Robert Wedderburn was a British-Jamaican radical and abolitionist of multiracial descent active in early 19th-century London. Wedderburn was born in Kingston, Jamaica, an illegitimate son of an enslaved Black woman, Rosanna, and Scottish sugar planter James Wedderburn. During his life, Robert Wedderburn sought to reconcile his political priorities and religious views.

Sir John Wedderburn, 5th Baronet of Blackness, was a Perthshire gentleman who joined the 1745 rebellion of Charles Edward Stuart. He was captured at the Battle of Culloden, taken to London, and convicted of treason. He was hanged, his estates were forfeit to the Crown, and his family was attainted. The Blackness in his title is Blackness House in Dundee rather than Blackness in Lothian just west of Edinburgh. His son John Wedderburn of Ballindean fled after his father's death to Jamaica, where he re-established the family's fortunes via slave sugar, and eventually regained his father's title.