James Henderson

James Henderson was a joiner in Bridge of Allan, one of several namesakes who lived at overlapping addresses and pursued the same trade. As with most tradesmen outside large towns, there is little documentation about him or his business.

In the Stirling Directory for 1865, a John Henderson of Henderson Place, Bridge of Allan, appears as a joiner, and in 1870 as an undertaker too (a common enough dual profession, when coffins were handmade). 1 A second, undoubtedly related, Henderson family lived at Union Place, from where a James Henderson worked as a joiner-undertaker in the mid-1880s. James's family also took in boarders, probably people on short visits to 'take the waters' at the spa town. 2

The James Henderson most likely to have worked for John Honeyman & Keppie may have been born around 1838 in Stirling, the son of John Henderson, a master joiner. According to the 1851 Census, this John Henderson employed three men, and had lodgers from Aberdeen. 3 James worked as a house joiner in Stirling, until in 1881 he appears in Allan Vale, Bridge of Allan, as a master joiner employing three people. 4 His children were obviously well-educated: according to the 1891 and 1901 censuses, one son was a pupil teacher and later a schoolteacher, one daughter became a librarian, and a third child became a chemist's assistant. 5

A second James Henderson, also a joiner and born around 1836, was living in Logie (Bridge of Allan) parish in 1891. He may have been a cousin of the last-named James Henderson. Two of his sons were law clerks, and the family took in boarders. 6