Arthur Cotter Henderson was an important figure in the history of Chilliwack making his mark in the core of town at Five Corners 130 years ago.
And while A.C. Henderson, born in Donegal, Ireland, on April 29, 1825, came overseas as a 19-year-old, he spent most of his life in America before coming to Chilliwack to be a pioneering figure.
A.C. Henderson landed first in Philadelphia. In 1847, he married Rebecca Hunter in New York City and moved to Milwaukee where they lived until 1852, returning to New York.
It wasn’t until 1875 that he came to British Columbia, his family following a year later. A.C. went on to farm in Rosedale, to co-found Cooke’s Presbyterian Church, and become one of the largest property owners in Chilliwack.
Along with the family following Arthur to Chilliwack was his adult son John Calvin Henderson who was a merchant running Henderson’s General Store at Five Corners.
The Henderson legacy remains in Chilliwack, in the street name in the area that was at the time known as Centreville, but also in blood as some direct descendants still reside in the area.
Janice Battis lives at Lindell Beach and is fascinated by the history of her distant relatives, she being the great-great-granddaughter of A.C. Henderson.
“We figure they came across the plains in covered wagons,” Janice says of Arthur and the family.
Battis has numerous anecdotes and snippets of information about the family history. Before settling in the Fraser Valley, she’s told they had purchased land near Seattle but upon arriving found it under water.
“They got duped.”
Exactly why Arthur left Ireland is unclear, although a 19-year-old in 1844, he may have been either lucky or prescient as the Irish Potato Famine began a year later, ravaging portions of the population from 1845 to 1852.
Arthur’s brother Samuel Henderson came to America much later, and the two arrived in the Chilliwack area in the 1870s. The two had money, and in addition to acquiring tracts of land in Rosedale, which they farmed, they established a presence at the area known as Centreville, now known as Five Corners.
Pioneer Isaac Kipp first laid out the townsite in 1881 in that area, calling it Centreville, after his hometown in Ontario.
A.C. and S.C. Henderson were integral in the foundation of Cooke’s Presbyterian on Wellington, according to A Century of Faith, a 1988 book written about the history of the church on its 100th anniversary.
The first meeting of the congregation was on Sept. 20, 1888, soon after A.C. and S.C. Henderson were inducted as elders of the church. S.C. was an obvious candidate as elder as he served as an elder in Ireland at a church for 27 years.
Samuel’s son was a prominent member of the community, too, as the town’s first doctor. Dr. J.C. Henderson was born in 1853 in Rathmullen, Ireland, and arrived in the valley in 1886. He married a daughter of the pioneering McCutcheon family, and had five children together.
Arthur and his son were involved in the creation of Henderson’s General Store, which was first located on the Fraser River in an area known as The Landing, but around 1887 moved operations to Five Corners.
On the spot of the Triple Play Pub today on the northwest corner was Henderson’s General Store, the second floor of which was Henderson’s Hall, a large space used for dances and meetings.
At the time in the 1880s, teenagers had to travel to New Westminster to attend high school, and before a proper high school was built in Chilliwack, Henderson’s Hall hosted some of the first high school classes in town.
The Hall was also used for Cooke’s first church services before the church was built just down the street, completed in June 1888.
@PeeJayAitch
paul.henderson@theprogress.com
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