Helen Gordon was the youngest daughter of Charles, VI of Terpersie, who was hung, drawn and quartered at Carlisle in 1746 for his involvement in the second failed Jacobite rebellion. The following profile is extracted from John Malcolm Bulloch’s House of Gordon, Volume II, edited by John Malcolm Bulloch (pp. 131-32):

George Stuart, schoolmaster of Oathlaw, her grandson in an unfinished pedigree (communicated by Mr. Robert Stuart, 27 Burns Road, Aberdeen), says: “My old grandmother, Helen Gordon, with her sister, Mrs. Lindsay (Note - this refers to Margaret, infra), were (p. 132) boarded then with poor folk, for the Duke of Cumberland’s soldiers would have killed them as rebels’ brats (my mother said so to me)... Helen Gordon was reckoned the beauty of the district, which the romance of her father’s life and her family no doubt enhanced. At all events my maternal grandfather, the recognised chief of a large branch of the Clan Chattan and the most spirited youth of those rough and romantic times, hearing of her beauty and the sufferings of her family in the wreck of the civil war, made suit and won her. It is my longest remembrance to have seen her still a beauty. A venerable clergyman after told me it did his heart good to see her walk...”

Further reference to the adventures of Helen and Margaret in the wake of the failed rebellion is to be found in Captain Douglas Wimberley’s 1894 study, Memorials of Four Old Families (p. 111):

Two of Charles’s daughters are said to have been boarded, after their father’s capture, with poor cottars to prevent Cumberland’s soldiers taking their lives.

Helen married the above-mentioned George Cattanach in 1757 at Gartly, Aberdeenshire.

According to Andrew Jervise, F.S.A. Scot., in Epitaphs & Inscriptions from Burial Grounds & Old Buildings in the North-Eaft of Scotland, with Hiftorical, Biographical, Genealogical, and Antiquarian Notes (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1875), at p. 266, Helen died on 25^th December 1841. Find a Grave favours the 23^rd but Jervise is preferred as the more reliable, since his transcription was made just a few decades after Helen’s death.

Forebears

Bulloch, referring to Charles, VI of Terpesie, states (p. 131) that Helen was allowed as a creditor on her father’s forfeited estates in 1747. Her mother was Margaret Gordon.

Brothers and Sisters

Helen Gordon had the following brothers and sisters:

James, not identified in Wimberley’s pedigree chart but known from Bulloch (p. 130), was the eldest son, born c. 1730, and enlisted along with his father in support of the doomed Jacobite cause. According to the same source, James was a lieutenant in the rebel artillery, which seems remarkable to say the least, considering that he then an adolescent; one has to suspect that there is confusion here and that another of the same name is implicated. James was subsequently captured at Carlisle, condemned for High Treason at Southwark on 24^th October 1746 but reprieved following a direct appeal to King George II.

His petition (quoted ad longam in Bulloch, p. 130) was addressed to the ‘King’s most excellent majesty’ and runs:

That your Petitioner, in September, 1745, being then at school, and about the age of 15, was seized and forcibly carried into the rebellion by a party of Highlanders, under the command of David Gordon, son of Gordon of Glenbucket, as was fully proved upon your petitioner’s Tryal. That your petitioner, being afterwards carried to Edinburgh, he there found his father, Charles Gordon, unfortunately engaged in the service of the rebells. That your petitioner engaged with the rebels rather for the sake of taking care of his father, who was aged and infirm, rather than from principle or inclination. That your petitioner’s said father was convicted of High treason at Carlisle, and has in consequence of such conviction suffered death. That your petitioner’s age and his unwillingness to engage in the rebellion was so clearly proved upon your petitioner’s tryal that the jury were pleased in open court to declare that they would have intreated my Lords the judges to have represented your Petitioner to your Majesty as an object of mercy if they had not imagined it was improper for them to trouble the Court too often with recommendations of that nature. That in further testimony of your petitioner’s unwillingness to engage in the service of the rebels your petitioner most humbly begs leave to refer to the annexed certificate of Mr. Walter Syme, minister of the Gospel at Tullynessle, a person of undoubted loyalty to your Majesty, and who has known your petitioner from his infancy. That your petitioner’s only hope is in your Majesty’s unbounded clemency, and altho’ your petitioner’s age or his father’s punishment is not any excuse or attonement for his crime, yet he most humbly implores your Majesty to take the above circumstances under your royal consideration, and to spare his life, the remainder of which he promises faithfully to devote to the service of your Majesty and your illustrious house.

Lord Adam Gordon encountered ‘James Gordon, late Terpersey’ as a mahogany cutter in Jamaica on 18^th July 1764. James was evidently deceased by 1801. (Bulloch, p. 130)

Henry, otherwise Harry, was, according to Bulloch, a lieutenant in the Marines, who died on 22^nd November 1779. An extract from the pedigree authored by Harry’s grand-nephew, George Stuart, refers to a gold ring, inscribed with his name in full around it, which belonged to him, subsequently passing to George’s brother, the Rev. Harry Stuart, and from him to ‘W.L.’ (William Leiper?) According to Wimberley, Harry Gordon was a captain in the Marines and no doubt it was this source which he had in mind.

Extracts from correspondence 1850-98, various