Biography

PETER WILSON ( Jnr) 1795 – 1876

Peter Wilson Jnr was born at Aberchirder in the Parish of Marnoch in Banffshire, Scotland, in 1795. He was the only son of Peter Wilson Snr. and Margaret Reid who was Peter Snr’s second wife ; Peter Snr. was then seventy five years of age.

Peter Wilson Snr was the lessee of the estate of Knock which had been in the Wilson Family for some hundreds of years. He was also a cattle dealer who knew the tracks around Scotland and down into England when in 1745 the Duke of Cumberland arrived in Banffshire in pursuit of Bonme Prince Charlie. Peter and another local were forced by Cumberland to guide the English to Culloden Muir where the Highland Scots were defeated. Peter Wilson was released to return home to Knock where he found all his crops destroyed and his livestock all taken to feed the English troops. Peter then left Knock and bought another smaller farm, Torston where his son Peter Wilson Jnr was born. Peter Wilson Snr died in 1821 at the age of one hundred and one, and is buried in the Ordiquill Church cemetery in Banffshire.

Peter Wilson Jnr attended a boarding school at Inverkeithny near Marnoch where the boys slept two-in-a-bed. Peter’s bed mate later became the Earl of Fife. Peter married Isabella Smith at Marnoch on the twenty-fifth of October 1818 . He prospered, owning property and dealing in cattle and horses. He owned two hotels in Aberchirder, The New Inn and Lord
Kintores Arms, (now the Duke of Fifes Arms). Both hotels remain today. Years later Peter sold up and moved to Canada, but returned to Scotland at the end of the Crimean War.

Peter and Isabella had ten children at least seven of whom eventually came to Dunedin. Daughter Elspeth Duncan, (nee Wilson), came to Dunedin in 1849 with her husband George Duncan , while sons Andrew and James arrived during the eighteen fifties. Andrew worked as a Chemist in Princes Street and James, a photographer, at the same address. James was later a brewer,(Wilson’s Well Park Brewery.) In the next century his name Wilsons was selected for the whisky produced on the Well Park site. The burial plot for George and Elspeth Duncan is in the Southern Cemetery, Dunedin.

Peter Wilson Jnr and Isabella followed the Family to Dunedin in 1866. Peter Jnr died at Dunedin on the twenty-sixth of March 1876 aged eighty. He was described as a gentleman, a resident of Duke Street.