High Street, WIck
During my trip this spring to Caithness, I had a few hours to spare thanks to major road work to repair the Berriedale Braes. As a result, I went to Wick and spent time at their fantastic heritage center. Their extensive artifacts and holdings include many items from Wicks history, with a special focus during the herring boom.
The friendly staff had a surprise for me, contrary to what I had been told, the Johnston collection of glass photographic plates had not all been lost. In fact many hundreds had survived. In fact they have taken the time to catalog and index them, allowing visitors to look for scenes of interest.
Immediately I began searching for my Henderson kin, and sure enough several Hendersons from Ramscraigs and Dunbeath had their portrait taken on glass plates. For a modest fee, the museum staff were happy to scan these plates into JPEG files.
As a result, I am pleased to share the first of these treasures, a photograph of a young Donald Henderson, the grandson of Angus (second son of James of Rhian) born in in 1864. In this photo he is 19 years old. The family likeness, especially with cousin Sally, is wonderful to see.
Cousin Sheri has come up with family history gold once more, with a group photo showing several of the kin during the mid to late 1910s. Several important members of the Reverend’s family are present including:
Top Row: Isabella Ross (Henderson) Gow – Jane R (Taylor) Henderson aka Mrs. Adam C. Henderson – Adam Cunninghame Henderson Gow
Bottom Row: Mary (McDonald) Henderson – James Henderson – Agnes (Nan) Henderson aka Mrs. John T Henderson
Thanks again to Sheri for the work that went into finding this photo and sharing it.
Thanks to the dedication and hard work of a Henderson cousin, we have at long last found our ancestor’s photos. This one is a portrait of him in 1909, the year that he died. By this point his health had become frail, and he was retired from full time duties as the minister of the Busby Free Church.
Words cannot describe the gratitude I feel towards my cousin for finding this, and taking the time to pass this on.
Some days when you are researching history, you get lucky. Early in our research efforts it became clear that it was very likely that photos of Reverend Adam had been taken at some point during his life, and that there was a reasonable chance that his family was photographed as well. The question would be – had any survived to the present age.
Then, as luck would have it, a cousin and member of the research team found an old photo, in a place where you would not normally keep a photo, such as at the bottom of a dresser drawer.
There, preseved for us to find more than a century after it was taken, is the photo we all hoped existed. It appears to be Reverend Adam C. Henderson, his wife Jane, and the lady at the far end being named Connie Cunningham – possibly a cousin of Adam, along with their children Hughina, Annie, Jane, Baby Isabella, Mary, Donald and Dora. No hint of where James (my grandfather) is during this shot, though maybe he is behind the camera. We are still trying to figure out where this photo was taken, thought it seems like it could be a church doorway, it does not match the photos we have of the Busby Free Church.
I cannot thank my cousin Sheri enough, this is truly a treasure.
[Update 07 Feb 2010] – A special thanks to Kathryn Campbell for giving us a possible location: The graveyard house at Cathcart cemetery.
