baptised on 5 April 1824 in Glenmuick, Scotland
died on 10 March 1904 in Sydney, Australia
died on 10 March 1904 in Sydney, Australia
Above: Thomas Robertson jr.
Thomas Robertson
(II)
"....The demolition of grand houses and their grounds often took place in stages. The Gardens of Merioola, a vast mansion built in 1859 in Edgecliff Road, were taken up with residential subdivision in the early 1920s. The house itself was demolished for a block of flats in 1952. ...."
- Sydney's Century: A History, by Peter Spearritt, UNSW Press, 1999.
Edgecliff Road runs North-South for most of its length. Rosemont Ave makes a T junction on its western side (left on the map), so Merioola stood on the corner to the south of the Avenue.
Menu
From probably about 1875 Thomas and Grace divided their time between Toganmain and 'Merioola', a large house in Sydney, equipped with a full-sized formal ballroom and set in spacious grounds on Edgecliff Rd, Woollahra, on the corner to Rosemont Ave, and had been built in 1859 by Mr John Edye Manning, who sold it in 1875. Later, in the 20th century, it was purchased by Mr Arthur Wigram Allen, a lawyer and photographer. after his death in 1941 it was converted into a boardinghouse, predominantly used by artists who called themselves the "
Merioola group
" before being named the "Sydney Charm School". In 1952 or 1955 the house was demolished.
Above and below: Merioola*
Robertson, Thomas (1825 - 1904)
Mr. Thomas Robertson, of Toganmain, New South Wales, who died in Sydney on Thursday, was one of the early pioneers of Victoria, arriving in Melbourne on January 23, 1840, after a voyage of 120 days. He was the youngest of a family of three brothers and two sisters, the late Mr. James Robertson, of Mount Mitchell; Mr. John Robertson, of Skene, near Hamilton; the late Mrs. Wm. Skene, of Skene, near Hamilton; and Mrs. Philip, of Miga Lake. The remains were interred in the Melbourne Cemetery on Friday.
Obituary from
Horsham Times
18 March 1904, page 3
Thomas Robertson died at Merioola on 10th March 1904 and was buried in Melbourne.
Below: his gravestone
* The images of Merioola are in the public domain because their terms of copyright have expired, according to the Australian Copyright Council (ACC), ACC Information Sheet G023v17 (Duration of copyright) (August 2014).
Taken from reports by John Humphreys:
From 1899 onwards Thomas's daughters travelled to Europe - Grace, the youngest, studied music in Dresden. In 1908 Margaret, the eldest, met an army officer, Robert Ingelow Bradshaw Johnson; they were married in Colombo, Ceylon on 16th October 1908. Her mother did not entirely approve, saying that he "swashbuckled for a living".
It was a genteel form of swashbuckling, in the British army stationed mainly in India, and seems to have involved playing a lot of polo. He was himself Australian, but had taken up the offer of a post in the British army in 1896.
The sisters Anne ("Arn") and Grace continued their European trips, and we have a
photo of them on skis
about 1910; their
mother
died on a holiday in Switzerland in 1911.
In 1912 the three sisters all met again at the military town of Quetta, high up in what is now Pakistan - then the North-West frontier of British India. The Johnsons were stationed there with his battalion (2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers). A fellow officer had recently been promoted Major, George Dickson, and he proposed to Grace; they were married in London in 1913.
The sisters' brother, John Seymour Robertson (1882-1958) stayed in Australia to manage Toganmain. He married in 1908 Constance Bettington (1890-1953).
