Art Thou Our John Henderson of 1823 Chatham County? No Indeed, Thou Art Not.

This evening I ran across a surprising will for a John Henderson in the records of Chatham County NC. I had seen this will years ago, so the will in and of itself wasn't surprising, but what did surprise me was the website's claim that the will was written by the brother of our Argalus (Hercules) Henderson.

Wait, what? What brother!?

A transcription of the will was posted by the Pike County Archives and History Society, who continue to host An Arkansas Connection, the work of the late Morris Myers.(*1) Morris's website contains a great deal of information on the line of Abner Newton Henderson, a grandson of Argalus (Hercules) Henderson and a prominent citizen of Pike County.

The authors of the post offer no explanation of why they concluded the will belonged to a brother of Argalus (Hercules) Henderson, saying only that it had been transcribed from a document obtained from the North Carolina State Archives. They did include a footnote containing the caveat that there could be errors on their site, so I'm going to chalk the identification of this will up to precisely such an error.

Here is the text of the will:

State of North Carolina } and County of Chatham

I John Henderson of the State and County aforementioned, being in perfect Health and sound Mind, Calling to Remembrance, the Mortality of human Nature, and that it is Appointed by the Wise Disposer of all things, for all Men once to Die, do make and publish this my last Will, and Testament, Although my Property has been much Curtailed by Misfortunes, and the many Delapedations (sic) that has been made on it, I have devided (sic) what remains into Ten parts to Viz I give and bequeath, to my Deceased Daughter, Sarah Donaldson's Children two Tenths of all My Property, real, and Personal, wheresoever to be found, And my Three unmarried Daughters Charlotte, Jane, and Margaret Aytone, Two Tenths each, Always excepting out of the above division, James Bonman, who was, left by my Son's will to me, Charlotte, Jane, and Margaret, And as I have received Credit with Mr. McMollan On James Bonman's Acct for more than my part of his Value would Amount to, consequently, James Bonman Properly belongs to my Daughters, Charlotte, Jane, and Margaret Aytone. I also Bequeath to my Daughter Mary's Children, one Tenth part of all I possess, And the other tenth, to my Daughter Joannahs Children, And do hereby appoint my Two Grand Sons, Robert, and James Donaldson my Sole Executtors (sic), to this my last Will and Testament, Hereby revoking all prior wills Heretofore by me made, in Witness whereof I have hereunto signed my Name, and Affixed My Seal This 29th December in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred & Twenty three.

Signed John Henderson (seal)
Witness: Wm. Broadfoot, Wiley B. Straugham

Proved May Session 1825
This last will and testament of John Henderson was exhibited in open court and proved by the oath of Wiley B Straughan one of the subscribing witnesses thereto and was ordered to be recorded and was recorded in Book B Lager 9 - The executors(?) within Named were duly qualified -- (signed) Tho. Raglan Stele

Now, I did have this John Henderson family in my database at one time, based solely on the relationships detailed in the will, but they were marked as unidentified/unplaced.

I feel very confident that this John Henderson who died in Chatham County bet 1823-1825 was not a relative of Argalus (at least not a close one, and by "close" I mean within a minimum of a couple of centuries). He seems too young to be a brother (Argalus was b ca 1727), and we can account for and exclude the son and grandsons of Argalus (Hercules) named John.(*2)

There were members of the Granville County Hendersons(*3) in and out of old Orange and Chatham Counties, but none of the names mentioned in the will really seem to fit with them either, although I will admit I know comparatively little about their family, so I can't rule them out.

Interestingly, a Margaret Aytone was born in Fife in 1735 to William and Catherine Aytone. The use of such a distinctive name made me wonder if this John Henderson was an unrelated Henderson immigrant who had connections with the Aytone family of Scotland.  Further investigation of this theory at FamilySearch.org revealed the 1783 baptism of a Margaret Aytone Henderson to a John and Cera (Sarah) Paris Henderson of St. Cuthbert's Edinburgh. This couple also baptized daughter Johanna in 1785 in Dunfermline, Fife. These dates and names seem a reasonable fit with people mentioned in the 1823 Chatham County NC will, but I could not find conclusive baptismal records for Sarah, Charlotte, Jane, Mary etc.(*4)

So let us go back to the will. The story didn't end in 1825...

In the Fall 1830 term of Chatham County Court, Robert Donaldson,(*5) by this time a resident of New York, sued the Devisees of his grandfather, the late John Henderson:

Robert Donaldson vs. The Devisees of the late John Henderson
Bill to subject the real estate of Testator to the payment of debt due the complainant

In this case, it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the  defendants, JAMES DONALDSON, ISABELLA DONALDSON, JO ANNA DONALDSON, ELIZA BROADFOOT, wife of WILLIAM BROADFOOT, JOHN McMILLAN, and MARGARET WEST, wife of FREDERICK WEST, are not residents of this State. It is therefore ordered by the Court that publication be made for three months in the North Carolina Journal notifying the said non-residents to be and appear at our next Court 
of Equity for the County of Chatham on the third Monday in March. Then and there to plead, answer or demur to this petition filed. Otherwise, judgment will be taken pro confesso and the matter heard ex parte as to them. -- THOS. THOMPSON, C. & M. E.

So there you go. This John Henderson's family didn't even live in North Carolina. At least not by 1830. So where did they come from?

A John Henderson Broadfoot was born near Fayetteville in1823 to a William Broadfoot (b 1783 Scotland), so if I was going to make a WAG, I'd say his mother was probably the Eliza Broadfoot mentioned in the 1830 record (although no mention of her was made in the 1823 will). We know from this article that Robert Donaldson was also a "native" of Fayetteville, but there were also Hendersons and Broadfoots (Broadfeet?) in Venango County PA in the early 1820's (John Henderson and David Henderson, constables, William Broadfoot, overseer). I really don't know where this John Henderson family came from prior to having been in Fayetteville for a time, but my money would be on Scotland, either Edinburgh or Fife.

Henderson's mention of his property having "been much Curtailed by Misfortunes, and...many Delapidations" is intriguing. I'm sure if I kept digging, I could track this family down, but it's getting late and I've been sidetracked from the other genealogical fish I was attempting to fry tonight.

Since it seems pretty clear to me that this family is unrelated to our Chatham County group, I'm gonna put a fork in 'em, cause as far as I'm concerned, the idea that this John Henderson was a brother to Argalus is done...to a crisp. However, researchers of the Chatham County NC Hendersons should be aware that there was a second adult John Henderson in the county in the early 1800's. It may be difficult to conclusively distinguish his records from those of John, son of Argalus. Be on the lookout for clues that point towards the man we'll call "John (of the Misfortunes) Henderson" and if you find any records that clearly reference him or his family, let's add them to the comments below this blog article so that other Chatham County researchers are aware of the two and don't get tangled up in them.


*1 Morris did a tremendous amount of work on the Henderson family, although he was only related through an 1831 Alford marriage. Since his death we have made many new and important discoveries, but I consider his work on the Abner Newton Henderson family of Arkansas very reliable. The PCHS also hosts a complete transcription Morris made of my aunt Thelma Henderson Schoolfield's typewritten notes about the Hendersons of Chatham County (from her courthouse research done from the 1940's to the 1980's). Please read his comments to me in 2003 about the sources and reliability of his work. 

*2 Son: John Henderson (b 1767 d ca 1838) married Frances LNU and had James, Sarah, Elizabeth, Mary, John Jr. Thomas, Pleasant, Dicey, Eliza and Martha. Grandsons: A) John H. Henderson (b ca 1794 s/o Ezekiel and Elizabeth Brashier Henderson) m Sarah Brashier, d Greenville SC; B) John Henderson (b 1802 s/o Isaac and Anaritta LNU Henderson) m Candace and/or Mary "Polly" Brewer, d Todd Co KY aft 1870; C) John Henderson (b bef 1790 NC presumed s/o Hezekiah Henderson) m Mary Susan Spurlin d 1819 Todd Co KY; D) John Henderson Jr. (b 1800 Orange Co NC s/o John and Frances LNU Henderson m Unknown, d ca 1849 Floyd Co GA.

*3 As far as I know, the Granville County Hendersons are not related to the Hendersons of Chatham and Onslow Counties, or the Hendersons of the Eastern Shore. I believe they may have ties to the Tidewater Virginia Hendersons, who were contemporaries of our early Eastern Shore Hendersons. I am hoping that we will eventually get some DNA testers from their line added to the Clan Henderson DNA project to settle the matter.

*4 John only mentions one (deceased) son, who apparently had no heirs. I feel pretty sure that this Henderson family daughtered out with his son's death, and therefore there is little or no hope of finding a living male Henderson descendant to DNA test.

*5 Robert and his brother James were appointed executors of John's will. Both were sons of Sarah Henderson Donaldson, who predeceased her father. Robert Donaldson was born in Fayetteville, NC, but he moved to New York where he worked as a banker and became a patron of the arts. His mother, Sarah Henderson Donaldson, is listed in the Arkansas Connection records as person #6000 Sarah T. Henderson, a daughter of John Henderson (son of Argalus). Morris did mention that he did not think Sarah T. Henderson fit logically as a daughter of this John. I believe that as a result of this cursory investigation, we can safely assume that this Henderson family was of recent Scottish origin and probably unrelated to the rest of the Chatham County Henderson. Sarah Henderson Donaldson can be removed from any databases where she might have been entered on account of her appearance on Morris's site.

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.

The Most Excellent History of Argalus and Parthenia...

...Being a Choice Flower, Gathered Out of Sir Philip Sydney's Rare Garden (no less).

From the diary of Samuel Pepys
31st Jan 1661 "To the Theatre, and there sat in the pitt among the company of fine ladys, &c.; and the house was exceeding full, to see Argalus and Parthenia, the first time that it hat been acted: and indeed it is good, though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are." 5th Feb 1661 "Here we saw Argalus and Parthenia, which I lately saw, but thought pleasant for the dancing and singing, I do not find good for any wit or design therein." 28th Oct 1661 "To the Theatre, and there saw 'Argalus and Parthenia' where a woman acted Parthenia, and come afterwards on the stage in men's clothes, and had the best legs that ever I saw, and I was very well pleased with it."

This afternoon cousin Robin Henderson (*1) emailed me a reminder about this 17th-century poem, the epitome of tragic chivalric romance and likely the source of our ancestor Argalus Henderson's very unusual name.(*2)

The earliest publication date I can currently find for the booklet is 1621, but if the authorship is correctly attributed to Philip Sydney,(*3) English poet and courtier, scholar and solider of the Elizabethan age -- who died in 1586! -- then it must have been written decades earlier. I was only able to find "Argalus and Parthenia" written in 1621 by one Francis Quarles, which can be read online, but I warn you, it's pretty heavy lifting. You might want to reconsider, and spend the evening doing something more exciting. Like laundry.

In 1659 John Quarles, son of Francis (and ultimately a victim of the plague) wrote a sequel, "A Continuation of the History of Argalus and Parthenia." Because the world needed that.(*4)

At one time I had believed that our ancestor's actual name may have been Hercules. His name was spelled thusly on a couple of documents, and if pronounced HURC-u-lus, it is very similar in sound to "ARG-ulus" (as it was sometimes spelled). Maybe Hercules was a semi-literate clerk's stab at a phonetic spelling?

By the time our Argalus was born, probably sometime between 1720-1730, the name had fallen out of favor, along with its equivalent for the female sex, Parthenia.

So, dear reader, I fear our unfortunate ancestor was actually named for the tragic hero of an Elizabethan-era poem rather than the extraordinarily powerful son of Zeus. I call our ancestor unfortunate because how can you go through life with a handle like Argalus? I mean, really!? Was he "Arg" for short? And how does one even pronounce it? Is it Ar-GAY-lus? ARG-uh-lus? AR-ja-lus? No wonder the county clerk made an executive decision in favor of a mythical hero.(*5) He was doing the man a favor.

I guess it could have been worse. He could have been named for the poem's villain: Dimagorus.

The second inconvenience of his name was the fact that no one ever seemed to be able to settle on a spelling for it (including me). For years I've been all over the place with it as I find it spelled so many ways in the records. Since it seems like the original name was actually supposed to be "Argalus" I've decided to standardize my own spelling of it. I will faithfully copy spelling variations when transcribing records, but when writing of the man himself, Argalus it will be. But you will find it written as Archaelaus, Arglas, Arglos, Agulus, and -- give it time -- more are certain to appear.

If you make it through Argalus and Parthenia, and A Continuation of the History of Argalus and Parthenia (assuming you can put your hands on that one), be sure not the miss the final thrilling sequel to the sequel, (this time in prose), "Parthenia's Return to Argalus."

Click to enlarge.

1 Of the Ezekiel Henderson line of Greenville SC.
2 "What a beautiful name," said no one, ever! But believe it or not, I've run across a few other unfortunates who had to live a lifetime with it during the 17th and 18th centuries, so it did have its time in the sun.
3 There is scholarly debate over the authorship, because really, what other kind of debate would there be over the authorship of an obscure 17th-century equivalent of a bodice-ripper?

4 Apparently those wacky inhabitants of the 17th century just loved themselves some Argalus and Parthenia. Couldn't get enough.

5 Just to be clear, I don't know that that's what happened. I'm joking about the executive decision thing. His name really could have been "Argalus Hercules Henderson." Just sayin...