Dead end?

These are my paternal grandparents, Lydia and Charles Roberton at the door to the house that my father grew up in, just outside Balloch on Loch Lomond-side.

My father had always talked of his mother's great love for her church and the fact that she and her father, Robert Whittaker, had been instrumental in starting the church, St Mungo's Episcopal Church in Alexandria.

Last year I decided to see if I could find any further information on their involvement with the church. I had my grandmother's obituary and a service sheet from the church at the time of her death which talked of her devotion to the church, how she had travelled there on foot from Balloch, and how much she would be missed.

I wrote to the priest-in-charge, Reverend Sarah Gorton, telling her about my grandmother and her father and asked if there was any mention of them in church records. Reverend Gorton kindly wrote back to me with the bad news that the church records she held unfortunately did not go back that far. She suggested contacting the library in Alexandria which I did. Unfortunately they could find no records linking my grandmother and her father to the church either.

So at the moment, I'm a little stumped as to where else I could search for this information. I'm sure it's there, somewhere. I just don't know where that 'somewhere' could be. I suppose this is the problem when trying to fill in the gaps in the lives of ordinary people. There sometimes just aren't written records to draw from or if there are they take a lot of finding.

The other mystery I have regarding this side of the family is connected with this photograph (below).

I can clearly see my grandmother sat on the front row, left of centre, in the dark clothing. I think the man sat centrally and to her right is her father, Robert and that the woman sat to his right, is his wife, Jane, my great grandmother. I don't even know what this gathering of people signifies. Could it be to do with the church at Alexandria?

Some brain racking is in order while I work out what to do next.

Recent discovery

I thought I'd found all of my father's notes and geneaology documentation but while looking through some crates and boxes in the garage, I came across an old briefcase of his, a file of family research notes and this photograph.

My grandfather, Charles Roberton is stood at the back in the middle (the one with a cigarette in his mouth). I assume this photograph was of the team of park keepers at Balloch. There's no date or writing on the photograph so I don't know for definite but the architecture of the building in the background looks very similar to Balloch Castle (pictured below).

Family photographs

My parents at their wedding with Kath Jackson (my godmother) and Alec Small who married Mum's sister, Betty

My maternal grandparents, Alfred and Maud

My paternal grandparents, Lydia and Charles

Maud with her brother, Bertie

My paternal grandfather, Charles Roberton

My grandparents all died before I was born so any impression I have of them has always been based on the stories my parents told me.

This is my father's father, Charles Roberton. He was born in Jamestown, Dunbartonshire, Scotland in 1881. This is what my father wrote about him.

My father was  born on 25th March 1881 in Jamestown in the parish of Bonhill, Dunbartonshire. His parents were Thomas and Helen Roberton and he was the fourth child and third son of a family of eight.

He was educated at Jamestown school and I can remember him telling me that when he was about eleven or twelve years old he worked what was called 'half and half'. That is, he worked part of the day and went to school for the remainder of the time.

About 1907/08 he emigrated to America and stayed there for fourteen years mainly around the Detroit area, although I believe he also had a spell working as a fireman on the Trans Canadian railway.

A search of the Detroit City Directories showed the following entries for a Roberton, Chas:-

1911                                                             Boards                       875 Congress

1914             Watchman                                      "                           37 Hamtramck

1915              Machinist          Pd & Co                  "                           241 Concord

1916                   "                    "                                                   251 Meldrum

1918             Autoworker                                 Resides                      91 Avalon,
                                                                                                      Highland Park

I have a small document holder of my fathers which contains two documents (a) an Employee Pass dated 1918 for the Ford Motor Company with his photograph attached to it and (b) a Registration Certificate in my father's name with the address 94 Avalon and the date 12 Sept 1918 on it. These two documents tied my father to the directory entry for 1918 ayt 94 Avalon.

His eldest brother, Thomas also emigrated and did in fact remain permanently in America. The fact that Thomas was in Detroit at the same time as my father is confirmned by an entry from the Detroit City Directories for 1914 which records a Thomas J Roberton, a plumber, with a house at 37 Hamtramck. This is the same address as a Chas Roberton was boarding at in 1914.

My father became a naturalised American citizen on 25th September 1917. He returned to Scotland for what was to be a visit, my my mother, got married and never returned to his adopted country. His American citizenship did in fact cause a minor problem during the second world war as he had to technically register as a foreign citizen.

He did not pass an apprenticeship as all his brothers had, but obtained a position in 1922 as a labourer in what had been a large estate on the banks of Loch Lomond at Balloch. The estate had been owned by 'the Browns of Balloch' but was later taken over by the Glasgow Corporation and run as a public park. During the thirty odd years he worked there he became an excellent gardener and our own garden was ever the envy of all our neighbours.

He was not a talkative man except when discussing his garden. Our cottage was situated at a crossroads near to the back entrance of the park and the road continued up the hill to a succession of farms. On a summer evening, my father would walk up the hill to a gate about half a mile away. There he would fill his clay pipe with a strong tobacco called Thick Black, light up, and leaning on the gate spend a contemplative half hour staring down to the vale below until it was nearly dark,then he would slowly saunter back home.

First Beginnings

This was written by my father. 

I was born on 4th October 1922 at 16 The Crescent, Alexandria, Dunbartonshire. My parents were Charles and Lydia Jane Roberton. My mother's name was Whittaker, hence my middle name.

Alexandria is in the Vale of Leven which is situated between the town of Dumbarton and Loch Lomond. The vale takes its name from thefast flowing River Leven which flows from the fresh water Loch Lomond at Balloch and takes a very winding course until it flows into the River Clyde at Dumbarton.

I was born in a terraced house on the banks of the Leven near to where a road bridge called the Bonhill Bridge connected the parishes of Bonhill and Jamestown to Alexandria. This was probably an appropriate spot for me to spend my early years as my father was born in Jamestown and my mother in Bonhill.

As we left his house when I was only four years old, I have few clear memories of it and those I do recall are linked more to stories told and often retold by my father, than to actual memries of my own making. In particular, my father loved to recount the visit he had from a new sergeant of the local police nicknamed 'Chesty' who advised him that some lads had been seen removing railway sleepers from the nearby railway station and that my name had been given as one of those involved. As I was only three years old at the time the affair gave my father a great deal of amusement and no doubt caused the unfortuate sergeant a similar amount of embarrassment.

My only other source of information was from listening to the stories told at family get-togethers after we had left Alexandria. It was the practice in those days for close relations to visit each other periodically. There would be a high tea with boiled ham and a cake-stand full of home-made cakes and scones. After the meal we all sat in the 'front room' where the adults had a good old chinwag, the children being 'seen but not heard'.

 Our closest friends and relations were Willie and Jean Bennie and their children, Mary and Peter. Jean Bennie was in fact the daughter of my mother's stepsister althought they had been brought up as sisters.

At such a meeting, the two of them would go through the same routine of discussing all the local gossip, old and new, about the people they had known. At the end Willie Bennie would turn to my father and say "Well, Charlie, that's the Crescent put to rest 'til the next time".

Following in my father's footsteps

This is my father, Charles Whittaker Roberton, or Charlie to his friends. He was an ever supportive influence in my life, softly spoken, strong, thoughtful and eternally optimistic. He was probably better thought of and more kindly remembered than he realised.

When he retired, my father decided to research his family history. I can remember the trips he took to London and Edinburgh (sometimes with my mum and on other occasions, alone) and holidays spent traipsing through overgrown graveyards in Scotland. He was a searcher, my father, a lover of knowledge, and that applied as equally to his family research as to other parts of his life.

When my father died in 2002, I had a newly born baby and a newly widowed mother to look after and my father's research was put away in a box. Since that time, my mother has passed away and my children (two of them now) can amuse themselves sufficiently to give me some time to myself so I've decided to take up where my father left off and continue with his family history research and that of my mother's side of the family too.

My father's parents were Charles Roberton and Lydia Jane Whittaker. My mother's parents were Alfred Lodge and Maud Lockwood. Those four branches - Roberton, Whittaker, Lodge and Lockwood - will be the focus of my research and this blog, although I'm sure ancestors with other surnames may occasionally want a chat. I have my father's notes to kick me off and a lot of available information on the internet too.

I look forward to sharing my findings with you. Who knows? We may be related.