's son Thomas was 16 and a half and also a horticulturalist. His sister Agnes was 15 and recorded as a domestic servant.
The fact that Thomas Henderson senior was a gardener was interesting. My guess at the time was that Thomas was working at Dalgatie castle as a gardener when his son Thomas was born there in 1820.
I later contacted Marion Boyd. Marion is connected to the Henderson family through the marriage of Sarah Henderson to William Cosstic. They married 13 April 1862. Marion sent me a copy of Thomas's (1820-1858) baptism entry.
On the first day of May, Eighteen hundred and twenty, Thomas Henderson, Gardener at Delgaty Castle, and his lawful spouse Janet Allan had a child born, baptised on the seventh day and named Thomas. Witnesses William Pirie in the head? and Fanny Milne in Mill of Delgaty.
The baptism entry explained how Thomas came to be born in a Scottish castle all those years ago. He was the son of the castle's gardener, Thomas Henderson senior.
One other important piece of information found in the baptism entry was Thomas’s mother’s maiden name. She was Janet Allan before she married Thomas Henderson. In an email from Marion in 2001, she said she had found the marriage of Janet Allan and Thomas Henderson. The couple were married 4 May 1818, at Falkirk, Stirling, Scotland.
Two years after they married the couple were living at Delgatie Castle where Thomas worked as a gardener.
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The following description of Delgatie castle comes from Hugh Cantlie’s book, Ancestral Castles of Scotland. (4)
Delgatie Castle was built at (Aberdeenshire, Scotland) by the Comyns, Earls of Buchan in about 1030, it came into the possession of the Hay family after the Battle of Bannock burn in 1314...
Following the Battle of Glenlivet in 1594, in which the Catholic Hays and Gordon’s defeated the Protestant forces, James V1 set out to attack those who had thwarted him.
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Delgatie Castle, Turriff, Aberdeenshire.
Where Thomas Henderson II was born in 1820.
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He successfully blew up the Castles of Huntly and Slains but met with rather more resistance than he expected when he arrived at Delgatie. There a remarkable woman called Rohaise, a nineteen-year-old, six- foot redhead, gathered what support she could and put up a spirited defence for six weeks. Two siege guns had to be brought from Edinburgh by sea to Banff, whence they were dragged on sledges to Delgatie by thirty yoke of oxen apiece.
Situated on the high ground to the west, where the Home Farm is today, they battered away relentlessly at the castle until the west wall finally collapsed. The defenders then used the escape passage to flee to the nearby Castle of Craigston and from there to France. James had almost certainly had the intention of blowing up Delgatie, as he had Huntly and Slains; but perhaps because the siege had taken so much longer than intended, he no longer had enough gunpowder with which to do it. The shattered west wall was rebuilt in 1597.
The castle’s appearance altered during the course of the eighteenth century. There were a number of additions carried out in 1707 and the two wings - the Chapel and Doocot to the west and kitchen and servants’ quarters to the east- were constructed in 1743. During the first part of the twentieth century Delgatie fell into disrepair and by the end of the Second World War was considered unsaveable...However in 1947 it came into the hands of Captain John Hay from his kinswoman the Countess of Erroll. He had been trained as a mason with the Bombay Sappers, and he is still continuing to this day.
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