Jean and Charlie

Meet Nana and Granda, Jean and Charlie Robertson on their 50th wedding anniversary. They met walking to work in 1929 when he was 19 and she was 18. He liked her legs (he told me). They both worked at box factories in Leith - Jean at the Cardboard Box Factory on Bonnington Road, and Charlie at Cummings & Son on Murano Place. They both came from families that loved really long names.

Charles James Neil Jamieson Robertson 1910 - 1996

Georgina McCabe Munro Greenan 1911 - 1995

Charlie was named after his great grandfather James Robertson and after Neil Jamieson. I’m not sure who the first Neil Jamieson was but there was a pharmacist in Leith of that name. Sometimes parents picked a middle name for a close friend or a local hero. Charlie’s father “George Brodrick” Robertson was named after the engineer who served as the Superintendent of the Port of Leith for many years.

It’s possible to track the friends by searching for them in the archives and checking addresses in the valuation rolls to see if they were neighbors, or if they were relatives through marriage.

Jean was Catholic and Charlie was Protestant and their families all got along. The only drama was that before the wedding Charlie had agreed to raise the children Catholic and then changed his mind the night before, which upset the priest (and Jean). They got married in Jean’s local church in Lochend and lived mostly happily ever after.

They started married life in Portobello then moved to Granton when new housing was built there in the 1930s. They raised their four children in Granton (Janet, Philip, George, and Chas) and moved down to Corby in England in 1960 to be near Janet. Their sons followed them one by one and David and I grew up in a big extended family, celebrating Christmas at our house and New Year’s Eve “Hogmanay” at Jean and Charlie’s. They loved a party.

52 Granton Place, Leith

39 Argyll Street, Corby, Northamptonshire, England

They lived in the second house from the left.