Were our Henderson Ancestors Among the Jacobite Convicts Who Arrived Aboard the Friendship in 1716?

The short answer to that is, "No."

If you want the long answer, including an explanation of how this story ever got started in the first place, read on.

It has recently come to my attention that there are still some researchers of our Onslow County NC Henderson family line who have not had the opportunity to correct a piece of misinformation that began circulating on Electric Scotland about a decade ago.

In a biographical sketch of Chatham County NC Henderson progenitor Argalus (Hercules) Henderson, son of James (Isaac) Henderson Jr. of Onslow County NC and grandson of Mariner James Henderson Sr. of Somerset County MD, it was stated that:

"James Isaac Henderson Sr. and his son James Isaac Henderson Jr. [could be traced] from their arrival from Scotland on the convict ship called S. S.Friendship in 1716 and their indentured servitude at Annapolis, Maryland until their freedom about 1732 when they arrived in Orange County, North Carolina and started a new life. Despite the hardships of losing land and holdings in Scotland by English and sold into slavery in the Colonies, James Sr. and Son endeavored to persevere in continuing the Henderson name here in U. S. and as a result there are many hundreds of thousands of direct descendants of James Isaac Henderson Sr. here in U. S..."

First, I realize I'm getting off on a tangent here, but I'd like to point out that we have no evidence that there was ever a "James 'Isaac' Henderson Senior." We don't know what Senior's full name was. At this point, every record I have ever encountered that mentioned either man, whether in Maryland or North Carolina -- and I have encountered many -- either called them simply "James Henderson," "James Henderson Senior" or "James Henderson Junior," with one exception. On one occasion in one North Carolina record, James Henderson Junior is called "Isaac Henderson."  Not "James 'Isaac' Henderson" -- just "Isaac Henderson." I have written an entire blog article to clarify the use of the name "James 'Isaac' Henderson" -- which I normally use just to distinguish the younger Henderson from the elder when I'm writing about either. (I normally distinguish Senior as "Mariner James Henderson," -- because that's what he was.) If you are among those who have the name "James Isaac Henderson Senior" in your database, please read the blog article and make the necessary corrections to your data.

And not to pick nits, but "many hundreds of thousands of descendants?" Well, I guess it's technically possible, but...that's a lot of descendants. To be fair, Genghis Khan has about 16 million living descendants. Of course he also had about a hundred wives and lived in the 1100's so they've had more time to multiply. I won't argue that there aren't a lot of us Eastern Shore Henderson descendants. There are. Just sayin'...

And one more thing. Neither James Henderson arrived in Orange County NC in 1732. Neither James ever lived in Orange County. Onslow County NC was formed in 1732 and Mariner James Henderson Senior was apparently already there at its formation and appears in the very earliest records. His grandson, Argalus, would move inland to Orange County later in the 18th century.

But I digress.

So back to the topic of the article -- the assertion that our Henderson ancestors of Orange/Chatham and Onslow Counties, NC, arrived as convicts aboard the Friendship. This is something that I've actually addressed online before, but I hope that by devoting a blog article to it, it will be picked up in Google searches and more widely read so that folks can correct their information.

There was in fact a Jacobite convict named Robert Henderson who arrived among a cargo of eighty "Rebells Transported in the Shipp the Friendship" in August of 1716. These Jacobites had been taken prisoner at Preston in Lancashire during the rising of 1715-1716 and loaded aboard the Friendship in Belfast for transportation to Annapolis (a colonial port with a thriving trade in convict indentures). The unfortunate Robert -- the only Henderson aboard -- was sold to Edward Penn, a wealthy planter of Anne Arundel County.

There was also a James Hendry aboard (sometimes transcribed as Hendrick). But there was no "James Isaac Henderson" (nor a "James Henderson" of any variety) aboard that ship.

So why did anyone ever think there was?

A careful reading of the transcribed (not original) records on ImmigrantShips.net quickly reveals that the name "James Henderson" is given as the purchaser of the bonds of prisoners David Steward and Henry Lumsdale or Lumsden (the latter of whose descendants think he may have been taken to Virginia). Although there was a separate entry for each purchase, I have no more reason to believe that there were two James Hendersons buying prisoners that day than I have to believe that there were four Daniel Sherwoods, three Aaron Rawlings's, or five William Bladens (see transcript).

So is it safe to assume that there was probably just a single James Henderson buying indentures on that August day? Probably not. The Henderson buying convict bonds in Annapolis was more likely to have been Jacob Henderson, but until I can examine the primary source document, I can't be sure.

John Thomas Scharf's History of Maryland: 1600-1675 records the buyer of Steward and Lumsdale's indentures as Jacob Henderson, not James (page 387).* Sometimes the names James and Jacob were used interchangeably, so without the original list to examine, I cannot be sure. Even were it written "James," we cannot rule out the possibility that the purchaser was actually Jacob. (In the way that supporters of King James were called Jacobites.) I have checked Ancestry.com to see if the the original records are among their scanned documents, but could not find them.

However, if the purchaser was actually Jacob Henderson, as I suspect,** then mystery solved, because we know very well who Jacob Henderson of early 18th-century Annapolis was. He was an Irishman and an Anglican rector, first in Delaware, and later in the Annapolis area. In 1713 he married the wealthy widow of Henry Ridgely, instantly elevating himself to the landowning class in Anne Arundel County. He was a contemporary and social equal of a number of other men buying bonds in Annapolis that day, including Benjamin Tasker (who would become mayor of Annapolis and a proprietary governor), William Bladen (attorney general), Mordecai Moore (a physician), and prosperous planters Aaron Rawlings and Daniel Sherwood.

But if a James Henderson (and not Jacob) was the actual purchaser of Steward and Lumsdales bonds -- and I seriously doubt it -- then could he have had any connection to our Hendersons of the Eastern Shore?

Hard to even speculate, and I hate to do so since I'm relatively certain the records are referring to Jacob. However...

James Henderson Sr., our line's direct ancestor and the progenitor of the Eastern Shore Hendersons (across the bay) was long dead by 1716. I get the impression his youngest son, James Jr. of Somerset County, was usually skint, and probably didn't have the funds -- or need -- for indentured men. (But that's just speculation on my part.) It might have been Old James's grandson, James Henderson of Pitt's Creek Hundred, son of John Sr.

Or not.

Maybe it was our line's Mariner James Henderson Sr., the first to move to Onslow County NC from Maryland. But he was probably youngish to have the funds to lay out for two indentured men in 1716 (about 20-25 years old), and he made his living as a mariner, so he's not likely to have needed laborers, although it's conceivable he might have been at the sale acting on behalf of the owner of the whatever ship he was sailing for at the time...or perhaps for his sawyer father, William Henderson. I can't rule him out, but he just doesn't seem a likely candidate to me.

So if this record has any connections to our Hendersons of the Eastern Shore -- and again, I doubt it -- then it would have to have been one of those three living adult Jameses. I don't recognize any of the other purchasers as men of Somerset County, so it doesn't appear to me that a contingent of monied Somerset Countians had sailed across the bay for a spot of shopping in the labor markets.

If Henry Lumsdale was taken back to Virginia by his purchaser, I would tend to suspect that any purchasing James Henderson might belong to the Virginia Tidewater Hendersons (another very old line, but one whose research has many gaps due to courthouse destruction during two wars).

So we are left with some ambiguity about the identity of the Henderson buying convict bonds in Annapolis in 1716. But what we are not left with is any doubt whatsoever that the James Hendersons (Junior and Senior) who were living in Onslow County NC in the 1730's were not Jacobite convicts transported to Annapolis aboard the Friendship in 1716.

We have enough evidence (including Y-DNA) at this point to confidently state that Mariner James Henderson Senior who moved to early coastal NC was from the Henderson family of Maryland and Virginia's Eastern Shore. We are reasonably confident he was the son of William "the Sawyer" Henderson and his wife, Sarah Bishop (probably a daughter of Lt. Henry Bishop's second marriage to Ann, the widow Bowen). Recent autosomal DNA matches in our family line have supported the Bishop connection.

William "the Sawyer" Henderson was the second son of immigrant James Henderson Sr., who is first found in Northampton County VA records in 1661along with suspected kinsman Gilbert Henderson. Although we cannot yet connect this Henderson family back to Scotland (any online tree claiming to do so should be considered suspect unless they provide iron-clad documentation), we know that by 1716 this Henderson family had been in the New World for over half a century.

*Carl Boyer's Ship passenger lists: the South, 1538-1825, Volume 3 also lists the buyer as Jacob Henderson.
** So far, Jacob Henderson is the only Henderson I have found in the Annapolis area during the first two decades of the 18th century.