ROBERTSON, CARL TROWBRIDGE (31 Jan. 1876-2 June 1935), journalist and son of Georgia Trowbridge and George A. Robertson, founder of the CLEVELAND MORNING RECORDER, was born in N. Bloomfield, Trumbull County, Ohio. He graduated from Harvard in 1898, and after a year teaching returned to Cleveland. Following a short apprenticeship on the Morning Recorder, Robertson moved to the PLAIN DEALER in 1901, covering city hall during the TOM L. JOHNSON era before being promoted to editorial writer and associate editor.
Robertson was an authority on contract bridge, joining the Cleveland Whist Club and playing on its national championship teams in 1902 and 1903. He was also an explorer, in 1920 directing an expedition which discovered a previously unknown section of Mammoth Cave, Ky., subsequently named Robertson Ave. Three years later he crossed the Atlantic in a 3-masted schooner with the CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY's Blossom expedition to Cape Verde. Robertson's travel led to many Plain Dealer articles. From 1920 until his death, Robertson also contributed a widely followed "Outdoors Diary" to the paper.
Married twice, Robertson had a daughter, Jane, from his first marriage on 12 June 1912 to Martha Bushea, whom he divorced in 1924. Later that year he married Josephine Wuebbon, a Plain Dealer medical reporter on 14 July 1925. Their son, DONALD (DON) ROBERTSON, was a reporter for the Plain Dealer, a columnist for the CLEVELAND PRESS, and a novelist best known for his fictional account of the EAST OHIO GAS DISASTER, The Greatest Thing since Sliced Bread. Robertson is buried near Rabat, Morocco, where he died suddenly while traveling.
Shaw, Archer H. The Plain Dealer (1942).