There have been many years of Robbins and allied family reunions in Oregon.  Originally they were large reunions, with the original Oregon Trail pioneers in attendance, but as families grew and married into other families and moved away from the home place, over time the reunions sometimes fractured into separate parts or died way altogether.

While most families hold reunions at some point, the Oregon reunions might have originally been driven by the shared experience of coming across the Oregon Trail and an early organization that helped bring pioneers together.

The Oregon Pioneer Association was established in 1867, with one of the leading founders being William Jackson Herren, son of Theodoshia (Robbins) Herren.  He was elected president of the organization in 1877, the same year he returned to Decatur County, Indiana, to visit his Robbins cousins that he hadn’t seen in decades.

The Association was made up of members who had come to Oregon prior to January 1, 1854, and each year they held meetings of members, many of whom were members of the Robbins and Herren families.  As the original pioneers died out, the organization dwindled, eventually being subsumed into the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers.  The Oregon Pioneer Associations’ annually published Transactions listed those members and other pioneers who had passed away over the years.

By the time the pioneer group was dwindling away around the turn of the last century, family reunions started being held.  Original pioneers were dying off, families were spreading out, many moving off the farm to look for jobs in urban areas both near and far.  For the Robbins family, 1922 was the banner year, with large reunions in Decatur County, Indiana, and in Oregon.  As families grew and locations changed, the various reunion groups separated, then rejoined, then died away, only to be replaced by something new.

I have collected articles over the years about some of these reunions and I include a few of them here.

I started attending Robbins reunions in 1977, and they continued on until the early 2000s before petering out.  In those years the reunions were held in Camas, Washington; Champoeg State Park; Willamette Mission State Park; and finally Silver Falls State Park.  The 2023 Robbins Reunion is being held at Feyrer Park in Molalla, a long-time location of reunions of the Jacob Robbins family.  For more information on the upcoming reunion click on the 2023 Oregon Robbins Reunion above.