Turnbull / Bonchesterbrige

[BrettMaximus]

Interesting info @Forfarian, and I was only mentioning the Hail Mary's in gest, as My Mother was a Catholic and that is what I was aware of as a child for Confession etc.

Brett

[Forfarian]

As for the Quakers, E.M Wilson is incorrect. It was only William Wilson (1764-1832)'s family that were Quakers, the rest were Presbyterian. Willam was the older brother of my GGGG Grandfather Walter Wilson 1770-1847 who was Presbyterian.

The Quakerism connection only lasted for 2 generations in one line of the family (William's line) in fact, one might say one generation, as I am sure that the majority of his children converted out of Quakerism whilst alive, Including James Wilson (The Economist).

You prompted me to have a look at the Statistical Accounts of Scotland.

The Old Statistical Account of Hawick, in 1793, says, "besides the Established Church, there are two meeting-houses; a Burgher and an Antiburgher ....". See attached screenshot.

The New Statistical Account mentions a chapel belonging to the Society of Friends, which is "frequented by only two families from this parish".

Both accounts make interesting reading - see https://stataccscot.edina.ac.uk/static/statacc/dist/parish/Roxburgh/Hawick

[Forfarian]

Interesting info @Forfarian, and I was only mentioning the Hail Mary's in gest, as My Mother was a Catholic and that is what I was aware of as a child for Confession etc.

I didn't take it as serious

[Josephine]

Interestingly, I have over 160 years of digitised Hawick Archaeological Society records.

That is interesting. How did you manage to snag those, Brett, and where can I get copies?

Regards,
Josephine

[BrettMaximus]

@Forfarian Interesting on the Statistical Accounts. I hadn't looked at those for many years.

As mentioned, it was was only William Wilson's line (1764-1832) that became Quakers and that barely lasted for a generation.

William died in London in 1832 of cholera, after attending a Quaker meeting of sorts. (I would have to look it up). I have a copy of a letter he wrote to his children from London just before his death.

@Josephine I received the HAS records on a hard drive in 2014 whilst in Hawick, from the then President of the Hawick Archaeological Society.

The files amount to 130 Gigabytes in total size, so they are not easily shared. The intention is that they will someday be available for members in a searchable format, via the Society's  website and available to folk around the globe to access. http://hawickhistory.scot

"A Hawick Word Book" by Professor Douglas Scott is available and downloadable online and that is your best bet for detailed information at this point @Josephine.

I might add, that until Walter Wilson (1712-1795) AKA Handless Wat, came into the town of Hawick and became a successful traveling merchant, this Wilson family were simple tenant farmers as were most folk prior to the industrial revolution.

Attached is are two photos.

They are photos of Handless Wat's measuring stick with his name carved on it and a date of 1734 (Age 22). One is of the stick on display at the Tower House Textiles Museum in Hawick, and the other is of me holding the item when the curator of the museum kindly allowed me to hold it for a photograph.

Oh, and on another online forum where Hawick ghost stories were being discussed, I mentioned that:

I remember having a drink with Colin Murray (I think I have his name right, he was once Cornet) when I was in Hawick in 2014. He told me his son saw a ghost without a hand in their home at 9 High Street. And I said to him "That would be Handless Wat" who lived at that address "my GGGGG Grandfather" and he almost fell over.

To which Colin's wife replied in the forum: Av asked Colin and he said it was true that when Lyle was small he saw a one handed man and he wasni legless lol x no sorry couldn't help that but yes he swears Lyle said this x

 

Brett

[majm]

Bill GUNN was a significant chap in the Wool industry in Australia.  1914 - 2003
 His forebears include WILSON.   Scottish heritage.   I never once heard him mention clan GUNN. 

Babe GUNN was a great chap too.  He was central west NSW focused. Another who I never heard mention Clan GUNN.  I hear Babe' s deep laugh at the very concept.  He died in 1985.  Hubert George Mafeking GUNN.1900-1985. 


JM.

[BrettMaximus]

We need a LIKE button for RootsChat Posts I think @MAJM

By Wendell E Wilson (Below)

Part 1.

Ancient Origins of the Wilson Families

The surname Wilson has roots in Ireland, Scotland and England, and before that some lines extend back into Normandy and Denmark. The surname appears to have originated independently in many different areas, and thus not all Wilsons today are related to each other. Five of the principal family lines bearing the name of Wilson in Britain today stem from (1) the ancient Irish, (2) Wolf of Denmark via clan Inness, (3) William of clan Gunn, (4) William de Waldershelf, and (5) an unknown Norman invader named Wilson. Spelling variants include Wilson, Willson, Willsonne, Wilsone, Wulson, Wilsoun, Wolsoun, Wolfson, Wilfson, Wylsone and others, some versions being older than others but the differences often meaning relatively little, since one man might spell his own name in more than one way at different times in his life.

Our Wilson line stems from the ancient Irish clans, as proven by DNA analysis (see below). However, before we get to the Irish Wilsons, let’s review all of what is currently known about the various other independent and mutually unrelated Wilson families in Great Britain:

The Norse Willsons of Scotland

Many of the English Wilsons are of Norman ancestry whereas some of the Scottish Willson's are mostly of Irish or Picto-Norse descent and represent either a branch (“sept”) of the clan Gunn in Caithness or the much older House of Inness in Banffshire. The clan Gunn Willson's are descended from George Gunn “the Crowner,” through his son William—hence “Will's son”—who lived in the late 1400’s.
The Wilsons of clan Gunn, however, were a relatively late-emerging Norse branch of the Wilson surname.

The name Wilson definitely dates to a much earlier time in Scotland. The early Nordic Wilsons were descended from a Danish Prince of the Royal House of Norway (Norway administered Denmark for centuries), and established themselves at a very remote period in the Orkney Islands, in the 9th century, soon after 888 when King Harold of Norway routed the more rebellious clans. The name occurs in the Viking Sagas and the Orkneyinga Sagas.

European historians generally refer to the period between the 8th and 11th centuries as the Viking Age. The Vikings expanded east, west and south from Scandinavia through trading, raiding and the establishment of settlements. From bases in Sweden they invaded the Baltic region and Russia; from Denmark they invaded England, France and coastal Spain. The Shetland and Orkney Islands were the first of the British Isles to be colonized around 780, and by 800 the Western Isles, the Faeroe Islands and Iceland were colonized.

In the Orkney Islands the indigenous Pictish population may have been entirely replaced by Viking settlers from Denmark. Numerous Viking settlements sprang up both east and west of present-day Cheshire County where our Tattenhall Wilsons were to be centered. Scotland did not regain administrative control of all of these lands until 1469, and the language called Norn, the Norse dialect of Shetland and Orkney, survived there until the 19th century.

Part 2 in the next reply post.

[BrettMaximus]

Part 2.

Ancient Origins of the Wilson Families

These earliest Wilsons stem specifically from a Danish tribe who followed a 9th- century Prince named Wolf—which allegedly gave all Wilsons who possessed a grant of arms the privilege of using the golden wolf on their family crest. The Wilson surname from this line is a corruption of “Wolf’s son” and “Wilf’s son.” Apparently any Wilson coat of arms containing the rampant wolf, and there are a number of them, indicates an ancient line stemming from Prince Wolf in the 9th century.

The Wilsons of Sandbach in Cheshire, for example, situated just a few miles from Tattenhall where our Wilsons lived, had just such a coat of arms: a golden wolf on a black background surmounted by three gold stars (or, in the old English/French language of heraldry: “Sable, a wolf rampant Or, in chief three estoiles of the second”). One might theorize that our Wilsons, in such close proximity but of commoner status by the 18th century, were from the same stock but had lost their armorial roots over the generations. That, however, would be wrong.

It should be noted that the name Wilson was recorded in Ayrshire at least a hundred years prior to the time of William Gunn: a Michael Wilson, born in the mid- 1300’s, was burgess of Ayr in 1418. That example alone predates the Wilsons of the clan Gunn by at least a century or more, and probably stems from the more ancient clan Inness, Wilsons who had taken their name from Prince Wolf. The Wilsons of the Tattenhall and Carden area who trace their ancestry to Andrew Willsonne (born ca. 1450) also predate William Gunn.

During the creation of the Scottish boroughs under King David of Scotland (1084-1153) many English/Welsh people came north to settle in the new boroughs; Irish –descended and Norman-descended Wilsons may have been among them. In any case, the Ayrshire group of Wilsons is considerably larger than any other branch of Wilsons in Scotland, and they also seem to have held lands in Ireland.

The Norse-descended clan Inness Wilsons and clan Gunn Wilsons took lands around Berwickshire, Ayrshire, Fraserburgh, Fingach, Kelton, Glenderston, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and are especially numerous today in Ulster. They aided William the Conquerer by taking part in the war on the side of the Vikings, whom Harold of England fought in the North of England prior to the battle of Hastings in 1066. This was a diversionary tactic which drew Harold's attention from the actual invasion site of William the Conquerer in the south of England.

Although the surname Wilson is among the 30 most common surnames in Ireland today, it was formerly thought that all Wilsons from Ireland were actually of Scottish ancestry, descended from Scots who went there after the religious wars when King William of Orange (1650-1702) settled Protestant lowland Scottish families there. DNA analysis, however, has shown that many Northern Irish Wilsons are instead descended from an Irish warlord over a thousand years earlier, long predating the Scottish immigration there. The Wilson name today is most common in Ulster, and also in Antrim, Armagh, Down, Tyrone, Dublin, Derry and Fermanagh..

The Irish and Norse-Scottish Wilsons also moved south into England, especially after the disbanding of the Scottish border clans in 1603. Major branches of the Wilson family were established in Eshton Hall, Yorkshire; Melton, Bankhall; Penrith in Cumberland; Casterton Hall in Westmoreland; Forest Hall in Northumberland; and Rivington Hall in Lancashire.

Part 3 in a following reply

[BrettMaximus]

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.]

<<Ends>>