- Robert Whitson, possibly the son of John Whitson, was born about 1798 in Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland. Records suggest that he was married twice, first to Ann Alexander on January 19, 1823, at Saint Cuthberts in Edinburgh and second to Isabella Alexander on March 25, 1825, at Canongate in Edinburgh. Both women are probably daughters of William Alexander, who was either a watchmaker in Edinburgh. It is likely, then, that Robert's first wife died, possibly in childbirth with John Alexander Whitson (born late 1823), and he married her sister to help raise the child. Four children were born to Robert and Isabella while still in Scotland--Robert, Ann, James, and William.
In late 1835, the Whitson family immigrated from Scotland to Canada, where they resided for a few years in Lanark County. They had two more children in Canada--Andrew G. and Mary Isabella. The Whitsons next appear on the 1839 census for Kitley Township, Leeds County, Ontario, where they lived close to the town of Smiths Falls.
On February 23, 1850, Robert's oldest son John married twenty-three year old Jane Lawson, daughter of Walter Lawson and Margaret Lowther, in St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Perth, Drummond Township, Lanark County, Ontario. Her father was a native of Dumfrieshire, Scotland, and her mother was from Newcastle on Tyne, Northumberland, England. The Lawsons had migrated from Scotland to Canada about 1824, and were living in Elmsley Township, Leeds County, Ontario, where Jane herself had been born. John and Jane settled close to his parents, and on the 1851 census for Kitley, both Robert and John are listed as farmers and as Presbyterians. Robert's family was living in a one and a half story stone house, and John and Jane were living in a one-story log house, along with their one-year old son Robert.
In 1863, much of the Whitson family--Robert, his sons' families, and several of his grandchildren's families as well--made the decision to migrate to America. Possibly this was because of tension between the Catholics and the Protestants in Canada at the time. They settled in Minnesota, and John and Jane soon decided to join them, moving to Granville Mills in Lillian Township, Goodhue County, Minnesota, in 1868.
In 1875, Robert Whitson died and was buried in Oaklawn Cemetery, Northfield Township, Rice County, Minnesota.
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1798 - 1875 (77 years)
