He was the eldest child in a Scottish family of three sons and two daughters, the youngest of whom was the writer Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye, 1832-1932, who when she wasn't writing under her own name used the nom-de-plume Isabel Massary.

Also aboard the ship were fellow Scotsman Joshua Richmond Young, one of his future business partners, and the incoming New South Wales governor Sir George Gipps.

The inclusion of the name 'Ramsay & Young' in a letter dated 22 August 1838 to Sir Gordon Bremer regarding a new settlement at Port Essington revealed that even then Robert and his partners had an eye on trading up north.

Anecdotal evidence together with numerous local newspaper advertisements and articles at the time relating to shipping in and out of Sydney suggests that both firms did well.

Between 1848 and February 1866 when the partnership was dissolved, Hope & Ramsay invested huge amounts of money and time into the development of numerous pastoral properties on and close to the Darling Downs.

Their holdings also included the pastoral interests at Mundubbera of Ramsay's younger brother Marmaduke following his death by drowning while crossing the Dawson River on 20 September 1865.

[4] On 9 January 1858, Mort & Co, on behalf of Hope & Ramsay, placed an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald about the forthcoming auction of their flagship stations at Rosalie Plains and Cooyar.

However, some reports say that the deal, worth £41,000 including 37,500 sheep and 1200 cattle, fell through and that Hope and Ramsay continued to lease the properties until they were transferred to the Queensland Lands Department in 1870.

Following the formal dissolution in February 1866 of his partnership with Louis Hope, who was by then actively involved in Australia's burgeoning sugar industry, Ramsay and his family moved into the Eton Vale homestead from where he took over the day-to-day management of the station.