Scottish Lowlands, to Northern Ireland, to the American Colonies and, in lesser numbers, to other lands. It will be recalled that Sir Ludovick, who died in 1662, was a man of considerable wealth and presented his second son, George, with the nearby Johnstone estate.

This Johnstone heritage was the beginning of a new branch of the family which ran parallel with the Houstouns of Houstoun for 142 years, a total of seven generations, though some of the heirs were nephews rather than sons. The historian Crawfurd spells the name of this branch of the family H-o-u-s-t-o-n and the same spelling seems to have been used by other offsprings in Scotland. However, the form Houstoun is still used by some. Another ancient branch of the family was the Houstons of Park near the village of Bishopton. This line originated through the marriage of one George Houston to Janet Cunningham, heiress to the Park estate, during the reign of James IV (1488-1513). This family, whose lands were in the parishes of Erskine and Kilallan, continued for four generations

These three branches of the family were all in Renfrewshire and close neighbors. The Johnstone Houstons were two and a half miles southeast of the original family estate and the Houstons of Park were four miles to the northwest.

Another branch, the Houstons of Blackadder, lived in Berwickshire in southeast Scotland near the English border. So situated, they were involved in the frequent border conflicts between Scots and English. The coat-of-arms of this house seems to have been the same as that displayed by some of the Houstons in modern times.

Among the old fortified houses still standing in Scotland is the Isle-of-Whitorn Castle in Wigtonshire, the southeast tip of Scotland, separated from Ireland by the narrow North Channel. This castle was erected by Patrick Houston of Drummaston about 1764, according to Nigel Tranter in "The Fortified House of Scotland." 3 This Patrick was likely an offspring from the Renfrewshire Houstons. Tranter mentions that he came from a family with much property in the Wigtonshire area.






3 Nigel Tranter, The Foitificd House in Scotland, Vol. iii (Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1965), p. 169.