1802. He was educated at the high school, Edinburgh, and after serving terms of apprenticeship with the Edinburgh engravers, Kirkwood & Sons, and William Hume Lizars, began business on his own account as an engraver on 1 Dec. 1825. In the following year he founded, with his brother Alexander Keith Johnston [q. v.], the since well-known firm of W. & A. K. Johnston. He was elected a burgess on 28 July 1828, and on 21 Aug. following was sworn high constable of Edinburgh. He was elected on 14 May 1830 secretary, and on 21 March 1831 moderator to the high constables for the remainder of the term of office of his predecessor, who had resigned by way of protest against a declaration in favour of reform issued by the high constables. On 4 April he was elected moderator for the ensuing year. He also served this office in 1839. In October 1831 he was appointed a member of the dean of guild court, and on 26 Sept. 1832 was sworn of the Edinburgh town council. On 2 Dec. 1837 he was appointed engraver and copperplate printer to the queen, and on 11 April 1839 he was admitted a guild brother of the city of Edinburgh. On a visit to his brother Archibald, surgeon of her majesty's ship North Star, on the Spanish station, in the summer of 1839, he landed with some of the officers at Bilbao, and witnessed a siege of the town by the Carlists. On his return to England he was the bearer of a despatch from Lord John Hay to Earl Minto. On 10 Nov. 1840 he was elected a bailie of Edinburgh. During the great distress of 1842 he presided over the Edinburgh committee of relief, and it was due to his suggestion that the relief works then instituted took the shape of such permanent improvements as ‘The Meadows’ and ‘The Queen's Drive’ round Arthur's Seat. From 1848 to 1851 he served the office of lord provost. On 26 Aug. 1851 he was knighted by the queen in Holyrood Palace. In 1852 he was elected a fellow of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries. In 1867 he retired from business to an estate at Kirkhill, near Gorebridge, Midlothian, which he had purchased in 1848, and where he died on 7 Feb. 1888. He was buried on 10 Feb. in the Grange cemetery, Edinburgh. Johnston married twice; first, on 13 March 1829, Margaret, daughter of James Pearson of Fala, Midlothian, who died on 13 June 1865; and secondly, on 23 Oct. 1868, Georgiana Augusta Wilkinson, youngest daughter of William Ker of Gateshaw, Roxburghshire, widow of the Rev. William Scoresby, D.D. His only child (by his first wife) was Elizabeth Whyte, born in 1830, who married Dr. Robert Edmund Scoresby Jackson, and died in 1879.
Johnston collaborated with his brother, Alexander Keith Johnston, in the production of the atlas to Bryce's ‘Family Gazetteer,’ and some other works and maps.
[Private information; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
JOHNSTONE. [See also Johnson and Johnston.]
JOHNSTONE, ANDREW JAMES COCHRANE (fl. 1814), adventurer, born on 24 May 1767, was eighth son of Thomas Cochrane, eighth earl of Dundonald, by Jane, eldest daughter of Archibald Stuart of Torrence, Lanarkshire (Burke, Peerage, 1890, p. 455). On 10 June 1783 he was gazetted cornet in the 23rd regiment of light dragoons, then stationed in India (Army List, 1785, p. 55), and became lieutenant in the 19th regiment of light dragoons on 6 Dec. 1786 (ib. 1790, p. 53), and captain lieutenant and captain on 10 Nov. 1790 in the 60th or royal American regiment of foot. He represented Stirling burghs from 1791 until March 1797 (Foster, Members of Parliament for Scotland, 2nd edit. p. 71). On 20 Nov. 1793 he married Georgiana, daughter of James, third earl of Hopetoun [q. v.], when he assumed the additional surname of Johnstone. He was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the 79th regiment of foot or Cameronian volunteers on 3 May 1794 (Army List, 1795, pp. 23, 181), and colonel in the army on 26 Jan. 1797. In March of the last-named year he was chosen governor of Dominica, and was given the colonelcy of the 8th West India regiment of foot on 23 Jan. 1798, and the brigadiership of the Leeward Islands on 12 April 1799. His rule was marked by tyranny, extortion, and vice. He drove a brisk and profitable trade in negroes, and kept a harem. Johnstone was recalled in 1803, and his commission was suspended. He and the major of his regiment, John Gordon, accused each other of peculation. The courts-martial, which were held in January and February 1804 and in March 1805, considered that both had been guilty of irregularities. In the next general brevet promotion Johnstone was passed over, and he therefore resigned his commission. He published a ‘Defence’ in 1805, which evoked some popular sympathy, and William Cobbett based on it a vehement attack on the commander-in-chief, the Duke of York. Mr. Whitbread presented a petition to the house in his behalf, after two hundred other members had been solicited to do so in vain, but without effect. On a general election taking place in May 1807, Johnstone and his brother George Augustus Cochrane were both returned for Grampound, Cornwall, after spending an enormous sum in bribes. In August
