Henry Henry

Pierre Charles Marie Henry was born in August of 1798 in Kingston, the first child of Louis and Marie Jacqueline Antoinette to be born in Jamaica.

When Henry was a boy his Uncle Barthélemy (half-brother of Louis) visited Jamaica and took young Henry back to France to be schooled. We do not know if any of Henry's brothers were also schooled in France, though this is probable. Henry attended the Vendôme College run by the Oratorian monks.

At school along with Henry was none other than Honoré de Balzac, the famous French playwright.

After broadening his education Henry returned to Jamaica when he was eighteen. He became a merchant like his father was at that time but soon tired of it and took up the practice of law, returning to the profession which his ancestors had practiced in France.

About two years later, in April 1818 he married Anne-Marie Maxime Seychoires (or Teychoires). Anne Marie was the daughter of Pierre Seychoires and Eulalie Paschale Lamothe. Pierre apparently moved around quite a bit, he was born in Dax, France but he and Eulalie, who was born in St Domingue, got married in Jamaica in 1807, Ann-Marie is recorded as being born in Cuba. At the time of Henry and Ann-Marie's marriage Pierre is described as being from "Upper Guiana". Pierre was a Negotiator so his job may have taken him throughout the Caribbean. Here we digress a little from fact into family legend. When Pierre died Anne-Marie became the ward of Louis, and she and her mother lived with Louis and Marie Antoinette. Concerned with what people would think about a young unmarried girl living in a home with young men, she was married to Henry when she was only thirteen and on her wedding day had to be pulled away from her dolls to be dressed and taken to church. The marriage record shows her only as a "minor child" but based on her death in 1887 at the age of eighty three, this is probably quite true.

Henry belonged to many civic and private organisations and is listed in The Freemason's Quarterly Review, third quarter of 1843, as "Grand Pursuivant" of the Kingston chapter of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.

Henry and Anne-Marie went on to have (?) ten children:
Eulalie Loduiska Vendryes b Jan. 1820, died Oct. 1825
Luce Mathilda Vendryes b Jul. 1821, died Oct 1825; these two little girls, aged four and five died only four days apart which suggests their might have been an epidemic of something at the time;
Louise Lilla Vendryes b Oct. 1823, we don't have her death but she married Charles Gadpaille from Nantes and had three sons and two daughters (maybe one of the Gadpailles would be kind enough to provide the date of death)
Anne Marie Maxime b Dec 1825, no further information
Luce Maxime b Jan 1826, d Aug 1830;
Eulalie Cirée b Apr 1827, in 1888 Henry the younger refers to her as being "quite old", though she would only have been 61 according to this date and younger than Henry, but that was another time; Cirée became Sister Sacre Couer;
Lorenzo Lorensthi, no dates, only a mention in another document, possible another infant death
Louis Ivanhoe Vendryes b Aug 1831 d Apr 1866, married Marie Louise deRoux Jun 1856
Peter Ernest b c1833, married Elizabeth Burger Nov 1866 and had three sons and three daughters
NB In 1877 Lilia's son Arthur Joseph marries his first cousin, Marie Maxima, daughter of Ivanhoe.

Poor Ann-Marie, by the time she was 21 she already had seven children and buried half of them!

Now we come upon a quandary, we have Louis Maximilien Vendryes b 16th October 1822 and Pierre Maximilien Lovensky Henri b 30th October 1824. The second name is definitely our great, great grandfather but many documents, including his obituary, say that he was born in 1822, unfortunately we have nothing written by Henry himself which mentions his age. Can we presume that Louis Henry was another infant death and so many subsequent documents accidentally picked up the incorrect dob?

We also wonder where Henry the elder and Anne-Marie picked up so many Russian names for their children as there was no history of this in previous Vendryes generations and Anne-Marie's parents also had normal French names. Possibly Henry had had close friends at school who were Russian; our grandmother did not know the answer and we probably never will.

In 1842, Henry entered into correspondence with Louis-Napoleon, nephew of Bonaparte, regarding the creation of a French Republic in Central America and may have been involved in collecting arms for that purpose. When Louis-Napoleon became Napoleon III, this idea seems to have fallen by the wayside but in 1853 Henry presented the Emperor with plans for a canal through Columbia. (We should know that from 1831-1900 Columbia and Panama were joined as New Grenada), so our Henry had planned the Panama Canal half a century before it was built! (Some of this is from a French West Indian Genealogy site called chcaraibe.org. my French is atrocious so I hope I have translated fairly accurately). This information also lends credence to some of the family stories.

Here is an interesting volume found on Google Books, Henry's work starts on page 348. It is more likely that this was written by the elder Henry of almost fifty rather than the twenty year old younger Henry.

Shortly before his death, Henry gave the Franciscan Sisters a property he owned at East Queen St; this was the original site of the Immaculate Conception High School. Henry died on the 13th May, 1858 at the age of fifty-nine but Anne-Marie, despite great child bearing from a young age, outlived him by thirty years and was able to see her children succeed. Unfortunately, she also lived to bury all but four of them: Louise, Henry, Cirée and Ernest.

Ship Samuel Cunard
As it lay off the coast of America at 2 o'clock in the morning of the 8th December, 1830
Presented to Capt. [William] McClure by Henri Vendreys Kingston Jamaica 1831

We sometimes joke that after a pirate (Louis) and an arms dealer (Henry, père) Henry the younger was the one who made the family respectable. He married into an old French family, became one of Jamaica's most respected lawyers and apparently did nothing more dangerous than collect shells as a hobby.

On the 30th October 1843 Henry married Marie Josephine duVerger (b 1826), daughter of Jean-Baptiste Guillaume duVerger (1790-1855) and the late Marie Francoise Uranie leMercier duQuesnay (1801-1841). The event was quite large for that time as most people then did not have the huge weddings we are now accustomed to. There were twenty four witnesses to the marriage and the ceremony was performed by the bride's uncle Father Marie Arthur Guillame leMercier duQuesnay. The duVerger and duQuesnay families were two ancient and noble French families who had come to Jamaica like the Vendryes by way of St Domingue. It is interesting to note a cultural difference: Englishwomen signing official documents signed with their married names, however French women use their maiden names, for example "Marie-Jaqueline leBlanc, wife of duPont"; this practice can be a great help to researchers.

Henry and Josephine had seven children:
Paul Emile (1847-1903) solicitor
Marie Charles Lucien (25th Mar 1850-6th Apr 1920) merchant, solicitor. Married Emma Rosalie Branday,6th June 1877: Charles, Isabella, Vincent,
William, Lillian, Helena, Bernard
Marie Josephine, married Harry Curtis Wilson: Beatrice
Arthur Louis (?-1901) solicitor, Clerk of the Criminal Court. Married Esther Levy: Blanche, Henry, Edmund, Ione, Arthur
Marie Irene, married John William Branday, three daughters
Louis Horace, clock maker and jeweller. Married Fanny Gutzmer: Cecil, Louise, Horace
Phillipe Camille, electrical engineer. Married Bertie Bold Huggins Baylis, 2nd Dec 1896: Vida Verona, Bertie Camille, Marie Leonie, Philip Eric,
Harry Edwin, Joseph and Mildred Winifred. Bertie, her eldest, Vida and her newborn baby, Joseph, died in the 1907 earthquake.
Marie Beatrice Elise (1866-1939) the baby and our great-grandmother

Henry operated a printery in his youth then worked as a clerk in his father's law office and in October 1861 was admitted to practice as a solicitor and by 1888 had become a Judge. Henry was quite obviously practicing law from much younger but must have finally sat the exam upon his father's death. In those days people did not study for a pre-determined time and then sit an exam set by a University but rather worked for another lawyer for as long as that person saw fit and then barristers would go to university and sit a set exam which allowed them to be admitted to the Bar; solicitors would sit an exam set by an official such as the Chief Justice.

Even while running a very successful law practice, Henry found time for a host of other pursuits, He belonged to many church and civic organisations, he was also Editor of a newspaper: The Colonial Standard and Jamaica Despatch for a period of fifteen years, including the time surrounding the Morant Bay Rebellion, copies of these are at the National Library of Jamaica. Henry is listed as a printer in his youth; we are not sure if his printery put out the newspaper; that is we do not know if he was the publisher of The Colonial Standard as well as being its editor.

Outside of his profession he received some degree of fame as an amateur conchologist and wrote several papers on the subject. He was a member of the Board of Governors of the Institute of Jamaica and spent a lot of time actually working there; he compiled the Manuscript Catalogue of the Rocks, Fossils and Minerals collected in the Official Geological Survey of Jamaica 1850-1856 for the Institute. In 1889, A. C. Sinclair persuaded the new Governor, Sir William Fawcett, to accept his long-time dream of holding a Great Exhibition like London's of 1851. The Institute of Jamaica helped him prepare and present his plans to the Governor. The idea bred success and Henry, because of his connection to the Institute, spent a great deal of time and effort towards the plans. The Governor went wholeheartedly for the plan and The Great Exhibition of 1891 was a resounding success. The Exhibition took over the grounds of Racecourse, now National Heroes Park and Mico College.

Upon his death Henry willed his shell collection and all his papers to the Institute of Jamaica. The unfortunate situation is that when Henry died the Institute of Jamaica had no home, the previous building having recently been destroyed in the Earthquake of January 1907, and it appears as if some of his wonderful collection of shells and writings are no longer in existence. The Vendryes Shield which is given to schools for history projects is named for him. He also played the piano, unfortunately his piano was destroyed when the Earthquake struck. By the time the family was re-established in a permanent home Henry was already dead and the piano (and crystal chandelier from France) was never replaced, however the gramophone was!

There is no better way to learn about someone than in their own words. If you are a descendant of Henry you most likely already have a copy of the letter he wrote to reconnect with the French Vendryes, if not you can read the letter here.

Henry died on 20th November 1907. Here is his Obituary from the 1916 edition of Who's Who in Jamaica:

FOR THE YEAR 1907

Vendryes, Henry was born in Jamaica of French parents in October, 1822. After a slight experience in commerce, he for upwards of forty years practised in the Law Courts both as a solicitor and an advocate, having been admitted a solicitor in 1861, and being at the time of his death the doyen of the Jamaica Bar. He achieved his first success in the celebrated "La Have" case in 1871. In 1879 he was appointed an advocate in the Supreme Court. He held the appointment of District Court Judge for the districts of Portland, St. Catherine, St. Mary and St. Andrew for upwards of three years, but on the abolition of the District Courts and the establishment of the Resident Magistrates' Courts he decided to resume private practice; and only now and then acted as Resident Magistrate for Kingston. At one time he was, for fourteen years, editor of the late "Colonial Standard." He was proficient as a musician; and as a conchologist his fame was widely known; his collection of Jamaica shells being second only to that formed by Chitty, now in the British Museum. In 1899 he published a "Systematic Catalogue of the land and fresh water shells of Jamaica," and he was ever ready to help fellow-workers. He had been a member of the Board of Governors of the Institute of Jamaica from 1889 to shortly before his death, which occurred in Kingston on the 20th of November.

NB The only reference we have regarding the "La Have" case is an 1869 New York Times article