Not much is known about this little boy - the first son of John Hendry Williamson. Records show that he was born at 211 Overgate, Dundee on 11 October 1905. His parents were wed exactly a week before his birth - his mum, Mary Kerr, was 21 and his dad was only 16. Both were employed in Dundee’s thriving jute industry.

By the spring of 1911, the family was living at 161 Overgate and John was working as a railway carter. Young John was 5 years old - John and Mary had no more children.

On the 6th of February 1912, six-year-old John died in Buckhaven, Fife of cerebral meningitis. There is no way to know how he ended up there from Dundee - perhaps his mother had family there? Perhaps they thought the sea air might improve his health? In any case, his mother stayed on in Fife after her sons’s death - John’s army records list an address for her in nearby Denbeath.

One of the saddest things about this little boy is that none of his later family knew of his existence until he had been dead for more than a hundred years. His father, John, never spoke of him, or of his marriage to Mary Kerr, so neither of his next two wives or nine children knew about either of them. One can understand the heartbreak he must have gone through - John himself was only 22 when his little boy died - and why he might want to bury those memories, but it is sad that little John Hendry did not have the opportunity to be remembered and loved by the siblings that came after him.