Elizabeth Robertson, formerly Kenney (née Wightman)

Daughter of Charles Wightman of Tobago: her trustees were awarded the compensation for 3 estates on Tobago.

1. Elizabeth Wightman, only daughter of Charles Wightman, esq. Tobago, married Dr Andrew Kenney at Eyemouth in 1820. She remarried, to Dr John Argyll Robertson, in Edinburgh 04/05/1829, when her address was given as Princes Street, Edinburgh and her father as Chas Wightman of the Island of Tobago.

2. "Andrew Kenney became a member of Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh in 1812. His graduation paper was on hydrophobia. In 1820, he was appointed a physician at the Edinburgh New Town Dispensary. At the meeting at which he was appointed, it was reported that in the previous year the number of patients who had received medicines or been treated there in the five years since the Dispensary had been established was 34,004, of which 12,264 were regularly attended in their own homes. In 1820, he married Elizabeth, the daughter of Dr Charles Wightman, who owned the Concordia estate in Tobago, and for three years they lived at 10 Albany Street. Wightman also owned the property in Dunbar in which John Muir, the famous Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness, was born. In 1823, Kenney resigned from the Dispensary, and he and Elizabeth sailed to Tobago with their two young daughters. On leaving Edinburgh, the Kenneys sold all their Albany Street house contents, including ‘some valuable paintings, among which are a Portrait of Prince Charles and several Battle pieces by eminent masters.’ A shower bath also was listed in the items for sale. Three years after arriving, Andrew died. Elizabeth later returned to Edinburgh and in 1829 remarried another doctor, John Argyll Robertson."

3. John Argyll Robertson, physician, lived at 58 Queen Street, Edinburgh, in 1832. He lived with his wife and children at the same address in the census of 1841 when her age was given as 35 years. She had died by the time of the 1851 census, when John was living with his sister and children at Grove Place, High Street, Duddingston.

T71/891Tobago nos. 24, 46, 70 and 274.

1. Edinburgh Magazine Vol. 87 (1821) p. 94 06/12/1820; GROS OPR Marriages 685/1 640 123 Edinburgh.

2. Email from Barclay Price, 19/06/2018; information available in 'Albany Street Edinburgh in the 19th century', entry for 10 Albany Street, https://sites.google.com/site/albanystreetedinburgh/home/house-list/number-10/number-10---information-on-other-residents [accessed 25/06/2018]. Death of Dr Andrew Kenney at Concordia, Tobago: Edinburgh Annual Register for 1826 (1828) vol. 19 p. 313.

3. Ancestry.com, Edinburgh, Scotland, Electoral Registers, 1832-1966 [database online]; 1841 and 1851 censuses online.

We are grateful to Barclay Price for his assistance with compiling this entry.