V. Robert Andrew Thomas Cheyne, youngest son of Christina Dumbreck Robertson and Robert Thomas Cheyne, was born on September 9, 1882 in Picton, New Zealand. He was only two when his natural father died, and when he was about 11 years of age, about 1893, his mother remarried and the family relocated to Wellington, on the North Island across the strait which divides the two parts of New Zealand

Robert Cheyne was married in Wellington on September 4, 1912 in Wellington to Olive Geraldine Boielle. They lived in Wellington until the early 1930s, when they moved to Dunedin, New Zealand, in the southern part of the South Island. They had no children. Robert Cheyne died in Dunedin on August 26, 1947 (age 64) in Dunedin, in the southern part of the South Island, New Zealand