Robert Thompson McMaster
also known as Robert T. McMaster
b. 1866
d. 1919
Robert Thompson McMaster was born in 1866 to Gilbert Clement McMaster and Margaret Thompson McMaster, one of twin sons. His twin brother, Erasmus Darwin McMaster, died young of a weakened heart. Robert carried the same condition and lived with it until age 55, dying in 1919.
Two photographs of him survive in the family archive — he appears twice in Maggie Eesley’s Four Generations deck. He was, per the family memory recorded on his daughter Peggy’s page, a civil engineer. The two frames bracket his life: the railroad-survey portrait of him as a working engineer (shown above) and, at the other end, the cabinet card below of him as a small boy of three.
He married Alice Anderson McMaster (1871–1961), daughter of Reverend Abraham Ramsey Anderson the Presbyterian minister, in 1902 (per the family’s hand-drawn McMaster–Anderson tree). Their children included:
- Donald Anderson “Don” McMaster (1903–1967) — photographer; ran the northeastern U.S. communications power grid in WWII.
- Margaret Jane “Peggy” McMaster Eesley (1914–2007) — Chuck’s grandmother, who married Will Eesley in 1942.
He died before either Alice (who lived until 1961) or his daughter Peggy reached middle age. Peggy was only five years old when her father died; the rest of her growing up was shaped by Alice, the widowed schoolteacher, alone.
He is Chuck’s great-grandfather through Peggy → Charles McMaster Eesley → Chuck.
Sources: Maggie Eesley, Four Generations of the Eesley Family (PowerPoint archive); Peggy McMaster Eesley’s obituary (Marietta Times, 23 May 2007).