3rd August 2002, 22:03
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More MacRobert family history
The following article is taken from http://www.xvsquadron.co.uk/macroberts.htm
XV Squadron is the RAF squadron which flew "MacRobert's Reply".
Quote:
Alexander MacRobert was born on 21 May 1854, the son of an Aberdeen labourer. He left school at the age of 13 to work as a floor sweeper in the Stoneywood Paper Mills on the outskirts of the City. He married his first wife, Georgina Porter - a clerkess in the Union works, on 31 December 1883.
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By the time he was 30 (1884) he applied for and obtained the post of manager of Cawnpore Woollen Mill in India. He set sail for India early in 1884 and Georgina followed a year later in 1885., where she lived with Alexander until her untimely death 20 years later. There were no children of his first marriage. Georgina died at Douneside on 8 November 1905 and is buried in the Allenvale cemetery in Aberdeen.
Following Georgina's death, Alexander eventually decided to return to India. his subsequent rise to Managing Director and then Chairman was swift. The mill became mills, both cotton and woollen and the business expanded to take in tanneries and boot and shoe manufacture. He became a founding member of the Upper India Chamber of Commerce. Alexander was knighted in 1910 and made a KBE in 1918 and created Baronet of Cawnpore and Cromar in 1922. He died a few months later on 22 June 1922 at Douneside and is buried with Georgina in Aberdeen.
In 1909, on one of his voyages back from India, Alexander met a Miss Rachel Workman, daughter of Dr and Mrs Workman from Worcester, Massachusets. Rachel, an American by birth, went to school at Cheltenham Ladies College and graduated in Geology at Imperial College London and was one of the first women to be elected a fellow of the Geological Society.
The courtship was brief and Rachel Workman became Lady MacRobert in 1911. They were married at Friends Meeting House in York on 7 July 1911. there were three sons of Alexander's second marriage, Alasdair, Roderic and Iain and the eldest, Alasdair, was only 10 at the time of his fathers death in 1922.
Alasdair went to school at Oundle and his two younger brothers went to Cranleigh. All three went on to Cambridge. Sir Alasdair, after coming down from Cambridge, became Chairman of the British India Corporation and frequently flew himself in a Percival Vega Gull to Cawnpore. It was on a flying visit home from India that he was tragically killed near Luton on 1 june 1938. In that same year Sir Roderic, who inherited the title, took a Short Service Commission in the Royal Air Force. Sir Roderic was killed leading a flight of No 94 Squadron in a Hurricane strafing attack on German held Mosul airfield in Iraq, on 22 may 1941.
It was only a month later, on 30 June, that Sir Iain was posted missing, following an operational Air-Sea rescue mission over the North Sea in a Blenheim of No 608 Squadron.
Lady MacRoberts' fighting response is now history. In addition to giving the Stirling bomber, The MacRoberts Reply, and 4 Hurricanes named after her sons, she also provided the House of Cromar, renamed Alastrean House, as a leave centre for operational aircrew serving in the Royal Air Force and the Commonwealth Air Forces.
Lady MacRobert died at Douneside on 1 September 1954 and is buried in the gardens a Douneside House.
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