Portrait of Lady Willielma Glenorchy, half-length, in a green embroidered dress and black lace shawl, in a sculpted cartouche

Willielma, Viscountess Glenorchy (1741-1786), was the daughter of William Maxwell (d.1741), a medical practitioner in Kirkcudbright, and his wife, Elizabeth Hairstanes (d.c.1806) of Craig. At the age of twelve, her widowed mother remarried a judge, Charles Erskine, Lord Alva (1680-1763). Following the introduction of Willielma to Edinburgh society, she married John Campbell, Viscount Glenorchy (1738-1771), son and heir of John Campbell, 3rd Earl of Breadalbane, and Arabella Pershall, in September 1761. As a wedding gift the Earl gave Taymouth Castle, Perthshire, to his son, who also inherited Great Sugnall House, Staffordshire, from his mother.

At Great Sugnall, Lady Glenorchy made the acquaintance of the Hill family at Hawkstone Park, Shropshire. The Revd. Rowland Hill and his sister were both Calvanistic Methodists, influencing Lady Glenorchy to combine Methodist principles with her native Presbyterianism in 1765. In 1770, she reopened St. Mary's Chapel in Niddry's Wynd in the old town of Edinburgh, where she invited Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Wesleyans to preach. Following the death of her husband in 1771, and having no children, Lady Glenorchy embarked upon a career of evangelical preaching, restoring a church at Strathfillan on the Taymouth estates, and opening a number of chapels in both Scotland and England.