Wilson's parents came from Duns moving to Tweedmouth just before Wilson was born, they were married in Duns on 10th December 1801, and before her marriage Mrs Wilson was Jean Mackay. She was apparently proud of her family connection to the writer Charles Mackay a Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter, remembered mainly for his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Unfortunately though so far, we have been able to confirm the family connection.

Wilson's father – William Wilson – was a sawyer and recent findings indicate he may have been one of a family of 23! His father apparently having married twice. So there are potentially lots of distant cousins out there!

Wilson was married at the time of his death, to Sarah Gladstone, the fifth daughter of Robert Gladstone, agent to the Old Berwick Shipping Company which eventually became the Berwick Salmon Fisheries company. Sadly John and Sarah had no children.

He did have brothers and sisters. We now know he was one of 6 children, very few of whom had surviving children. One married into the Fairnington Family of Wooler but he have no more information than that. One of his sister’s however married a George Beattie from Chatton whose descendants ended up in Blyth. We have been able to trace the tree down to a George William Beattie, of at one time 22 Albert St, Blyth who died on 30^th June 1958. From local support we then traced one of his distant great nephews to, appropriately enough, an English teacher based in Leeds, England.

We have had contact from around the world from people with distant family connections to Wilson and these are still being researched.

His widow, known as “a relic” in those days remarried in Glasgow in 1838 but was widowed again and returned to Berwick.

We’ve been working on Wilson’s family tree for a few years now writes Jan Anderson - and it's available to view (but not alter!) on the Ancestry Website. Just log in with your account to view the Wilson tree, or join with a free 14-day trial. There are 136 people in the Wilson tree, and 387 records covering five generations.

It’s not been an easy task because – unlike JMW – most of the family were not writers, and have left only rare traces of themselves in the records. John himself didn’t help matters by not marrying his wife Sarah Gladstone in church, but (we think) opting for an ‘irregular’ marriage at nearby Lamberton Toll. One of the best sources of information for genealogists is the Census taken every ten years in the UK, with records existing from 1841. Unfortunately Wilson died in 1835 and had not returned to Berwick till 1832, so does not show on the Census records, but they have been useful for obtaining details in 1841 of Wilsons mother Jean Wilson (nee Mackay) and his siblings. Newspapers have also been a very useful source via The British Newspaper Archive although not all editions of all newspapers are available, an enormous amount of information is there if you are patient, and lucky of course. It has been through newspaper reports that we have learned that Wilson had a Scottish accent, and that amongst his possessions was a human skull reputed to have belonged to one of the sons of Alexander Seton, the Governor of Berwick in the early 1300’s. However, by far the best nugget of information so far came via a fellow genealogist, with the discovery of a Margaret Wilson of Duns, an aunt of Wilsons. Margaret had been the only daughter of James Wilson, a Miller, who was married twice and had 21 children of which Margaret was the only girl. This took the Wilson family tree solidly back a further generation and helped explain why there were so many Wilsons in the area!

The research continues...