It is reputed to have seeded around 1100 and by the late 13th-century grew on the estate of Scottish independence leader William Wallace's father.

[1] The tree stood at the west end of the village of Elderslie in Renfrewshire, to the north of the turnpike road.

[2] By the late 13th-century the tree came into the ownership of the father of Scottish independence leader William Wallace.

[2] By the mid 19th-century it had become common for Scottish men to own a snuff box that incorporated a fragment of the Wallace Oak together with part of a tree said to have been planted by Mary, Queen of Scots at Holyrood Palace, part of another tree under which she is said to have watched the Battle of Langside and a portion of the rafters of Alloway Auld Kirk (made famous by Robert Burns).

[5] By 1851, Jacob George Strutt drew it for his Sylva Britannica, many of its branches had been removed and it was described as "a melancholy torso, bald and frail, with its limbs hacked off by relic hunters, like Wallace's by the hangman".