Wishart family members include Francis Marion Wishart (1837-1872) of Shoe Heel (now Maxton), near Lumberton in Robeson County, N.C., who married Lydia Maria Pittman (1845-1899) in 1866. Wishart, known as Frank, had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War and came home to a Robeson County terrorized by a gang of Croatan Indians, led by Henry Berry Lowry, who, at 16, had witnessed the brutal execution of his father and brother, who had been falsely accused of theft. Wishart, known as a valiant fighter in the recent war, was persuaded to take up the fight against the Lowry gang after the county was terrorized to the point of deciding to employ military tactics to search for and destroy the gang. Wishart drafted a large number of men to serve as foot soldiers in the fight, but was himself the victim of an ambush that ended his life on 2 May 1872.
Before his death, Frank Wishart instructed his pregnant wife and two small children to take refuge from gang members' retaliation with relatives in Whiteville, Columbus County, N.C. There, William Clifton Wishart was born in 1871. He married Ann Armfield (b. 1874) in 1896 and fathered four children. William Clifton Wishart achieved prominence in the field of railroad accounting, serving for many years as a vice president of the New York Central Railroad.
From the guide to the Wishart Family Papers, circa 1830-1999, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)
