Thomas Henderson's trust

The single property i Thomas's trust is
shaded in red.

This is the story of the property trust established by Robert Henderson for his son, Thomas. See my earlier post for the background to this trust. 

Thomas Henderson was the second son of Robert Henderson, an Innkeeper in early Colonial Sydney. Little is known about Thomas. Details of his birth have not been discovered, leading some to speculate that he may have been adopted as a companion for Robert, his older brother.

Thomas grew up around the Dove Inn in Darling Harbour. The little we know of Thomas paints the picture of a spoiled youth with rich parents. He comes into some focus in 1858 when he is repeatedly taken to court in an effort to get him to support a child he had fathered with Eliza Wallbridge, a barmaid at the Dove Inn. To make matters worse, Eliza washis sister-in-law, younger sister of Hannah, his brother's wife.

At around the same time as Thomas was creating a scandal for the family, his brother Robert was busy doing the same, deserting Hannah and her children and running away to Woy Woy with another woman. 

These joint scandals were quite possibly behind their father's decision to leave his property in trusts, rather than to his sons direct.

Robert Henderson Sr created a property trust for Thomas that contained a single property, known as the 'Bethel Chapel'. This had been a seaman's mission run by an interdenominational organisation called the 'Bethel Union', but the property was sold to Robert Henderson when a new chapel was built in The Rocks. The property was right on the waterfront at the foot of Erskine Street. From descriptions contained in later conveyancing, it seems to be on the opposite (southern) side of Erskine Street, opposite what was then known as the Clarence Hotel.

The property was left in Trust to Thomas for his lifetime. He was entitled to receive any rents or profits from the property, but was not permitted sell it or convey it to someone else.

Thomas fell seriously ill shortly after his father died. In his last weeks of life, he made a will, naming the publicans at the Dove Inn and Clarence Hotel as his executors and leaving all of his estate to Catherine Larkin, housemaid at the Dove Inn. There was a Catherine Larkin born in St James, Sydney in 1854 and if this was the girl, she was only 16! Thomas was 32.

The trustees signed over the Bethel Chapel property to Catherine Larkin in September 1870.

Catherine married Matthew Smith in 1872, but the couple held onto the property and there are several records of the property being leased in the following years. I have not traced it further, but it is likely that the property was resumed by the Government either in 1890, when the Clarence Hotel was resumed, or in 1900 when the Dove Inn and the other Phoenix Wharf properties contained in other trusts were resumed.

I can't help it, but I don't have a good opinion of Thomas Henderson. I think his father would have been horrified to see the property leave the family in this manner less than a year after his death, left to a slip of a girl.