Gold Watch and Ring

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Murray Macpherson, Glenorie, Australia

1. What is your object and how did it come to be in your possession? 
Robert Macpherson, my Scottish great-uncle who emigrated to the USA about 1905, bequeathed his gold watch and ring to his nephew, another Robert, my father, who passed it on to my son Robert.

2. Why have you chosen this object for the Macphersoniana project? 
This family heirloom represents our family line through the name ‘Robert Macpherson’. The first Robert we know of was my 4x great grandfather, born in Inverness-shire about 1760. He had a grandson Robert born in 1815 who was a tailor in Carnaby St, London, and a great-grandson Robert born in 1854 in Dunfermline, Fife. Known as Bob, he was a popular barber in the High St who died in a flu epidemic after nursing his ill in-laws.

Bob’s nephew Robert, also from Dunfermline, was named after him and was fondly known as Bert. Born in 1885, he emigrated to New York where he worked as a linen salesman, along with his brother Graham, a linen importer for a Dunfermline linen company Hay and Robertson, where their grandfather had been a hand-loom weaver many years before.

Bert bought the gold watch and ring in NY. He was a devotee of cricket and a well-known singer in Manhattan who married but had no children. He bequeathed his jewellery to future Robert Macphersons in his family.

Cue to my father Robert, born in 1918 in Sydney, Australia. His father Thomas, (Bert and Graham’s brother), had emigrated here in 1910. When he passed away in 2011, the watch and ring passed to my son Robert, known as Robbie, who is a bagpiper with the Hills Pipe Band in Sydney.

3. Why is this object important to you and what does it mean to you?
The watch and ring are tangible examples of our family’s heritage and the continuity of Macphersons. Despite hardships which forced all of them to look for opportunities abroad, they flourished in their new lands and nurtured their families with sound values and attitudes. Despite the 3 childless Roberts and the family dispersing across the world, the name has still carried on today.

Linked inherited experiences “include values and attitudes passed by word or deed from parent to child, and which, like family heirlooms, might fade with age or be cast aside, or might be refurbished, passed on to the next generation and accorded greater respect.” (Stephen Foster, A Private Empire).

In our case we not only inherited the heirloom but also the values and attitudes and have great respect for both.

4. What does this object tell us about what it means to be a Macpherson?
To be a Macpherson is to be part of a proud Scottish clan that, despite adversity, has been resilient and adaptable to living in new lands yet still valuing continued links to family heritage in Scotland.

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