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« on: Tuesday 23 February 21 00:40 GMT (UK) »
Part 3.
Ancient Origins of the Wilson Families
The Wilson family of Ayrshire was a Covenanting Protestant family. (“Covenanters” were adherents of the “National Covenant,” a 1638 agreement among Scottish Presbyterians to uphold their faith.) The name is also seen in the land of Kintyre (a peninsula between Scotland and Ireland) where the Ayrshire Wilsons who were Covenanters settled and were given farm land.
The Wilson's in Glasgow are predominantly related to the Wilson family that originated in 11th-century Berwickshire, Scotland and moved out into Ayrshire, during the formation of the Royal Boroughs under Kind David, and later into Kintyre (during the Covenanting wars).
This accounts for the earliest records of the name, which are found in Yorkshire, Berwickshire and Ayrshire. Berwickshire is situated along the border of Scotland and England, but was originally part of Scotland. The earliest written historical records of the name Wilson as a Scottish name are in Berwickshire, which is where the Wilsons of the lands south of Edinburgh and on the West coast, Ayrshire and Kintyre, are claimed to descend from. It is interesting to note that Berwick is barely a stone’s throw from Yorkshire, where the Norman-descended Wilsons of Jerusalem Hill are to be found.
The murder of the “virgin martyr” Margaret Wilson (who was of Berwickshire) at the hands of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) caused many Wilsons who were Covenanters to go west into Ayrshire and later Argyll. One instance of this is Margaret's brother, who was outraged at his sister’s murder and became a soldier in the Covenanting army which opposed Cromwell and his slaughter of Presbyterians. After waging war he fled to Kintyre and ultimately Ireland and may have ended up in the American colonies as a fugitive.
The Norman Wilsons of Jerusalem Hill, Yorkshire
In Yorkshire the name of Wilson of Jerusalem Hill (not our line) is attributed to the descendents of Sir William (Will) de Waldershelf, a knight from the Pennine Hills of Hunshelf and Waldershelf in Normandy, who came to the British Isles to join William the Conquerer after the conquest in 1066 and was apportioned lands in Yorkshire.
His descendant, John de Hunshelf and de Waldershelf, born around 1320, had a son William whose son John was the first to take the surname Wilson, in honor of their ancestor. This Yorkshire Wilson family is of the peerage, and their full and documented family tree can be found in older editions of Burke’s Peerage. Despite being from Normandy, their coat of arms is similar to that of most of the Nordic Wilson arms, with a rampant Wilson wolf surmounted by three stars, and similar latin mottoes including Aut pax, aut bellum (“Either in peace or in war”) and Vincit qui se vincit (“He conquers who conquers himself”).
As indicated above, some of the Norman Wilsons were apparently also the descendants of the original Danish Wilsons. They had been driven out of Scotland and England in 1002 by King Ethelred the Unready because he feared (justifiably) that they were against him. Fleeing to France, they returned with William the Conqueror and were by then considered Normans.
The Wilson family is found in the Domesday Book (William the Conqueror’s census of England in 1086), indicating that people of that surname (distinct from William de Waldershelf’s Norman line) had come to Britain with William the Conquerer in 1066. In Devon a Manorial Lordship dating from the Domesday Book is also called Wilson. The arms include the emblematic Wilson wolf with a fleur-de-lis overhead representing Normandy, and the motto of Wil sone wil (a pun on the name, translating as “Get one’s way”).
Recent Genetic Research
There is new and current speculation based on some recent evidence found in a huge DNA study (drawn on by the BBC for their show “The blood of the Vikings”). DNA samples were taken from groups across the four countries of the British Isles in order to determine the impact and spread of the Danish bloodlines, especially in the areas which were traditionally known to be Viking: the area of “the Danelaw” lands in northeastern England, and northeastern Scotland (Caithness and Orkney).
It was revealed that the Irish today are predominantly descended from the “Britons” or Brythonic Celts, as are most of the Welsh, and are not of Danish or Norman ancestry. Areas of northeastern Scotland and the Danelaw areas of England, on the other hand, were found to be predominantly of Danish/Norman descent.
The Wilson name, however, does have some representation in northern Wales, and this is also an area of A+ blood grouping—a blood group which only people of Nordic descent have. [See, for example, Helgason et al. (2001) MtDNA and the islands of the North Atlantic: estimating the proportions of Norse and Gaelic ancestry. American Journal of Human Genetics, vol. 68, pp. 723-737.]
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