Corporal Robert C. Bickerstaff was born in County Armagh, Ireland in 1834, the son of Arthur and Rachel Bickerstaff.

Bickerstaff served in The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada in 1866 and participated with No. 2 Company in the Battle of Ridgeway on 2 June 1866, and on duty in Stratford after. (He was Espicopal and the American Fenians were Roman Catholic.) He was possibly still serving in the QOR by 1871.

In various censuses, he is listed as a grocer and storekeeper.

In 1912 Bickerstaff applied for the Fenian Raids Land Grant, and he was awarded the General Service Medal with Fenian Raid 1866 clasp.

He married Charlotte but does not appear to have had any children however his great, great nephew Lieutenant Colonel Moore Ivan Jackson, served in WWII and rose to command The Queen’s Own Rifles militia battalion in the 1960s.

He died aged 92, on 22 July 1924 in Toronto, Ontario of “senility.”