Clan Henderson

History

Henderson is unusual among clan names in having more than one starting point. The Clan Henderson Society, which keeps the clan's history today, traces three distinct lines that came together only much later: a Lowland family in Liddesdale in the Borders; a branch in Caithness in the far north; and a line settled around Glencoe in the western Highlands. That the same surname covers such different origins is itself part of the clan's story, and no single account explains all three.

The Glencoe Hendersons are the line clan tradition dwells on longest. They are said to take their name from Eanruig Mòr mac Rìgh Neachtain, 'big Henry, son of King Nechtan', a legendary figure linked to the early Pictish king Nechtan. This is tradition rather than documented history, and no outside record confirms it. What can be said with more confidence is that a Henderson family lived among the MacDonalds of Glencoe for generations and, by clan society account, served as hereditary pipers to the MacDonald chiefs. They were there on the night of 13 February 1692, when soldiers under Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon killed thirty-eight members of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe on government orders, in the atrocity remembered as the Massacre of Glencoe.

The Caithness Hendersons have a separate, and separately uncertain, origin. Clan tradition holds that they descend from a younger son of a chief of Clan Gunn, called Henry, who took a different name to distance his branch from a long feud between the Gunns and the Keiths. This account rests on the clan's own tradition rather than independent confirmation, and is best read as a family story handed down rather than settled fact.

It was the Lowland line that rose furthest. James Henderson, Lord Advocate of Scotland, had his lands of Fordell in Fife erected into a barony in 1511, founding the Henderson baronial line that still holds the chiefship. A different branch of the wider Henderson name produced Alexander Henderson of Fife (1583–1646), the Presbyterian minister who helped draft the National Covenant of 1638 and later the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 — work substantial enough that he was later called Scotland's 'Second Reformer' after John Knox.

Hendersons scattered widely in the centuries that followed, with clan society records pointing to settlement routes through Shetland and Ulster on the way to the wider Scottish diaspora. The clan's institutions are mostly modern: the Clan Henderson Society of the United States and Canada was organised in the late 1980s with the backing of the then chief, and held its first general gathering at Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina, in 1988. The chiefship itself continues through the Fordell line: the present chief, Alistair D. Henderson of Fordell, was recognised by the Lord Lyon in 2005 and lives in Australia.