Hello,
I realize this is an old thread, but on the off chance this forum notifies you of new posts, I will give this a shot. My grandfather (Malcolm Stewart Robertson) was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada in 1888. He immigrated to the US in the early 1900's.
I have a casual interest in genealogy and have made attempts to trace the lineage of our PEI ancestors back to Scotland. My efforts, as well as the efforts of much more professional researchers, all seemed to dead-end with a Thomas Robertson (b.1776, d. 1841) who married a Susannah Jenkins (b. 1780, ). A number of years ago, while I was actively using Ancestry.com, this seemed to the case for most every other researcher who was looking into the line.
Recently I logged onto Ancestry.com after a long hiatus. I noticed there are quite a number of family trees that now carry on the line well beyond Thomas. Most of them list Thomas' father and mother as the James Robertson and Margaret Clarkson (Clerkson) your post speaks of. However, I haven't seen any source documentation that would confirm this linkage. (I am a casual user of genealogical software/websites, so it's quite possible the source is right under my nose).
I am intrigued by the linkage for a few reasons. My father, uncle and aunt adamantly maintained that our first ancestor on PEI was a James Robertson. The story I was told was that James was a school teacher, who after swearing an oath of allegiance to the King, was given a land grant/charter on PEI. My grandfather had the charter, and all three children have vivid memories of seeing it. Sadly, no one in the family now knows where it is. I made several inquiries with researchers on PEI who were able to identify a couple of James Robertsons who had potential to be our missing ancestor, but no documentable linkage could be made at that time.
While going through some of my father's papers the other day, I discovered a letter from my uncle that roughly listed out our PEI lineage. My uncle, born in 1911, spent a summer on PEI working with an uncle on the family farm. Consequently, he probably was the most well-versed in the family history. Anyway, in this letter (written nearly 40 years ago), he listed the first ancestor as "James Robertson, born 1756".
I find the birth date of 1756 interesting because it is the same date most of the family trees attribute to the James Robertson you are referring to. Furthermore, many of these trees show Margaret Clarkson having died on PEI (at the ripe age of 100, which makes me skeptical).
Sorry for being so long winded, but I wonder if your research on James Robertson and Margaret Clarkson lists a son named Thomas and/or shows they may have emigrated from Scotland to PEI? The records on this side of the pond seem rather sketchy. Perhaps they are better on your side?
Thank you for any light you might shed on this for me.
Malcolm Robertson