HENDERSON, GEORGE (1797-1836)

HENDERSON, GEORGE, retail merchant and JP; b. Miramichi, 27 Jun 1797, s/o John Henderson and Anne Murdoch; m. 1828, Briseis Newcomb, of Pictou, N.S.; d. Newcastle, 27 Sep 1836.

George Henderson's father, an older brother of Patrick Henderson, was a shipwright and may have had a shipyard. He was in possession of a number of valuable riverfront properties at the time of his death in 1819 and was sufficiently well-to-do to leave £1100 to each of his two surviving sons: John Henderson Jr of Chatham and George Henderson of Newcastle.

At around the same time as John Henderson's estate was settled, George Henderson, age twenty-six, built a fine new house in downtown Newcastle. From then onward he was a leading retailer in the town, dealing in groceries, dry-goods, and hardware. He was one of the first elders of St James Presbyterian Church, a parish school trustee, and one of Newcastle's earliest fire wardens. In 1830 he was named a justice of the peace.

After Henderson's death in 1836, at age thirty-nine, his widow took over the business in partnership with Simon Newcomb. Since both her father and one of her brothers were so named, it is not known which man was in business with her. The arrangement was evidently a short-term one in any event, and Newcomb was not mentioned by her in 1842 when she informed the public that she was closing her store.

While renovations were being made to the former Henderson house in 1903, a bottle was discovered in a recess in the chimney containing a note which Briseis (Newcomb) Henderson wrote many years previously. In it she stated that the house had been erected in 1822 by George Henderson and had been renovated by her, the last survivor of the family. "Her children," she stated, "two sons and one lovely daughter, all died of consumption" - between ages nineteen and twenty-two. For more than twenty years prior to her own death in 1885 she made her home in Chatham.