What's in a name

Advertisement: Sydney Herald for 7 March 1936

I have been working on the Story of Robert Henderson for almost 2 months, but I still keep running into problems with his name. The first problem is that he is sometimes shown in official records as 'Robert Anderson'. I thought at first that this was only in his early career and his father, Thomas, suffered from the same confusion.

The second problem occurs after Robert moves to Sydney in 1840. There is another Robert Henderson, of a similar age, who lives in Newtown. This other Robert is a gardener and nurseryman.

My latest issue came while I was re-checking my sources for the last time and I noticed a vessel named William that I had not researched. Gwen Dundon's book on the Shipbuilders of Brisbane Water says the William was a cutter built in Sydney in 1846. She references an item from the Sydney Herald on 7 March 1846. This is where confusion sets in. There was no Sydney Herald in 1846 and I can't find anything relevant in the Sydney Morning Herald of that date. In a stroke of inspiration, I looked in the Sydney Herald for the same date in 1836 (10 years earlier) and discovered the advertisement shown above right.

This is for a Brig, not a cutter and the agent (other versions have him as the agent) is 'Robert Anderson', lower George Street. Now I know Robert was spending time in Sydney around this time, but I don't think he moved full time to Sydney until about 1840. So is this our Robert, or was there actually a Robert Anderson in the picture?

I next turned to the William and had a closer look at the vessels registered with this name and any mentions in the shipping columns. I think there were several brigs of this name. One was lost in Bass Straight in 1939 and another ran ashore on the south coast of NSW in 1842. There were 4 vessels named William in a list of vessels published in 1847 including a 324-ton brig, a 73-ton schooner and two cutters (24-ton and 10-ton). R. Anderson is shown as the owner of the 10-ton cutter, which was built in Sydney.

I am inclined to think that there may well have been a shipping agent named Robert Anderson working in Sydney in 1836 and this was not our Robert Henderson. I have no idea if this Robert Anderson was the owner of the cutter William in 1847, but I notice that 'R. Anderson' and 'Robert Henderson' are separately  listed as owners of vessels in a similar list published in 1842, so this possibly supports the idea thet Robert Henderson and Robert Anderson are separate people.