Charles Dumbreck Robertson
(1839-1919)

By Reuben Buck Robertson, III

from “Our Robertsons”

Copyright © 2023 Victoria Robertson

Charles Dumbreck Robertson, a product of Shetland culture and education in the mid-nineteenth century, left as a youngster of eighteen to explore the far reaches of the world. During his lifetime, this engaging Shetland expatriate pursued interests and opportunities in an amazing variety of professions, including engineering, journalism, medicine, insurance, and law. The virtues of hard work, resourcefulness, and integrity that were ingrained during his upbringing brought him recognition as a distinguished lawyer, jurist, civic leader, and man of letters in his adopted land of America.

The only child of Christina Dumbreck and Thomas Robertson Charles was born on March 6, 1839, in Stove in Walls Parish, Shetland, and was baptized there by Rev. Clarke, a Wesleyan Methodist minister. His mother died within a few days after his birth. His father, Thomas Robertson, was a merchant in Walls, where he owned a small fleet of fishing boats and operated a fish-curing and -smoking business that required frequent travel to mainland Scotland and the European mainland. Following Christina’s death, Thomas employed a young woman from Unst named Margaret Mouat to live in the home and help take care of the child. Three years later, Margaret and Thomas were married; they eventually produced eight offspring of their own.

The first of many members of his family to emigrate from Shetland, Charles D. Robertson set out from Shetland to explore the world at the age of eighteen. He sailed first to India, where he found work as a surveyor and civil engineer on railway- and bridge-construction projects. Later, he made his way to the United States, arriving there in September 1863. Within four years, he had married Cynthia Ann Buck (Hillman) and started a family. They settled in the bustling city of Cincinnati, Ohio, in the early 1870s, and there Charles forged a preeminent legal career. He died in 1919 at the age of eighty.

Early Adventures

When young Charles was finishing his high school years, sailors home from the sea told of the discovery of gold on Canada’s Vancouver Island off the western coast of British Columbia. Some showed off gold nuggets they had brought back. Charles knew it was time for him to leave the comforts of home, braving the dangers of the high seas and the voyage around Cape Horn, to explore the Vancouver gold fields for himself. But money would be needed to make the trip. In 1842, when Charles was three, his father had built a 42-foot sailing sloop named the Charles and put the legal title in Charles’s name. The boat would have to be sold to pay for his passage to the New World.

With his father’s reluctant approval, C.D. Robertson left home in 1857, armed with the Episcopal prayer book and watch that had belonged to his late mother. There was still a baby at home, born to his father and stepmother less than a year before; another half-sister was born three years later. It was the last time Charles would ever see his father.

When Charles arrived in mainland Scotland to board the ship for Vancouver, he learned that the scheduled departure had been delayed for several weeks. This gave him a chance to visit friends and relatives in Edinburgh in a “whirl of social enjoyment,” as he later described it. But then another delay of the sailing date was announced, and his money began to run out. He was able to talk the ship’s agent into refunding most of the ticket price and found work in Edinburgh to replenish dwindling funds. But the job—door-to-door sale of subscriptions for an illustrated Bible being published in installments—proved unrewarding, as Charles discovered how tough it was to separate skeptical Scots from their money for such a scheme.

Running out of options in Scotland, Charles made his way to London to seek advice and help from a business acquaintance of his father, who was a Member of Parliament.185 His father’s friend recommended that Charles get on the next ship to India, where he could find work on rail-construction projects then being undertaken by the British government. Charles took the advice and soon was on a clipper ship bound for India. The young man arrived in Bombay, the largest city of India, in May 1857. This was the beginning of five years of hard work, exotic life, and wild adventure. On the first night ashore in this turbulent and lawless environment, the captain of his ship was killed in a hotel brawl.

India at that time had fallen into political and military turmoil which soon led to the collapse of the East India Company that had controlled the subcontinent for over 250 years. A few days before Charles’s ship landed, a bloody uprising that became known as the Sepoy Rebellion had broken out throughout India in protest against foreign cruelty and domination of the Indian people. Hundreds of European men, women, and children were butchered by rioters and mutinous troops. Just before Charles landed, a secret plot had been hatched in Bombay to kill all European residents:

There were only a handful of European soldiers in the city. . . . Native detectives in the employ of the government had revealed the secrets, and were active with the real conspirators. The plans were complete, and the day and hour for the rising appointed; on the day preceding the appointed time, under pretext of some sort of a religious holiday and ceremony, most of the European women and children were taken on board the ships in the harbor. That night the European officers broke in on the conspirators, and the three leaders were captured and blown away from cannon mouths. They might have been shot or put out of existence by other more usual methods, but blowing them into eternity from a cannon had a wholesome influence on the natives. It cooled their ardor, and struck terror into their religious souls.

Despite this upheaval, Charles was accepted for employment in the civil service. He was assigned to stay in Bombay for a few months and worked to master the basics of Hindi, the official language of northern India. He was then sent to the interior to assist in the surveying, tunneling, grading, bridge building, and other work necessary for construction of the first rail lines across the Indian subcontinent.

A newspaper feature article many years afterward described C.D. Robertson’s work experience during his time in India:

He entered the engineering service of the British government, and in the unsettled state of the country the life of a British government employee there was one of adventure and almost continuous peril of death. Young Robertson became a civil engineer and helped to push the first railroads through the jungles and plains of the Indian continent. He became especially proficient in the building of bridges, and within five years rose to the head of that branch of the service. Many of the bridges of India were constructed under his direction.

There were many adventures and dangers during Charles’s years in India. One that stands out started when the young man heard one afternoon that there was a tiger lurking in a culvert a mile or two from the camp. He grabbed a rifle and some ammunition, jumped on a horse, and raced off to look for the tiger. It was not to be found, but he saw and shot at a pair of hyenas that disappeared, sneering, into the jungle. Then he glimpsed a large ante- lope through a clearing. Charles tied his horse to a tree and went charging after it on foot, hoping to get a shot. Running through the jungle, the young man finally realized that he had lost his bearings and night was falling fast; panic began to set in. “Well,” he thought, “here you are, lost in an Indian jungle, miles from any human habitation, with only the stars overhead, and surrounded with wild and ferocious animals.” He ended up spending the night in the jungle, seated on a pile of stones with gun in hand, his imagination fired by visions of “the glaring eyes of the hyena from every bush, the crunching bloody jaws of the wolves from every rustling, falling leaf, and the wailing of the jackal, like that of lost spirits in Dante’s Inferno.” Fortunately, he survived to tell the tale fifty years later.

Charles Robertson continued working in India until 1862, when he became severely ill with malarial fever that quinine medication did not relieve. He had to get away from the interior’s unhealthy tropical climate at once or die. So Charles headed back to Bombay, first by ox cart and then by train, so weak and sickly that he had to be carried on a stretcher—”a shivering, shaking, bronze skeleton,” by his later self-description.

He was able to book passage on a steamship across the Indian Ocean to Suez, where he would connect with another ship to England, planning then to return home to Shetland. At sea, his health rebounded. Charles became acquainted with a fellow passenger from America on his way home to Boston, who told of great opportunities in the United States. By the time his ship reached England, Charles had decided to continue on to America instead of going back to Shetland.

He landed in New York on September 19, 1863, and began looking for work. At that time Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States, and the nation was engulfed in a civil war between northern and southern states. Having an aptitude for writing, Charles was hired to work on the editorial staff of the New York Tribune, run by the renowned news- paperman and anti-slavery crusader Horace Greeley. Impressed by the adventurous young Shetlander, Greeley employed him to help in the preparation of a running chronicle of the Civil War, titled The History of the American Conflict.

In New York, Charles became friends with a family who invited him to stay in their home in Brooklyn Heights. This family had wealthy relatives in northern Ohio who met the agreeable young Shetlander on a visit and, impressed with his capability and charm, offered him employment in their business. Following Horace Greeley’s famous advice—”Go West, young man”—C.D. Robertson accepted the invitation and moved to Norwalk, Ohio.

Norwalk was a small but flourishing town near the shores of Lake Erie, less than fifty miles from Cleveland. Charles later recalled Norwalk as “One of the ideal villages of the West with its broad and spacious Main Street for miles shaded with magnificent maples, and fringed on both sides with handsome, and sometimes elegant residences, interspersed with artistic churches and commodious schools.” He was offered room and board with Judge and Mrs. Samuel Worcester in Norwalk, in a home that Charles considered “the most refined and aristocratic in that part of the State.”

Perhaps influenced by Judge Worcester, Charles developed a strong interest in the law and considered a possible career in that profession. To pursue it, however, Charles felt he needed more formal education or training in other disciplines. He therefore enrolled in the Cleveland Medical College in Cleveland, Ohio. There, he became acquainted with another medical student, Jirah Dewey Buck, who introduced Charles to his recently-widowed sister, Cynthia.

Cynthia Ann Buck

One of the two children of Reuben and Fanny Morton Buck, Cynthia Buck was born on May 21, 1836, in the village of Fredonia, in Chautauqua County, in the far western corner of New York State. Life had not been easy for her: Cynthia was only seventeen when her father died, leaving debts unpaid and few assets for his family. Her first husband, William Hillman, had died in 1864, leaving Cynthia with a young child. One other daughter born to Cynthia and Mr. Hillman had died as a baby. By the time Cynthia was twenty-eight—with the United States still embroiled in Civil War—she was a single mother forced to make her own way in life.
Charles D. Robertson and Cynthia Buck were married in December 1867 and took up residence in the town of Sandusky, Ohio, near the shore of Lake Erie. A woman of strong character and physique, Cynthia Robertson was dedicated to literary and academic pursuits and to the interests of women. She was an avid reader, and her home became a center of culture where friends and neighbors would come together for discussion and for lectures by distinguished guests from the fields of science, literature, and philosophy.

Cynthia was very active in women’s organizations committed to broadened educational and cultural opportunities for women. She was one of the organizers of the Cincinnati Women’s Club, which still exists in that city, and within that organization, she led a group devoted to Greek literature and philosophy. In 1894, she helped found the Ohio Federation of Women’s Clubs, in which she served in various positions and for several years as its general secretary. A memorial tribute called her the “soul of Plato in a woman’s frame.”

Professional and Public Life in Cincinnati

While still living in northern Ohio, C.D. Robertson decided to get into the business of insurance. Starting as an apprentice, he went to work with a prominent insurance company in Sandusky and soon was promoted to the job of actuary (an expert who calculates insurance and annuity premiums, dividends, etc.) for the company. That position in turn led to an offer of employment from an insurance company in Cincinnati—a bustling city on the banks of the Ohio River in the southwestern part of the state.

About 1870, Charles and Cynthia moved to Cincinnati. In 1871, a city directory listed him as Vice President of the Cincinnati Mutual Insurance Company. But there remained his interest in the law. Enrolling in the Cincinnati Law School, he obtained his degree in 1872, was admitted to the bar, and began to practice. He soon became a respected trial attorney and counsellor for insurance firms in the area.

With his intellect, professionalism, and engaging personality, Charles D. Robertson’s star was rising at a time when that of his father in Shetland was falling. By the time Thomas Robertson died in 1873, he had lost his business and fallen into virtual poverty, while his son in Ohio had become a practicing lawyer with a supportive, loving wife, and a growing family.
A fine writer and an avid student of history, C.D. Robertson was elected to member- ship in the prestigious Cincinnati Literary Club in 1872, the same year he was admitted to the bar. This organization, limited to one hundred members, held weekly meetings for reading and discussion of original papers prepared by the members. This brought Charles into regular contact with some of the leading lights of the Cincinnati business and intellectual worlds. He was an active, prolific member of the Literary Club for more than forty years, holding numerous leadership positions, including the office of president. Fortunately, many of the scholarly and historical papers presented by C.D. Robertson to the Cincinnati Literary Club between 1886 and 1916 have been preserved in the collection of the Cincinnati Historical Society.

Training in mathematics, engineering, medicine, insurance, and general law equipped Charles Robertson to become an outstanding member of the bar and a respected community leader. Within a few years, he was appointed to the board of trustees of the University of Cincinnati, serving from 1876 until 1883. In 1883, he was elected Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Hamilton County, Ohio, and took office on the first Monday of December in that year.

Judge C.D. Robertson’s introduction to his new position could literally be called a trial by fire. Like other growing cities in America in the late nineteenth century, Cincinnati had a rough, often violent edge. Crime was a matter of great concern, and there was public outcry against what some perceived as excessive delay in bringing criminals to justice, followed by inadequate punishment for those convicted.

Matters got completely out of hand, however, barely three months after the new judge was raised to the bench. In March of 1884, an uproar arose when the jury in a homicide case against a man named Berner returned a manslaughter verdict. Many people thought it was cold-blooded murder. The presiding judge sentenced Berner to twenty years in prison, the maximum sentence for manslaughter, but strongly criticized the jury for not returning a verdict of murder in the first degree. A public assembly was convened to discuss problems in the criminal justice system and to protest the verdict, but passions were inflamed, and the assembly turned into a full-scale riot. The mob stormed the city jail, intent upon applying its own justice to the inmates there, but was turned away by the police. The rioters then turned to the courthouse in downtown Cincinnati, which was set on fire. The courthouse burned to the ground overnight. So much for law and order.

Despite this inauspicious beginning, Judge C.D. Robertson served with distinction on the bench of the Common Pleas Court, presiding over a number of dramatic and colorful cases. One of the most sensational involved a proceeding for the disbarment of attorney Thomas Campbell on charges of bribery, fraud, and corruption of the judicial process. Campbell was, in fact, the attorney who had represented Berner in the murder trial that led to the court- house riot and fire. Immediately afterward, a committee of the Bar Association of Cincinnati had conducted its own investigation of the attorney’s conduct in that case and others, resulting in a formal petition to the court for Campbell’s disbarment. Among the allegations were that Campbell had attempted to bribe a juror in the Berner case and had allowed two others to be seated as jurors without disclosing that they were clients of Campbell’s. Although the case had been pending for some time, Judge Robertson was appointed in 1885 to a panel of three judges assigned to hear the matter. Many of the city’s most powerful and best-known lawyers were involved in the proceedings. The legal team against Campbell was led by William Howard Taft, an aggressive young prosecutor who later became President of the United States and was appointed Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

After five years on the bench, Charles Robertson decided not to seek another term as Common Pleas Court judge and instead went back into private practice. Together with another retired jurist, he opened the law firm of Robertson and Buchwalter in 1888, where he practiced for the rest of his life. Even as a private lawyer, however, he continued his involvement in public affairs and his opposition to corruption in politics.

In the late nineteenth century, politics and public administration in the United States were dominated by two organized political parties, Republican and Democratic, which amassed much greater power than the counterparts of today. C.D. Robertson was a Democrat and committed to political reform and civic integrity. The 1880s and 1890s saw the rise of a ruthless political machine in Cincinnati and Hamilton County, dominated by a saloon keeper named George B. Cox. Boss Cox was one of the most notorious of the American big-city bosses of the time. He seized and asserted almost dictatorial power, able to control the granting of public contracts, the outcome of elections, appointments to important offices—even, it was rumored, outcomes of cases in court. Many years later, Charles Robertson’s son reminisced about the bad old days of Boss Cox and his father’s opposition to the corrupt machine politics:

When the City decided to build a new water works system, complete with filter plant and everything—citizens had complained that when residents of Pittsburgh [upstream on the Ohio River] ate asparagus, the folks in Cincinnati could tell it—a non-partisan committee was selected to supervise the building of the water works and Father was chosen as Legal Advisor. Later a dispute arose between the Commission and the prime contractor, which resulted in a long drawn out legal battle.

The Judge in the case was a friend and neighbor of my father, but of opposite political faith. When he had decided to run for the position of Judge, he enlisted the aid of George B. Cox and was elected. As the trial was reaching its climax, late one night this Judge came to Father as a friend and told him that George B. had sent him “orders” to decide the case in a way favorable to the defendant contractor, regardless of law and facts. Inasmuch as he had accepted the support of the Cox gang to get into office, he was torn between conflicting obligations—loyalty to his oath and loyalty to one who had helped him politically. My father’s advice to him, of course, was to comply with his oath of office. And that is what the Judge did, but he considered it wise not to reappear on the political scene thereafter.

Judge C.D. Robertson pursued his commitment to good government even at the state level. Running as a reform candidate in 1897, he was elected to the Ohio Senate, where he was chosen chairman of the Democratic Steering Committee and Democratic floor leader. As a member of the Ohio Senate, he continued to oppose the powerful political boss of northern Ohio, Mark A. Hanna. In those days, members of the United States Senate from each state were selected by the state’s legislature, not popularly elected as they are today. When Boss Hanna sought to have himself appointed to the U.S. Senate, Charles Robertson put up a valiant but losing fight to block his power grab. His effort was warmly praised by many, including the Cincinnati Times-Star newspaper which wrote, “Judge Robertson played good politics . . . and almost prevented the selection of the Cleveland statesman.”

When the Mayor of Cincinnati named C.D. Robertson to an important public position in 1910, the appointment was hailed as one that pleased “even the opposition,” the Cincinnati Times-Star wrote, because he “is known throughout the city as a staunch Democrat and is liked by everybody.” The paper continued in its praise of Charles Robertson: “No member of the Hamilton County bar is held in higher esteem by his associates and none has a larger circle of friends. Judge Robertson deeply sympathized with the struggles of young men in their fight to make their way in the world and there are many who could tell interesting stories of how he reached forth a helping hand.”

Charles Robertson was again proposed for an important public trusteeship in 1914. The Cincinnati Times-Star endorsed his selection in glowing terms:

The position . . . needs men of the caliber of Judge Robertson — men of sound judgment, of sober thought, of progressive ideas along the lines on which true and abiding progress alone can be built; men of affairs and men of action; men who know Cincinnati and appreciate her best interests; men with the right grasp of civic affairs; men of experience in matters affecting the city of Cincinnati — and of that class of men Judge Robertson is an honored illustration. His services on the bench of the Common Pleas Court were distinguished not alone for a knowledge of the law and its right application, but for courtesy, high judicial bearing and a seeking after justice in all things.

None stands higher on the roll of a judiciary distinguished throughout Ohio than Judge Charles D. Robertson, and the reputation he gained on the bench and at the bar is a reputation based on high character and unimpeached probity.

Family Life

Charles and Cynthia Robertson had five children—in addition to Cynthia’s daughter from her first marriage—but only two of the five survived to maturity. Their first child, Thomas Walter Robertson, was born in 1868 and died of blood poisoning in 1884 when he was less than sixteen years old. The second child, Georgia Dumbreck Robertson, was born in October 1870, grew up to marry and raise a family, and lived to the age of eighty-one. Two of the following children fell victim to scarlet fever within a month of each other in 1878. Charles and Cynthia’s youngest child, Reuben Buck Robertson, was born in June 1879; he lived to the age of ninety-three, raised three children, and had an outstanding career of his own.
After their father, Thomas Robertson, died in 1873, two of Charles’s younger half-brothers followed him to settle in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thomas, who never married, arrived in the United States in April 1876. He was listed in the city directory as a resident of Cincinnati in 1886. He died in 1900. Andrew Umphray Robertson, the sixth child of Margaret and Thomas Robertson, immigrated to America around 1880; in 1881, he married Cynthia Robertson’s daughter Esther Hillman (called Etta for short). Etta and Andrew lived for a while with Cynthia and Charles, and Etta helped care for the young children.

When they first moved to the Cincinnati area, Charles and Cynthia were living across the Ohio River in Covington, Kentucky, which was accessible by a newly constructed sus- pension bridge. By 1875, the family was residing at 221 Auburn Avenue in the Mt. Auburn section of Cincinnati and for a time resided at 1510 Eastern Avenue. They finally bought a large, beautiful home on Ridgeway Avenue in Avondale, which was then a separate municipality but was later annexed to become part of the city of Cincinnati. The house on Ridgeway Avenue was also home to numerous other relatives from time to time. In later years, Cynthia’s granddaughter Greta Robertson, the daughter of Etta and Andrew, lived on Ridgeway Avenue and worked as Charles’s secretary in the law firm.

C.D. Robertson and his wife enjoyed seeing the world and traveled extensively. In 1885, they visited Scotland and Shetland, and Charles again was able to see his aged stepmother, Margaret Mouat Robertson, and to visit with his half-brother James D. Robertson. Later, they travelled to the St. Lawrence Seaway, Toronto, Quebec, and Montreal in Canada, to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Yosemite and Coronado Beach in California, and to Hawaii, where they went to the rim of the volcano Kilauea.

Charles Dumbreck Robertson died in his sleep on the night of August 28, 1919. Distinguished leaders of the bench and bar wrote of him, “It may safely be said that Judge Robertson had no enemy. He never spoke unkindly to anyone. His sunny, genial disposition; his guileless frankness, ready humor and warm heart; his deep sense of justice, personal honor and courage; his thoughtful consideration for others; his clear sense, ability and habits or industry gave him a life of happiness, usefulness and distinction. . . . He never denied any man his due, and he left to those he loved the priceless heritage of an untarnished name.”
Cynthia Buck Robertson lived for four years after the death of her husband. She died in Cincinnati on November 16, 1923, at eighty-seven years of age. She was honored by her peers as an exceptional but unassuming woman who was instrumental in the women’s club movement, a civic leader in arts and education, and a kind, charitable, and loyal friend. Cynthia Buck and Charles D. Robertson, all of their children, the children’s spouses, and some of the grandchildren and their spouses are buried in the Robertson lot in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.