Henry Anderson

Henry Anderson was an Irishman.  Or was he?  In the 1861 and 1871 censuses he was recorded as being born in Ireland and it's clear from the births of his children that he had been in Ireland before coming over to Scotland.  The 1851 census says he was born in Edinburgh!  This is strange because, although he did end up in Leith for the last period of his life, this piece of information was recorded before then.  Why would it say Edinburgh unless it was true?  It is clearly possible that he could have moved over when he was young but this would have been quite strange in a time of mass migration in the other direction.  Anderson is a Plantation name i.e. originally Scottish Protestant and he could have had family connections but it's unlikely we'll ever know, given the state of the Irish records.  There is a birth in 1794 in Duddingston with good family names so there is a possibility but there isn't enough to go on to draw any conclusion.

The Mormon database says he married Helen Carnie around 1827 although that is probably a guess based on children's birthdates.  Almost all Andersons in Ireland are Protestant and almost all Carnies, which is considered an alternative spelling of Kearney, are Catholics.  Mixed marriages were uncommon and frowned on in those days so maybe they were running away from a bad situation by coming to Scotland.  Strangely, on the other side of my mother's line, Henry Kearney, almost certainly a Catholic, married Elizabeth Wilson, virtually guaranteed to be Protestant so maybe the same applied there as well.

Warning - the next part is complicated so don't worry if you don't understand. I have checked the workings though.

Henry and wife Helen had four children that we know of, Elizabeth (1828), Henry (1833), John (1835) and Jane (1840) and there may have been others we have no record of.  Elizabeth is of special interest to us even although she is not in the direct bloodline.  A look at the 1871 census shows that the widowed Henry was living with Charles Hunter and his wife Elizabeth and Henry is listed as father-in-law, which makes him Elizabeth's father.  There's nothing unusual in that but Charles was born in Musselburgh.  That rung a bell with me and I confirmed that son John's wife Isabella Hunter was also borm in Musselburgh.  Sure enough, Charles Hunter was Isabella's big brother, also born to Thomas Hunter and Isabella Cuthbertson, so a brother and sister cross-married a sister and brother.

It doesn't stop there though.  A look at the previous census found Charles and Elizabeth Hunter in Bennie's Close, next door to her parents Henry and Helen, and their eldest children (Henry and Isabella, confirming the usual naming pattern) were listed as being born in Dumfries in 1848 and 1850.  This tied in nicely with the Maxwelltown reference (Maxwelltown is effectively a part of Dumfries) which had puzzled me until I found Henry and family there in 1851. 

It looks to me as though this was the pattern of events.

  • The Andersons come over from Ireland to Dumfries between 1841 and 1846.
  • For some reason Elizabeth Anderson is in Musselburgh and marries Thomas Hunter there in 1846.
  • The Hunters move down to Dumfries beside her family and have two children in 1848 and 1850. 
  • From 1851 to at least 1853 the Hunters are in England, deduced from children's births.
  • John Anderson marries Isabella Hunter in Musselburgh in 1853 while he is up there on his own.
  • The Hunters return to Leith by 1855.
  • John and Isabella Anderson have children in Leith (and one in Musselburgh) from 1855.
  • Some time before 1861 Henry and Helen Anderson move up to Leith to stay close to the Hunters.
  • Some time before 1868 John and Isabella move away and son John is born in Kirkcaldy.
  • Helen dies in 1868 and Henry moves in with the Hunters.
  • Henry dies in Leith in 1872.  He is lame and dumb by this time.

Henry's records show that he was in Binnie's Close, Meikle John's Close and Combe's Close, all in Leith.  A close is an alleyway between buildings, not big enough for a car or cart but used by pedestrians.  They could be dark and dangerous and in medieval times down-right unhealthy with all sorts of human debris left there.  A photographer Thomas Allan was commissioned to photograph the old closes of Glasgow before their demolition and they weren't dissimilar to those in Leith.

The 1851 census is full of interest.  Henry is listed as a shoemaker as well as a lodging house keeper.  He is elsewhere noted as a labourer except in his son John's death record where the shoemaker occupation pops up again.  The fact that he is a keeper and his wife a keepess (they said it, not me) suggests they don't own but just manage the place.  One son builds coaches which would be horse-drawn, of course, and our John, in common with most of the other inhabitants of the lodging house was a door-to-door seller of goods.  I had to research the difference between hawkers and pedlars and came up with the distinction that hawkers have a horse and cart and pedlars are on foot, ped- being a clue.

Henry signed his name on his wife's death certificate with a mark.  It wasn't a cross but it still indicated illiteracy.