There is an extensive genealogy of his ancestors in . Seven generations previous are also described in

Robert Heysham attended the public schools at Mauch Chunk, and then entered an engineer corps of the Lehigh Coal Navigation Company. Early in the year 1841 he engaged on the repairs of the canal, which had been partially destroyed by a freshet in the Lehigh river. He was afterward under the direction of Edwin A. Douglas, chief engineer, and was engaged in the engineering department in charge of the canals, railroads and of the building of the incline planes and gravity road, known as the Switchback Railroad, between Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill. He was appointed chief engineer of the Lehigh Valley Railroad in the spring of 1852, and after the completion of the road between Mauch Chunk and Easton, in 1855, was appointed general superintendent as well, and remained in that service until 1882, when he was elected president and chief engineer of the South Pennsylvania Railroad. When work on that enterprise was suspended he returned to the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, and was elected second vice-president, in which capacity he was charged with the care of its transportation lines and engineering. He was also elected the vice-president and general manager of the Bethlehem Iron Company. He was named in the will of Asa Packer as one of the five trustees to manage the estate, and he and his brother William were appointed original trustees of the Lehigh University, in 1865, and St. Luke's Hospital, located at South Bethlehem. To this hospital he has recently added a men's ward at the cost of twenty-seven thousand dollars. He is and has been a member of the E. P. Wilbur Trust Company since its organization. He is a director of the Valley Coal and Coke Company, and owner of coal lands in West Virginia and Alabama. He is president of the Sayre Mining and Manufacturing Company in Alabama, president of the Little Warrior Coal and Coke Company in Alabama, and director of the Wilbur Coal and Coke Company of West Virginia, and of the Virginia Coal and Coke Company in Virginia. He built his present residence on Fountain Hill in 1858, and the library, which now contains 10,000 volumes, as added to it in 1899. He is a charter member of the Church of the Nativity, was one of the original vestrymen, and is now rector's warden.