Notes for: William Robertson

William Robertson was living in Fauquier County, Virginia, before coming to Kentucky. A September 28, 1767 deed there (Deed Book 1, pp. 293-95) shows that his first wife was Frances Ann ______. It is interesting that William Robertson, tailor, was sued in Fauquier County by Mary Hardin and that this suit was abated by her marriage to Robert Wickliffe (8 June 1759, Minute Book 1, p. 7). This is the same Mary that later married William in Kentucky.

The Columbuses think that this is the same William Robertson, weaver, age 20, who was banished from Scotland after the Battle of Culloden. In William's will he directed that a debt of 60 pounds be paid to William Reid of Scotland. There is no record of William in Fauquier County after 1767, and he may have followed the Wickliffes to Augusta County, Virginia, perhaps to that part that later became Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He lost his land in Pennsylvania because of a title dispute. He died in 1796, in Nelson County, Kentucky. He left a son John and a daughter Elizabeth, wife of Joseph James. John's family is treated in an article entitled "Clarification," by M. J. Edgeworth in the Kentucky Genealogist, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1962), pp. 66-67, from which much of this information is derived.