Margaret Buchanan Robertson's mother, Margaret Campbell, emigrated to Australia with her family in 1821. Margaret Buchanan Robertson was born in 1826. In 1829 her father left, and her mother married again in 1835. The children from the first marriage were sent back to Scotland around 1830, when Margaret Buchanan Robertson was 4 years old. She lived with a cousin of her father's, and was treated by James Young Simpson for a "constitutional delicacy" c1857.