#9. Peter and Annie Robertson Home

Peter Robertson was born on April 18, 1847 in Scotland.  By 1871, he was living in the settlement that he helped to establish as Del Norte.  He along with other miners and farmers J. Cary French, B. F. Lovett, John B. Gredig, David Lovato, Andrew Richardson, John P. Johnson, P.J. Peterson and others were the group who formed the Del Norte Corporation which was the developing group for the Town of Del Norte.

Annie Melvin was also born in Scotland on April 7, 1860.  She and her brother had gone to Silverton where she met Peter Robertson who at that time was a mining engineer.  Peter and Annie were married on September 6, 1883 in Silverton, San Juan County.

By the Colorado census of 1885, Peter “Scotty” and Annie Robertson were living in Del Norte and they had one daughter, Mary.  Robertson was listed as a farmer as his occupation.  They did have two other daughters, Christina or “Chrissie” as she was known by, and Edna.

When he arrived in Del Norte in January of 1891, Dr. John McFadzean stated that he walked past the stone fence at the Robertson home.  The fence is still there. People would sit on the fence and watch the train arrive at the depot.

In 1911, a true flood struck the Rio Grande and water filled the streets of Del Norte nearly to Grand Avenue.  The Robertson home would have been in the middle of the flooding.  The story that Edna Robertson Shaffer told her friend, Ruth Marie Colville was that “the Robertson girls, Chrissie, Mary and Edna, and their mother got the piano upstairs when the water was rising, but unable to get back down when the flood was over”.

Annie Robertson married Fred Ceeley in 1906.