He moved to the US in 1785 with his parents and settled in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where his father was appointed the first President of Dickinson College.
Nisbet served at that Society's third president, from 1830 until his death in 1857, at the time being the last surviving original member.
[3] Upon his death, due to a fall from his bedroom window, the St. Andrew's Society chartered a railroad car from Calvert Station to attend the funeral.
The estate contained 1,500 acres and was located in what is now Cockeysville, Maryland, just north of the Hampton National Historic Site.
All that is left of the Montrose Estate is the burial plot containing the graves of the Nisbet family, near the Historical Society of Baltimore County.