This page is a stub.
You can help improve it.
John Douglass and Brigit Senson: A Mid-18th-Century Border
Marriage
In the middle decades of the eighteenth century, the lives of John Douglass and Brigit Senson
(also recorded as Semson or Simson) illustrate a familiar but often under-documented pattern of movement between Scotland and the north of England. Their story, pieced together from surviving genealogical records, places them at the intersection of two regions whose families, trades, and loyalties had long interwoven across the Border.
John Douglass is recorded as Scottish-born, around 1703, the son of Thomas Douglass and a mother named in some sources as Elizabeth or Mary. By the 1730s he had left Scotland(1) and settled in County Durham, part of a wider eighteenth-century drift southward by Scottish craftsmen, labourers, and agricultural workers seeking steadier employment in the expanding towns and rural estates of northern England. It was there, almost certainly in the mid‑1730s, that he married Brigit (Bridget) Senson, born 1713, whose surname appears in several spellings typical of the period’s parish registers.
The couple established themselves firmly in the Durham area, where they raised a notably large family. Between 1737 and 1756, parish-level genealogies record eighteen children, a pattern consistent with stable residence and regular employment. Among their children were
•
Mary Douglass (1737–1799)
•
Thomas Douglass (1737–1737)
•
William Douglass (1738–1787)
•
John Douglass (1739–1741)
•
Catherine Douglass (1739–1739)
•
Ann (“Nancy”) Douglass (d.1817)
• Bishop John Douglass (1743–1812)
•
Charles Douglass (1745–1746)
•
Bridget Douglass (1747–?)
•
Anastasia Douglass (1748–1799)
•
Frances Douglass (1749–1803)
•
Catharine Douglass (1755–?)
•
Thomas Douglass (1756–1845) alongside several infants who died young — a reminder of the era’s precarious domestic life.
Although the precise details of John’s occupation have not survived, the
family’s long presence in Durham suggests integration into the region’s
agricultural, mining, or artisanal economy. Bridget’s own background is
hinted at through the variant Prissick, a name strongly associated with Durham and North Yorkshire, and possibly indicating her maternal line or parish of origin.
John Douglass died in 1757, and Bridget lived on until 1792, witnessing the early stirrings of the industrial age that would transform the region her children and grandchildren inhabited. Their lives, though lightly recorded, form part of the broader story of Scottish families who crossed the Border in the eighteenth century, carrying with them names, traditions, and kinship ties that continued to shape communities on both sides.
Notes:
1. The biography for John Douglass D.D. (1743–1812), catholic prelate,
who was born at Yarm, Yorkshire, records that John Douglass (snr) had fled Scotland because he was a Jacobite supporter. The family appears to have met Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 as he and his supporters made their way south. There is some evidence that he was descended from the Thomas Douglas,
Baillie of Edinburgh (1616-1686), the son of James, 8th laird of Cavers.
2.
Alfred Douglass, who built Corio
Villa,
is thought to be a descendant of John Douglass and his wife Bridget at
Yarm, Yorkshire.
Contributions
The Douglas Archives are built
from families histories. Do you have an ancestor whose
story should be told here? Please let us have the details.
|
