About Peter Thomson Robertson

June 2024

I graduated with a degree in history from the University of Virginia and then obtained a law degree from Boston College Law School. I have been practicing law in Massachusetts for 50 years.

Four years ago, during the depths of the pandemic, I decided to use the skills I had acquired in my education as an historian and my training and experience as a lawyer to do some in-depth research and writing about my illustrious family heritage. My maternal great-grandfather Peter G. Thomson, for whom I am named, founded what became one of the largest paper making enterprises in the world, ultimately known as Champion International. My grandfather Reuben B. Robertson, Sr. married Thomson’s daughter Hope and, at the request of his father-in-law, gave up practicing law with his father in Ohio to go to the mountains of western North Carolina to manage Thomson’s huge new pulp and paper mill in the small town of Canton. He was in charge of Champion’s North Carolina operations for decades and ended up running the entire enterprise after the last of Peter Thomson’s sons active in the business died. My grandparents became iconic figures in the region, and my grandfather was once called “one of [North Carolina’s] greatest citizens” by U.S. Senator Sam Ervin. My father Reuben Robertson, Jr. succeeded his father as president of Champion and took time off to serve as the Deputy Secretary of Defense under President Dwight Eisenhower, becoming one of the most important advisors to the President on matters of defense and security policy. The President and other government officials continued seeking his advice after my father formally left Washington.

In part, the website I have established to preserve family stories,ThreeReubens.com, is an extension and expansion of the extensive genealogical work my brother Reuben did in the book entitled Our Robertsons, published recently by his widow Victoria. However, ThreeReubens.com, goes beyond Our Robertsons to delve into and relate details of the lives of some of our relatives that were beyond the scope of that work.

One of my proudest achievements in my researching and writing about my Thomson and Robertson family history is to have unearthed stories that were unknown to members of my generation of relatives. Those stories have included: the indictment and acquittal after trial of Peter Thomson for bribing a government employee in connection with business Champion had obtained from the U.S. Postal Service; the fight between Peter Thomson and his eldest son, namesake, and designated successor for control of the Champion companies, resulting in the permanent alienation between the two; the initial opposition of my grandfather and Champion to the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park due to the proposed taking of Champion’s vast timberland holdings in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, which became the heart of the Park after a negotiated settlement; and the story behind the rare, if not unique, photograph of Winston Churchill and General Dwight Eisenhower on a troop-inspection tour shortly before D-Day, on which my father obtained each of their signatures.

As my work continues, I hope to find more such stories to add to the family lore.