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Sir Robert Tolerton CB, CBE, DSO, MC (1887 - 1956)
Early years

Robert Hill Tolerton (later Sir Robert Tolerton) was born on 19 April 1887 at Stangmore, Co Tyrone in Ireland (now Northern Ireland), the elder son of Samuel Tolerton, a Quaker teacher from a farming background. His mother was Letita (Etta) Jane Tolerton (nee McKeeman), possibly an irish presbyterian from Belfast.

Samuel Tolerton died when Robert was four years old. By the age of 8 he was living in Dublin with his mother and younger brother Lee, his mother being secretary of the Philanthropic Reform Society, Dublin and other Quaker charitable organisations.

Education and early career

Robert was sent to England to be educated at the Quaker Stramongate School in Kendal, Westmoreland (now Cumbria). He attended the University of Dublin (Trinity College) where he graduated BA in 1911. He then entered the civil service (Board of Trade).

Military career 1914-1919

4 August 1914 saw the outbreak of World War 1. On the 29th August 1914 Robert was gazetted as a second Lieutenant in the 23rd (County of London) Battalion, The London Regiment, a territorial unit part of the 6th (London) brigade about 5,000 men), 2nd London Division. He served on the western front in France and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was wounded twice, mentioned in dispatches, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross.

Post WW1 career

After WW1 Robert Tolerton returned to the civil service where he was transferred to the Ministry of Transport where he remained for the next 29 years until his retirement in 1948. He died in 1956 in Cheam, Surrey.

Personal life

Many of the letters he wrote from the Western Front were to the person whom he eventually married in 1931 - Miss Sarah (Sally) Elizabeth Burnet. Sally Burnet (1886-1963) was the eldest daughter and second child of John Edward Harrison Burnet 1855-1933). These letters were donated by Sally Burnet's nephew to the Imperial War Museum in the 1980s.

Sally Burnet was born in Northumberland and grew up in London and later Bradford. She also became a civil servant, in Yorkshire and later in London. She was Robert Tolerton’s boss when they were both civil servants in London before the war. She was awarded the OBE in 1917. She died in 1956 in Littlethorpe, Ripon, Yorkshire.

Her father, John Edward Harrison Burnet, although born in Northumberland, was from a Roxburghshire farming family and grew up in Melrose. He was a civil servant and at various times worked as an examiner to the County Courts in Northumberland, London and Bradford, retiring to Morecambe.