Willie Stewart had been born on the borders of Glasgow's Govan- and Crosshill in 1875. He was the son of the Manager of the Glasgow Corporation Water Works and would trained initially as an Electrical-,  becoming a Marine Fitter cum Engineer. It was nautical work, which took him from Clyde-side to Tyneside and eventually, notably with White Star Line, to Merseyside, where he would finally settle, marry late, live out his working-life and retirement and finally die. 

In terms of football he had in reality two clubs. The Toon was one, the other Queen's Park. He joined The Spiders as a nineteen-year-old in 1894 and clearly out of choice. His home throughout his childhood and teenage-years was, if anything, slightly closer to Third Lanark's first Cathkin Park than Queen's 2nd Hampden. Moreover, it was at a time when the latter had chosen to remain outwith professionalism, whereas the Thirds had were embracing it and just topped the League. Nevertheless he was soon rated by all highly enough to receive a first cap in 1898 and a second in 1900. Moreover, that same year he would also be part of the Queen's Park team that reached the Cup Final, scoring, albeit in defeat to Celtic. 

But he then fell out with his club of choice, curiously, for one based on not playing for money, because of him giving priority to his engineering-work over on-field availability, turning to the neighbouring alternative for what would be last three months of 1900-01 and the first month of 1901-2. That is before work took him to the Tyne and the city's club probably could not believe its luck.

On leaving The Magpies and once in Liverpool Willie seems to have settled in Bootle, remaining unmarried until the age of fifty-three, when in 1928 he wed in West Derby the half-Scots Lillias Mckenzie or Corbett, so presumably a widow, originally from Keswick and nine years his senior. They would have fourteen years together, she dying, aged seventy-six, in 1942 in Bootle once more. He would outlive her by the best part of a decade, passing away in Bootle's General Hospital in 1951 at exactly the same age to be cremated at Anfield Cemetery.