Introduction





MARGARET'S LETTER

Part 1:
~INTRODUCTION~

One of my earliest genealogy research projects was to document the life of my ancestor, William Diuguid, born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1717, and my descent from him through his son, George Diuguid, an American Revolutionary War patriot. The Duguid family settled in Albemarle County, later Buckingham County, Virginia before the Revolutionary War, eventually changing the spelling of their surname to Diuguid.

I first became aware of William's connection to the Henry family through the book about his life and descendants called William Diuguid of Buckingham County Virginia, by Eleanor Harris MacRae (Virginia Beach, VA: published privately 1988, rep. 1989 in collaboration with Jim Eades Diuguid). Mrs. MacRae’s work states that Williamʼs mother was Jean Henry, a sister of Col. John Henry and Rev. Patrick Henry of Virginia, and the aunt of the famous Patrick Henry. But what was the basis and proof of this information? Where did it come from? Documenting my ancestors with primary sources is what brings their stories alive for me. So I began to research the basis of the family information and gather copies of as many primary source documents as I could locate. This would prove to become a time-consuming and absolutely fascinating immersion into the Virginia and Scottish archives with unexpected and startling new findings which would allow me to trace the Henry family back another generation. In the process, new questions and new avenues for research have been opened up and beckon Henry family researchers.

In William Diuguid of Buckingham County, Virginia, the evidence given confirming Williamʼs parentage and relatives is a letter (hereafter referred to as “Margaret’s Letter”) written in 1790 by Margaret Donald from Aberdeen, Scotland to her cousin Patrick Henry in Virginia. A transcript of this letter appears on page 7 and holds intriguing clues to the Diuguid, Donald and Henry family relationships. It seemed that the information from Margaretʼs Letter was likely the key to linking all these relationships together and perhaps would provide clues for documentation yet to be found.

Turning to a respected publication written about the life of Patrick Henry, I reviewed Patrick Henry: Patriot in the Making by Robert Douthat Meade (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1957) in which I located discussion about Col. John Henryʼs early life and ancestors. Meade begins his discussion of Margaretʼs Letter on page 7. He travelled to Scotland to conduct research on the Henry ancestors and located the Aberdeen University records of brothers, John and Patrick. He also found evidence of part of the Henry family in Foveran Parish, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, which we know was the birthplace of David Henry, a cousin mentioned in Margaretʼs Letter. It was obvious to me that the main and perhaps only source of information on the Henry ancestors was that which was contained in Margaretʼs Letter and perhaps word of mouth through the Henry, Diuguid and Donald lines.

A few years ago I became acquainted with researcher and author Judy Henry of Porter, Texas who has done extensive research on her husbandʼs Henry family (unrelated to the Patrick Henry line) and now facilitates a Henry DNA project. She had teamed up with Dr. Rebecca Wood, a descendant of Patrick Henry, and others to work with a Scottish genealogist to trace the ancestors of Patrick Henry. They were aware of Margaretʼs Letter and that Jean Henry was a sister of John and Patrick, but many pieces of the puzzle remained misinterpreted mainly due to a lack of information about the Diuguid family. Once Judy, Rebecca and I began to correspond, the proper relationship of the Diuguid family members to the Patrick Henry line became better understood.

I then decided to go back and take a fresh look at the information contained in Margaretʼs Letter to confirm the veracity of each bit of information and perhaps to glean new clues through analyzing other primary sources. I believe that there are clues in original documents that are often overlooked in abstracts or transcripts. In rereading a booklet written by my aunt after research she conducted in the 1960s on our Duguid line in Scotland, I discovered that she mentioned that the original letter was housed in the Library of Congress. In October of 2003 I received confirmation from the Library of Congress that the letter was located in a chronologically arranged series of correspondence in Box One (1) of the Papers of Patrick Henry, 1776-1818, held by the Manuscript Division. Shortly thereafter, Bruce Kirby, a Manuscript Reference Librarian, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, sent me a complimentary photocopy of the original four-page letter.

Analyzing the original letter has led to some new discoveries in the Virginia and Scottish records, confirming various people and topics mentioned in the letter and turning up some exciting finds.

For further genealogy data on the William Diuguid family and descendants, see William Diuguid of Buckingham County, Virginia by Eleanor Harris MacRae, now in its Second Revision with James Eades Diuguid as Collaborator, privately printed, which can be found in many genealogy libraries, the DAR Library in Washington, D.C. and the Library of Congress.


Part Two: WHO WAS MARGARET DONALD?

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Created August 7, 2009

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