The Old Family
and how we got here
Robert Alexander's birth seems not to have been recorded but we have his parentage from other sources anyway. He was the son of a slater, Hugh Alexander, and a rare outsider in this tree, Julia Greig from Edinburgh. Robert appears to have followed his father into the building trade as a mason's labourer and then as a quarryman. I suppose it's possible that he could have been quarrying for materials for the building trade and knocking the rough rocks into building stones of the right dimensions. Someone has to and working with masons this would possibly have been one of his tasks. On the other hand maybe all he did was get heavy stones for the masons to knock into shape.
There isn't really much more to say about Robert, which is quite unfair as he might have been a remarkable man in ways that we don't know, such as a wonderful musician or the strongest man in town but there is nothing of that sort in the records.
Something of interest for me is that he stayed at 380 High Street, just seven doors up from my childhood home at 366 High Street.