Spaniards, Oppression, and More Hendersons in Scotland
I have a new research quest that I am pursuing. There is an old family story that my Papa Henderson, my mom’s dad, had Spanish roots. I have yet to find proof of this. Family stories are often not based on fact, although I have been able to verify some claims (e.g., I’ve always heard that our family descended from a Huguenot — and I recently discovered the guy’s name: Louis Boulier).
Unfortunately, the claims to Spanish ancestry are looking weak. With the enormous help of long-time researchers like my aunt Eleanor Buzzacott and other genealogists further afield, we’ve traced my Henderson line back almost 250 years — and it’s Scots all the way down. Beyond 1780, though, it is difficult to get good data. Censuses weren’t taken or stored in the same way. Violent events or — more pedantically — cultures uninterested in a certain kind of archival approach become more common.
Still, the pursuit of one objective, however difficult, can give rise to unexpected discoveries.
A Gateway to History
My earliest known Henderson ancestor is a man named Archibald, whom I’ve written about a little in a different post. Archibald was born in 1780 or 1785 in a region of the Highlands called Ardnamurchan.1 He had a pretty hard life from what I can tell.
In the 1841 and 1851 censuses, Archibald’s birthplace is listed as Ardnamurchan. Ardnamurchan is really more of a region than a specific town or village. It is a peninsula jutting out from the westernmost part of the Scottish mainland, north of the Isle of Mull, where Archibald would later get married at the age of 31 (or 26, depending on his birth year).
Given the lack of records prior to Archibald’s birth, I had assumed that Ardnamurchan was as far back as we were going to get with the Henderson line. I thought I might be able to do some research about the region, maybe get a sense of the local industries: salmon fishing, the rearing of black Highlands cattle, coal and lead mining, and kelp farming.
But history has a way of opening things up. In 1778, Ardnamurchan was sold to James Riddell, a noted “agricultural improver,” committed to the enclosure of lands and maximizing yields. By the early 1800s, Riddell had commenced massive clearances (i.e., evictions of the region’s tenants from their crofts) in order to expand his sheep farming venture. Given that we don’t know much about Archibald’s activities between his birth and his marriage in 1811, it seems quite possible that Archibald’s movement south to Kilninian and Kilmore on the Isle of Mull was driven, if not by Riddell’s clearances themselves, then by the rumours of “improvements” that surely must have been circulating at the time.2
A History of Oppression
This recurring image of an oppressive force being applied accompanies much of the history of the Henderson family up until it emigrates to Canada. On the Isle of Tiree, Colin Henderson rises up with the Land League in a show of resistance against the tyrannical Big Factor, John Campbell, who manages the island on behalf of the Duke of Argyll. Earlier, the family is caught up in the Highland clearings with James Riddell in Ardnamurchan. There is yet another oppressive event in the backdrop of the Henderson family, though. I encountered it when I started to ask a perhaps obvious question: how did the Henderson clan come to Ardnamurchan in the first place?
(Note that we are entering the realm of speculation here because we lack concrete pedigree details.)
The Hendersons are well known as a “sept” of the Clan Donald. A “sept” is an affiliated family within a larger clan. For many years, the Hendersons were the bodyguards and pipers for the MacDonalds. Specifically, they filled this role for the MacDonalds who lived in the valley of Glencoe.
In 1692, less than a hundred years before Archibald Henderson arrived in the world, the Highlands was a place of great resentment. The Stuart reign was more or less definitively over. After pushing James II to abdicate in 1689, the English Parliament had invited William of Orange and his wife Mary, the daughter of James II, to rule over England and Scotland. The Highland Scots resisted fiercely, but finally William had enough.
After negotiating with the various clans, it was agreed that an oath of allegiance would be taken in exchange for payment from the crown and a pardon for insurrection. But this was contingent upon the oath being taken by January 1, 1692. Due to a variety of reasons, including the clans waiting for notification from James II that they could be released from their oath of allegiance to him, this was not taken on time. Many of the clans did not take the oath in time; although, notably, the Clan Donald did take the oath as of January 6, 1692.
There are several versions of how the decision to make the MacDonalds — and, by extension, the Hendersons — of Glencoe an example to show the might of the new rulers. (I particularly loved listening to the In Our Time podcast about it.) Suffice it to say, the plot was shocking both at the time and now for its cruelty, treachery, and bloodlust.
Late in January 1692, 120 troops were sent to the valley of Glencoe. The right of the military at the time was, if there was insufficient separate lodging available, they could require residents to feed and house them. They lived alongside the villagers for two weeks. There are stories of them hunting with them, playing games with them, and drinking and eating with them.
At the end of the two weeks, another troop arrived, this time with a secret message for the soldiers already there: the entire village — men, women, and children — were to be killed the next morning. The killings started at 5am on February 13, 1692 with the murder of the clan chief, Alasdair MacIain, and his wife as they got out of bed.
Thankfully, there are many reasons that the massacre was not as absolute as King William and his cronies had hoped. Although nearly 40 people were killed in the end, the plan to seal off the northern exit does not appear to have been fully carried out. Many villagers did in fact escape — although several of these are said to have perished in the snow, having been forced to leave with absolutely nothing.
The massacre was a PR nightmare for William III. The public was horrified by what happened and, during the subsequent investigation, the term, “Murdered Under Trust,” was used. The event had not only been horrific; it had been a fundamental breach of ancient hospitality laws. Much of the story at the time was subsequently spun to focus on the fact that the leader of the troops was a Campbell and that the MacDonalds and Campbells had had a long-standing feud.
Scholars nowadays look at this proposition askance. The villains in this story are unquestionably the monarchy and those who sought to ingratiate themselves with the new monarchy at the time. They were the ones who included language in the order to “extirpate” all, sparing none under 70. (And, yes, the soldiers themselves were evil too — but not in their capacity as Campbells.)
A distantly related family historian named Archie Henderson has suggested that Glencoe is where the Henderson family came from before settling on the peninsula. Ardnamurchan is nearly 17 hours by foot from Glencoe — and that’s based on Google Maps, so doesn’t account for the crossings over bodies of water that would be required at Loch Etive and Loch Linnhe.
It would be great to have more concrete proof — even just a few more generations before Archibald would get us something. But the story of the Massacre at Glencoe is still moving, even if I don’t know for sure whether my ancestors were part of it. It’s said that it was “Big Henderson of the Chanters,” the piper for the MacDonalds, who helped to spread the word of the treachery. He was also one of those killed.
There are long-standing legacies, I suspect, that linger in the psyche of a family that has been under these kinds of circumstances. I’m sure they’re visible in the anger of the crofters on Tiree and in the actions of my great-great-great uncle Colin Henderson. I don’t know if they linger still. As I read this history that may well have been the history of my family, I am bewildered at the number of things that could have gone wrong along the way that might have led to me not existing at all. And so, I come away from it mostly just so grateful for Providence and to have been able to live in a time of extended peace during our family’s time over the last century and a bit here in Canada.3
One more “but maybe…”?
In the course of looking into the story of the Hendersons on Tiree, I did come across one tantalizing bit of information that I’m not quite sure what to do with. In all likelihood, it’s an unrelated factoid that none of us should waste much time thinking about.
But it is also sort of cool. (And the links below are pretty interesting if you are a history buff).
In 1588, over two hundred years before any Hendersons would arrive on the Isle of Mull, a ship sank among the rocks of the coastline. It was not wrecked in a storm, however: it was exploded by a government spy! This was the San Juan de Sicilia, a ship in the Spanish Armada. The story of the gold that had been in its stores and, which now presumably lies at the bottom of Tobermory Bay, has inspired many in the centuries since.
I had heard of the infamous Spanish Armada before, but did not really know the context at all. I knew that it had something to do with Queen Elizabeth I because of her awesome speech:
I know I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.
I’d say that merits a mic drop (although, actually, the speech goes on).
The Spanish Armada was Spain’s at-the-time unrivalled navy. In 1588, it sent its ships over to England to attempt to reinstate the country’s lapsed Catholicism. Rebuffed by England’s much more agile fleet, the ships fled through the North Sea between Ireland and Scotland. Several of the ships sank along the way.
One of the reasons I find all of this so interesting is that, this period represents an important time of Spanish-Scottish interaction. I acknowledge again that I have not been able to find our supposed Spanish roots in the Henderson pedigree of the last 250 years; however, there are all sorts of stories of Spanish sailors fleeing across the Scottish landscape. Who knows? Maybe one of them found a way to stick around. Maybe one of them met a bonnie Highlands lass and decided to hang out in the heath a bit. Maybe one of them found their way to Mull or Ardnamurchan and met someone, started a family, and one day had a descendant who bumped into one of the Hendersons. Maybe! Right?
Ok, yeah, this is all pretty much hardcore speculation — and, notably, Reddit has thoughts. There was another important Spanish-Scottish interaction that happened in 1719 during the Jacobite Rebellion. So, if not the Armada, maybe then?
The hunt continues.
- Fun fact: Archibald Henderson was born on April 23, 1780. I’m hoping to get this post out today — April 23rd — Archibald’s 245th birthday. ↩︎
- The major clearance of Ardnamurchan happened in 1828 and then again in 1853, according to this nineteenth-century compilation. A “Valuation of the Estate of Ardnamurchan” was commissioned in 1807, which made several recommendations for improvements. ↩︎
- I realized, as I wrote that, that my grandfather would have been 100 this year. His father, Alexander, came to Canada about 10 years before that. ↩︎