George Thomas Robbins

January 30, 2021 / robbinsroots / Leave a comment

George Thomas Robbins was born in Decatur County, Indiana, to Jonathan and Margaret (Spilman) Robbins (my previous post featured his brother Theodore Irvin Robbins). He grew up among numerous Robbins and Spilman cousins in Decatur County. In fact, his aunt Sarah Spilman, was married to Jacob Robbins, and his first cousins in that family crossed the plains to Oregon in 1852. His younger sister Nancy Jane (Robbins) Meredith, would tell her children the story of the Robbinses leaving Indiana in 1852. As later recorded by her son James:

Mother [Nancy] had a cousin, the daughter of Jacob and Sarah Robbins, a few years older than my mother [Nancy Jane (Robbins) Gilliam]. They would play together very often, and for some years they kept up a correspondence between Indiana and Oregon. Mother told that she could remember the folks loading the great wagons. They baked a lot of bread and packed it away in boxes. They killed hogs and salted away the meat, they loaded a great variety of dried foods as well as household goods in the wagons. She said she and her cousin would help take bundles to the wagons for the others to pack away.

George himself would leave Decatur County and strike out west, but a couple decades later and he would only go as far as Iowa and Kansas, but in the latter state he would become a prominent community member.

George Thomas Robbins (courtesy of Joyce King Higginbotham)

In October 1864, late in the war and at the age of 22, George Robbins would enlist as a private into Company G of the 35^th Indiana Infantry as a “substitute.” That is, he was paid to substitute for a draftee who could afford to supply a replacement. The 35^th Indiana regiment was serving that autumn in the Nashville campaign – an ill-fated attempt by Confederate General John Hood to try to draw William Tecumseh Sherman and his army away from Georgia to come rescue Nashville. Sherman didn’t bite and Hood was defeated outside the city in December of 1864 and his army retreated and disintegrated. George’s service in the Indiana regiment would have seen some serious, but successful, fighting in Tennessee and Alabama. Later after the war ended the regiment was ordered to New Orleans and Texas, before returning to Indiana for discharge in September of 1865.

According to his obituary, George attended Hartsville College, a United Brethren school in Indiana. The college was established in 1847 by the citizens of Hartsville, which is located just to the west of Decatur County in Bartholomew County, but in 1850 turned the college over to the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. His connection to that denomination must have lasted his lifetime as his funeral was conducted at his local Brethren church in Kansas.

Compared to many people of the time, George married late. He was 33-years-old when he would marry the young widow Mary Elizabeth (Vanderbur) Huddleston. The Vanderburs were a large and prominent family in Decatur County and she was not the only member of the Vanderbur family to marry a Robbins: her cousin William Thomas Vanderbur was married to George’s cousin Jennie Robbins.

Robbins-Vanderbur relationships

At the time of their marriage, the couple were living in Lucas County, Iowa George was there as his oldest brother James H. Robbins had moved there with his family as early as 1867. Whether he moved with James or came to visit is not known but there he encountered another Decatur County acquaintance, Mary Vanderbur. Mary had been married to a younger man, John Huddleston, in the same county in 1873 but John died in Kansas in 1874 (he and Mary had no children), and Mary was back in Lucas County marrying George Robbins in 1875. George and Mary would be the parents of seven children.

In 1877 George, wife Mary, and their first child, Charles Leonidas Robbins, moved to the town of Russell situated almost in the center of Kansas in Russell County. Over the following years more children came along including Ethel Laverne (Bratt), Earl, Floyd Joseph, Olive (Treiber), Meredith, and Roy Stone Robbins.

In Russell county George Robbins worked as a teacher, a carpenter and a bookkeeper. He was a member of the local school board and he served as postmaster of Russell from about 1893 to 1897, during the administration of Grover Cleveland.

*Official Register of the United States Containing a List of the Officers and Employees of the Civil, Military, and Naval Service…*.(Vol. II, p. 119), 1 July 1887.

George Thomas Robbins died in Russell in 1913. Most of his children seemed to have moved away from Kansas with the exception of youngest son Roy. His widow Mary died in 1942 in Canton, Ohio, where daughter Olive Treiber was then living. Both George and Mary are buried in Russell, Kansas.

Obituaries of the time were typically effusive in their praise of prominent citizens, but even allowing for hyperbole, it is clear that George was a well-liked individual.

He was a man of first class habits, whose conduct and walk in life was not only a good example to his children but to the community as well. He built up a fine reputation for honesty and integrity and was most highly respected in the community. He leaves to the world a legacy in the way of a splendid family of sons and daughters which would well be a credit to any man. His cheery disposition and agreeable nature made a pleasant association and valued friend.

[Jacob Robbins-Absalom Robbins-George Robbins-Jonathan Robbins-George Thomas Robbins]

John V. Travis: (Briefly) A Civil War Soldier

May 4, 2018 / robbinsroots / Leave a comment

I don’t order Civil War pension records very often, as they are rather expensive. Once in a while though I splurge on a case file in hope that the record will provide new information, if not in specific genealogical data such as names and dates, but in social and economic history of the family involved. The most recent pension record I’ve received is that of John V. Travis. His mother, Docia (Robbins) Travis, applied for a pension after his brief service in the Union army. This pension file doesn’t include any new genealogical bombshells but does have some interesting facts not otherwise passed down in a family’s records. Here is a summary of the information contained, with some additions from other sources.

John V. Travis was the son of Absalom Travis and Docia F. Robbins, and Docia was a daughter of Marmaduke and Elizabeth (Parsley) Robbins. Docia was born in 1821 and married Absalom Travis in 1839 in Decatur County, Indiana. John Travis was the couple’s third child, born about 1845 though unfortunately the pension file did not provide an exact birthdate. Absalom Travis died 12 October 1853, leaving Docia a widow caring for six children ranging in age from 1 to 13.

According to the pension file, John enrolled as a private in company D of the 123^rd Regiment of Indiana Infantry Volunteers, on Sunday, December 20^th, 1863, to serve for three years or the duration of the war. It was probably not a happy day for his mother and it would only get worse quickly. John became ill and died on 23 January 1864, after only one month of military service. He was approximately 19 years of age.

There is an affidavit by his doctors E. B. Swain and M. G. Falconbury, in which they,

“…say that they attended on John V Travis late a Private in Co. “D” of the 123^rd Regt Ind Vols in or during his last illness and that Said John V Travis died on the 23^rd day of January 1864 near Greensburgh Indiana by reason of a disease called Cerebro Spinal Meningitis and that said disease was contracted or originated three days prior to the date of his death.”

John’s commanding officer, Capt. Angus McCoy also reported that John

“…was attended in his last illness by Civil Surgeons and Physicians And that there was no Regimental Surgeon yet appointed or on duty with Said Regiment at the time of the last illness and death of John V. Travis.”

On August 8, 1865, Docia filed a “Declaration for Mother’s Army Pension.” In that document she appoints Edwin White as her attorney, presents two witnesses to her signing the declaration with her mark “x”, Green B. Roszell and Calvin H. Paramore (the latter being married to her cousin Mary Ellen Robbins). They also state “…that said Docia F. Travis is poor, and has no income save what is contributed by friends, or earned by her own labor; and they believe her unable to earn her subsistence, by reason of her age and also having a child (daughter) to support.” The daughter is not named but was likely Nancy Ann Travis, then in her late teens. This statement also seems to support the idea that her youngest child, William Travis, who appeared in the 1860 census as a 7-year-old, was deceased.

Another affidavit was filed by her nephews George Harvey and William Riley Robbins, sons of her brother Jacob. They provided a little more information about her situation:

…that Said John V Travis did in his lifetime for a period of three or four years contributed money and other necessary articles Such as provisions to the regular support of his mother Docia F. Travis, and that Said John V Travis did not give her money and other articles as presents but that he worked for the Said G H Robbins at different times and that he the Said G H Robbins paid a part of his wages by the request of Said John V Travis to Said Docia F Travis, the same being for her regular support and that Said Docia Travis was wholly dependant upon her Said Son (John V Travis) for Support. And that Absalom Travis the husband of Docia Travis died about the year 1855. That he the Said Absalom Travis left to his Said widow Docia F Travis property, Real & Personal, worth the Sum of two hundred & fifty Dollars, all of which she has used to support herself and family and that she has no property of any value at this time with the exception of a cow and a little household furniture all not worth more than one hundred Dollars…

Docia Travis was approved for a pension, to receive $8 per month, commencing on 23 January 1864, the date of John’s death. Presumably she received retroactive payments from the date of death to the approval of the pension.

By about the same time she was being approved for the pension, Docia moved to Clay County, Illinois. She continued to collect her eight dollars each month until in 1872 she remarried, to William Nichelson. William seems to have died sometime in the late 1880’s and Docia re-applied for a pension based on John’s service, as she was once again without support. Her “Declaration for Dependent Mother’s Pension” was filed on 8 August 1890 with the support of her new attorney Thomas W. Kepley. As support several of her friends filed an affidavit stating “…that she has no property other than common necessary wearing apparel and bedding. That all the means of support she has is from her own labor which consists of doing a little light house work for others and nursing the sick which occupations she is not now able to perform only to a limited extent on account of Old age and failing health. That her annual income from all sources is not more than about Ten Dollars.”

She must have been relieved to once again be awarded a pension, this time receiving the increased amount of $12 per month, commencing in September of 1890.

As frequently happened with these pensions, the recipient was asked to provide additional or clarifying information, sometimes as the result of a routine audit. In Docia’s case apparently there was some concern about the spelling of her second husband’s name, causing her to file an affidavit at the local courthouse that “…states as follows that she has no education whatsoever and cannot tell what is the Correct way of spelling her late husbands name. She does not know whether it is spelled Nichelson or Nicholson, that the difference in spelling that name in her papers has been made by different officers who have done business for her. That she believes that the correct way is as it is spelled in her Original papers, Nichelson.”

We do not know when Docia died. Family records suggest around 1903. However a notation in the pension file indicates she was last paid in October of 1900 and had been “dropped because of failure to claim 3 yrs 3 mos.” Was she deceased by this time? or too infirm to collect her pension? The record is not clear.

There were no spectacular new finds in this pension file, but we did learn something about John Travis’ death, the physicians that attended him, the economic status of his widowed mother, and her education level. That information is not usually available in any other genealogical record available to us from this time period. I’ll write up summaries of other pension records and include the information in future posts.

(Jacob Robbins-William Robbins-Marmaduke Robbins-Docia (Robbins) Travis-John V. Travis)

Jacob Green Robbins: A Late Emigrant to Oregon

October 31, 2017 / robbinsroots / 1 Comment

In some earlier posts I shared some of the reminiscences of David Ransom Robbins, a grandson of Ransom Robbins, who was the subject of much of the family stories. David’s parents were Jacob Green and Jane (Force) Robbins and they are the subject of this post.

Born in Indiana in 1827, Jacob Green Robbins was the fourth child of Ransom and Rebecca (Green) Robbins. He was raised in Jennings County and married Jane Force, a native New Yorker, there in 1851. To this union were born twelve children.

Grand Review of Union Army (1865)

Jacob enlisted in the 82^nd Regiment of Indiana Infantry Volunteers on 9 August 1862in Indiana and served through the duration of the Civil War. The 82^nd was involved in the battles of Perryville, Stone’s River, Chickamauga, Atlanta, and was with Sherman when he marched across Georgia and up through the Carolinas to Confederate General Johnston’s surrender. This regiment, with Jacob, participated in the Grand Review of the Armies in Washington, D.C., where Jacob was discharged, honorably, on 9 June 1865. Like many soldiers, Jacob suffered from illness, including diarrhea, piles, and cataracts in the eyes, brought on by exposure to the elements and unclean water and food. His later application for a pension would describe these conditions.

Upon return from the war, Jacob, along with other members of the Robbins family, emigrated from Indiana to Minnesota. A friend of his, whom he had grown up with and served in the same infantry company with, owned land in Minnesota but decided to remain in Indiana and offered the Minnesota place to Jacob. Once the Robbins’ Indiana farm was sold, Jacob and Jane purchased the Minnesota land, and moved there to Scott County.

Jacob and Jane’s son David Ransom Robbins wrote about the family’s arrival in Minnesota:

Uncle Jim Robbins lived about four miles northwest of Waterville…we finally got to Uncle Jim’s. They knew that we was on our way, but did not know when we would arrive. Grandfather [Ransom Robbins] and Aunt Julia’s house was only a short distance from Uncle Jim’s, and they had gone to bed. Uncle Jim called them and they came over. My cousin Ransom was not married yet, and was at home. He was a volunteer soldier in the Fourth Minnesota Regiment and served till the war ended. You can imagine that it was quite late when we got to bed that night.

Initially the Robbins’s lived near Fish Lake. David Ransom Robbins described building their house there.

After father got the house logs made, he took one of the mares and snaked them out of the woods to where he wanted to build the house, and sometime in the last or first part of April of 1866 he had a house raising, and the neighbors came and put up the body of the house, and about that time Uncle Nelson Force (Mother’s brother) came. Then he, father, and Grandfather Robbins made rafters out of saplings by hewing them on one side, then put them up and nailed sheeting on them, which was one inch lumber. And then they put the roof on which was three foot clapboards they had riven out of oak timber. They also made all the joists out of small trees. When they got the floors laid and doors and windows in, and as the weather was quite warm by that time, we moved into our new house before the cracks between the logs were chinked and plastered.

Jacob Green & Jane (Force) Robbins

After living at Fish Lake for about six years, Jacob bought a farm a little to the southwest in Lexington Township of Le Sueur County, and that’s where he and Jane remained until 1911. In that year, at the ages of 83 and 74, Jacob and Jane moved to Oregon! Both family and newspaper articles state that it was in search of a “milder” climate that caused the couple to make the move. Certainly Cottage Grove, Oregon, is much, much milder than Cordova, Minnesota.

Cottage Grove Sentinel (24 October 1912)

The very next year, the Cottage Grove Sentinel spotlighted the elderly Robbins couple, one-year residents of their community, with a headline that stated “Mr. and Mrs. J. G. Robbins Sweethearts Still and Hale and Hearty at Advanced Ages of 85 and 76.” A couple of their many children lived nearby and helped take care of the couple in their last years. When they passed away, they did so within weeks of one another. Jacob Green Robbins died in March of 1918, while Jane passed away two months later, in May of 1918. Both Jacob and his wife Jane are buried in the Brumbaugh Cemetery outside Cottage Grove.

(Jacob Robbins-James Robbins-Ransom Robbins-Jacob Green Robbins)

Remembering War Dead

May 26, 2017 / robbinsroots / Leave a comment

On Memorial Day, Americans frequently visit cemeteries and place flags and flowers on the grave of anyone who has served in America’s armed forced. But Memorial Day is officially the day for remembering those who died while in military service. We have many, many relatives in the Robbins family who have served in the military, and we also have those who died while in service. An early post on this blog told the story of Jefferson Robbins and his lonely grave in southern Indiana. This post will discuss his uncle Harrison Robbins who is buried in a more prominent location.

Gravestone of Harrison Robbins

Harrison Robbins was born about 1820 in Henry County, Kentucky, and taken by his parents Micajah and Elizabeth Robbins north to Decatur County, Indiana, sometime in the early 1830s. Later as a young man he moved south to Breckinridge County, Kentucky, where other Robbins’ were moving from Indiana, and where in 1845 he was married to Eleanor Swink. (As an aside, in the future, various Swinks and Robbins would move to Colorado, settling in Otero County, where the small town of Swink exists to this day – but that’s a story for a future post). There seems to have been quite a bit of travel back and forth between Decatur County and Breckinridge County. We find many of our family living in one place one year, the other place a couple years later, then back to their original location several years after that. And in fact, by 1847, Harrison, Eleanor, and their first-born child Elizabeth, were in Decatur County.

Harrison was not young, about 41 years old, when he enlisted on 18 September 1861. He and Eleanor had six children by then: Elizabeth, Rachel, Ann, Henry C., Lafayette (“Lafe”), and Stephen Robbins. What made a man of his age, a husband, and a father, enlist in the Union Army? He must have been motivated by patriotism and devotion to the preservation of the Union. His enlistment came just two months after the first Battle of Bull Run, which the Union lost, and which demonstrated that the Union wasn’t going to be preserved without bloodshed. His political views might possibly be determined by the name of one of his sons, Henry Clay Robbins, as the noted political leader Henry Clay, by then deceased, was known as “the Great Compromiser,” who stood for the Union above all else.

Whatever the reason, after enlistment, Harrison was mustered into the 37^th Indiana Infantry at Lawrenceburg, Indiana. The 37^th was attached to the Army of the Ohio, and ordered to Kentucky in October of 1861. After that the regiment was involved in the invasion of Tennessee and the capture of Huntsville, Alabama. In June of 1862 Harrison was promoted to the rank of corporal and was then involved in the siege and capture of Nashville in the fall of 1862. In December, the Army of the Ohio, now under the command of William S. Rosecrans, moved southeast from Nashville and took position near Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

The Battle of Stones River opened on December 31, 1862. Both the Union and the Confederate commanders (Rosecrans and Bragg) planned attacks that day, but Bragg was quicker. The Union Army was hit hard and driven back, but not driven from the field. Over the next several days they fought off several Confederate attacks and in the end it was Bragg who led his Confederates back south. The battle was noted for having the highest percentage of casualties on both sides. Sadly, Harrison Robbins was one of those casualties.

Excerpt from George Puntenney’s “History of the Thirty-seventh regiment of Indiana infantry volunteers : its organization, campaigns, and battles–Sept., ’61-Oct., ’64”

The only thing we know specifically about his death is what his widow Eleanor reported in her pension application a few months later, that “….his death was caused by being shot through the bowels…” In 1864, the 111^th United States Colored Troops disinterred bodies from the Stones River and other battlefields, and reburied them in the newly established Stones River National Cemetery. Today that is where Harrison Robbins rests. I’ve visited that cemetery twice over the years and Harrison’s grave is a very easy one to find, just a few steps from the central flag pole.

Harrison’s children ranged in age from 3 to 15 years and Eleanor wasted no time in applying for a widow’s pension. It’s too bad that it’s from a such a record that we have this information, but Eleanor did list all of her children and their birth dates and places, a listing we can’t find for a lot of families of the same time period. She never remarried but the family seems to have split somewhat. In 1870 only some can be found in the U.S. census. Rachel and brother Lafayette, for example, are found living in the household of a C. and Rachel Kirby.

Over the years, the children separated even further. Daughter Elizabeth (Robbins) Murray ended up in Benton County, Indiana, with her family; son Henry C. Robbins lived in Kansas and Missouri before moving to Sheridan, Wyoming; Lafayette Robbins joined some of his Robbins and Swink cousins in Colorado, where he died in 1924. He had been married to Maleta Hubbard in 1911 in Breckinridge County, Kentucky – he returned to Kentucky from the west to marry into a family who already had several Robbins connections. Harrison’s widow Eleanor lived with her daughter Elizabeth Murray and died in 1883. It is not known if she died in Decatur or Benton County.

Stones River National Cemetery

Today Harrison Robbins’ grave is in a prominent national cemetery, as part of the Stones River National Battlefield. A long way from home, but not forgotten.

(Jacob Robbins-Absalom Robbins-Micajah Robbins-Harrison Robbins)

A Young Soldier Found in the “Dead Room”

March 13, 2017March 22, 2017 / robbinsroots / Leave a comment

One of my interests in family history research is bringing to light little known or totally unknown family members. A 20-year-old, who served a couple of months in the Civil War before dying of disease, without ever marrying or having children, is an example of one of our “forgotten” relatives.

We wouldn’t know much about the life and death of Jefferson Robbins, if he hadn’t died young during the Civil War, and if his mother hadn’t applied for a federal pension based upon his military service. That record provides a surprising amount of information about a young man in the Union Army dying of disease shortly after enlisting.

The son of Hiram and Catharine (Wise) Robbins, Jefferson was born in Harrison County in 1841. (Hiram had first married in Decatur County but after the death of his wife, moved to Harrison County where he remarried). Harrison County is a lovely, green, farming and wooded area, on the north bank of the Ohio River where the first state capital of Indiana, Corydon, was located. When the Civil War broke out, the 20-year-old Jefferson enlisted in nearby New Albany, Indiana, on 18 September 1861 and was sent across the Ohio to the military camps in Kentucky. Three months later he was dead.

Of the 600,000 casualties (north and south) during the war, two-thirds were caused by disease. Dysentery, typhoid fever, malaria, pneumonia, and small pox among others were the common killers of the day. Jefferson Robbins died of typhoid fever on 19 December 1861. Typhoid is an intestinal infection that is spread by ingesting food or water contaminated with the bacteria “Salmonella typhi” and caused huge epidemics in army camps. Symptoms included fever, headache, belly ache, red lesions, and either constipation or diarrhea. There was no effective treatment. Only in 1911 was a vaccination available and made mandatory for U.S. soldiers.

A neighbor back in Harrison County was visiting his son, also in the army and in the hospital in Louisville, and while there the father asked if any other members of his son’s company were in the hospital. He was told that Jefferson Robbins was there. He searched through the wards but could not find him. He was finally told by the hospital steward to check the “dead room.” There he found the body of Jefferson. On his own initiative he brought the body of the young soldier back across the river to his mother in Indiana.

Excerpt from Catharine Robbins Bishiop application for a pension based on her son Jefferson Robbins’ Civil War service

Jefferson’s death must have struck his mother Catharine very hard. Her husband Hiram Robbins had died in 1852, she was remarried to a Michael Bishop, who soon deserted her, leaving her in a limbo situation with five surviving children. So not only had she lost her oldest son, but Jefferson helped support his mother and was probably in the army for the $13 a month pay that privates received. We know that he supported his mother before his death because her pension application provides an economic history of her life in the years leading up to the Civil War. A neighbor wrote out an affidavit in which he stated “…the said Jefferson Robbins was a work hand on the farm of this affiant at the time of his enlistment in said service and had been for more than 2 years previous; that he used the profits of his labor economically and after took a portion of it in such articles as were necessary to [and] for the comfort and support of his mother, Catharine Robbins; that he manifested great anxiety as to the welfare and comfort of his mother…”

In her pension application Catharine stated “…that the said soldier wrote her one or two letters after his enlistment but they have been destroyed, and cannot be furnished; that he died before he was paid for any service as a soldier and she therefore received no money from him while he was in the service, and cannot therefore furnish any letters sent her from the army by her said son; that she has not owned any property of any kind whatever since the death of her said husband, save and except about $200 of personal effects as household goods.” Catharine received her pension, though not without a criminal investigation into her original attorney’s behavior of keeping some of the money she was owed, but that’s another story.

My sister and I visited Jefferson’s grave in Indiana in 2015. It is located in a quiet corner of a quiet county. You drive southeast out of the small farming community of New Middleton and then off on a long gravel road through the woods until you reach the small secluded cemetery. It is cared for and it didn’t take long to find Jefferson’s grave. Standing in front of it, and remembering the story of how he came to be here, I couldn’t help but wonder if we weren’t some of the first people to visit his grave since his family laid him to rest in 1862?

(Family line: Jacob Robbins-Absalom Robbins-Micajah Robbins-Hiram Robbins-Jefferson Robbins)

Robbins Roots

Sharing generations of stories…

Civil War