Barbara Lindsay Johnston Henrysoune

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Barbara Lindsay Johnston Henrysoune (c. 1595–1681), an 11× great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers her likely Edinburgh origins, marriage to Peter Patrick Henrysoune Henry, motherhood of Marion Hendersoune, and the historical context of late-sixteenth and seventeenth-century Lowland Scotland. Notable: long life spanning the Scottish Reformation's aftermath and the Covenanter era.

Barbara Lindsay Johnston Henrysoune, born about the year 1595 in or near Edinburgh, in the shire of Midlothian, Scotland, and departed this life on the sixteenth day of June, 1681, stands among the earliest forebears of record in the compiler's paternal-grandfather line. By the family reckoning she was an eleven-times great-grandmother of the compiler, and her long life of some eighty-six years carried her across one of the most turbulent centuries in Scottish history.

Edinburgh in the closing years of the sixteenth century was a walled burgh of perhaps eight thousand souls, dominated by its castle rock and its reformed Kirk. The Scotland into which Barbara was born had only a generation earlier undergone the Reformation under John Knox, and the religious settlement remained contested throughout her lifetime. She would have lived to see the union of the crowns under King James VI and I in 1603, the National Covenant of 1638, the civil wars of the mid-century, and the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660. Her final years coincided with the years of persecution known to later generations as the Killing Time, when Covenanters in the Lowlands suffered grievously for their faith.

Barbara was united in marriage to Peter Patrick Henrysoune Henry, the surname appearing in its older Scots form before the gradual anglicization to Henderson and Henry that the line would later assume. Of this union is recorded a daughter, Marion Hendersoune, born in 1615 and surviving until 1688, through whom the lineage descends to the compiler.

Though little of Barbara's personal circumstance survives in the archive beyond the bare framework of name, place, and date, her place in the family record is one of foundational importance. She is among the earliest named matriarchs in the Henderson-Henry branch, anchoring the line to Edinburgh and to the Scotland of the late Renaissance. Barbara was an eleven-times great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.