Wishart Family of Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire & Fife

The name derives from the Guiscard family of France and became the Norman Wischard (Old Norse visk hard meaning ‘wise and bold’) when it reached Scotland in the 13th Century. More information on the origins of the name can be found on the Wishart Society website.

This database concerns the descendants of a cook called John Wishart who was likely to have been born in Renfrewshire in the first half of the eighteenth century, and who eventually moved with his family to Glasgow in the early 1770′s. Of his descendants some remained in Lanarkshire, whilst another, fronted by the children of John Wishart and Helen Shaw, settled in Kirkcaldy where many of the family still live.  The aforementioned John Wishart, who was a bookbinder, (b. Glasgow circa 1797) gained infamy as a ‘wholesale’ bigamist in Dickensian London, and was eventually tried and transported to the colonies for his crimes.

His first wife, Helen Shaw Wishart left Glasgow with her family sometime in the 1830′s, possibly as a result of discovering her husband’s misdemeanours, which were widely reported in the press, settling first in Kirkcaldy before heading north to Dundee. Helen’s oldest son, Alexander, stayed behind in Fife, and it is from him that the author is descended.

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