Fresh from three long years before the mast on the whaling ship Peruvian, George M. Robertson landed in Honolulu in 1844. He was 23, and had no interest, after seeing Oahu, in returning to St. Johns, New Brunswick, with his ship. He began to study law and the Hawaiian language, and within a short time was appointed to the Land Commission. Judicial appointments followed, as did marriage and the birth of his son James William, in 1852. Oddly enough, James, at age 15, set out for St Johns, where he went to work for an uncle as a clerk in an insurance office, after which he went to sea for four years, before finally returning to Honolulu in 1871. There he made the rounds seeking employment, and eventually he was hired by Archibald Cleghorn. Marriage to Cleghorn’s daughter, Rose Kaipuala, came next.
It may be that the final gathering of the Robertson clan took place in Honolulu in January, 1914, on the occasion of the ninetieth birthday of Sarah Humphreys Robertson, widow of Judge George Morison Robertson. Someone had the good sense to copy a photograph of the assemblage, and even better, to identify each of the forty three participants in a Robertson genealogy. My grandmother, Hilda Rose Robertson Chillingworth, is present, holding my father’s older brother, two year old Selden. She is also pregnant with my father, who will be born in June of that year. My grandfather, an infantry captain, (for whom I am named) has gone to war. Rose Cleghorn Robertson, Hilda’s mother, is also absent, as she died in 1911. Sadly, she was the third Cleghorn daughter to die too soon. She barely survived the death in late 1910 of her father, Archibald, who had never recovered from the death of Kaiulani.
The bad news did not end with Archibald’s death. The contents of his will made the front page of the Honolulu newspapers of November 11, 1910, including the disinheritance of my grandmother’s older brother. That brother would soon be responsible for the final injustice when he convinced the territorial legislature to refuse the Cleghorn testamentary gift of Ainahau as a public park in memory of Princess Kaiulani. The legislative refusal opened the way for the subdivision and sale of the entire Ainahau acreage. The residence eventually came into the hands of a photographer/promoter of Hawaiian travelogues whose unattended gas heater caught fire one night in 1921, and before the fire department could arrive (from Kaimuki), Ainahau burned to the ground.
The Ruler of the Heavens 