Dow and George, the two youngest sons of William Franklin Robbins, worked and lived near each other for much of their lives, and will be discussed together in this post.  Both of the boys came across the Oregon Trail at a very young age.

Benjamin Dow Robbins was born in 1843 in Decatur County, Indiana, the fourth child, but third son of William F. and Melvina (Myers) Robbins.  His older siblings were Nat, Margaret, and Gilman.  Younger siblings were Nancy Adeline and Sarah Jane, and then George Henry, who was born in 1849 also in Decatur County.  Melissa Robbins came along in 1851 just months before the family crossed the continent, and once in Oregon, Artemissa Robbins was born in 1855.

Dow was about 11 years of age when the family moved to Oregon, while George was about 3 years old.  Neither boy appears in family reminiscences of crossing the plains.  Mentions of “Dow” in their father’s Oregon Trail letter refer to William’s brother, John Dow Robbins, not his young son.  It must have been an overwhelming experience, moving from comfortable farms and surrounded by family in Decatur County, to creaking along in wagons across arid plains, with the terror of sudden death at the hand of disease or Indians always ever present in their minds.  Near the end of their journey Dow and George lost two of their siblings from disease.  George may have been three years old at the time of the trip, but as an elderly man he regaled my mother with stories about the trek (and being a child it never occurred to her to take notes!).

In the 1850s William Robbins and his family lived along the Clackamas/Washington county line, near what is today Tualatin.  Sadly William was killed in a hunting accident in 1856, and in 1859, the widow Melvina married Robert Lavery.  Even though the children eventually went their separates ways in adulthood they all seemed to have a close connection, as census records and group photos demonstrate.

Dow Robbins

Dow Robbins has only been found in a few of the federal censuses.  Williams’ family is not found in the 1850 census, where the family should have been living in Decatur County, Indiana.  In 1860 Dow is living with his sister Margaret and her husband Isaac Ball, while ten years later in 1870 he is listed in the household of his oldest brother Nat, mother Melvina, full siblings George and Artemissa, and his half-sister Olive (Melvina’s daughter with her second husband).

We know that he was in eastern Oregon (Grant county) by 1879 because he appears in the local newspaper as having drawn jury duty.  Between 1883 and 1890 Dow purchased many acres of ranch land in Grant county between the small settlement of Long Creek and the community of Hamilton, which was the home of his uncle John H. Hamilton.  Some of the land was purchased directly from Hamilton.

In 1903, at the age of 59, Dow was married to Anna Maria Born, the daughter of a Prussian miner and farmer, and the couple had three children, Otis, Aura, and Erma, all born in Grant county.  I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Otis and Aura back in the 1980s.  They were able to provide some of the information about the family included in this post.  Not finding Dow in the 1900 census, he appears finally in 1910 with his wife and children, with his brother George Robbins living them.  About that same year Dow sold his ranch and became a partner in a livery stable in Long Creek, possibly with his brother George.  Soon after Dow became ill, sold out his share of the livery, and moved in with his in-laws near the little town of Fox (Fox is miniscule and according to his death certificate he lived in Trester, which is a few miles west, and mainly a wide spot on the road).  Dow died in 1916 of liver cancer, leaving his wife of thirteen years and three young children.  He is buried in the Hamilton cemetery.

George Robbins

It’s unfortunate that we don’t have more information about the interesting life of George Henry Robbins, the future elderly raconteur and entertainer of younger generations.

He first appears in the 1860 census, where he is listed with his mother Melvina, sisters Adeline, Melissa, and Artemissa, half-sister Olive Lavery, stepfather Robert Lavery, and step-siblings James, Mary, John, Joseph, and Rachel Lavery.  In 1870, when he was 21 years old, he appears in the household of Jesse Boone as a laborer.  Boone was responsible for “Boone’s Ferry” across the Willamette River, now a prominent road in the community of Wilsonville.  George has not been found in the 1880 census.

His sister Artemissa, her husband Charles Thompson, and sister Melissa, with husband Jacob Kauffman, and their families, had moved to southeastern Washington about 1880, settling in the community of Waitsburg.  According to family stories, George also moved to Washington at this time, possibly working as a farm laborer or running a livery stable.  Artemissa soon returned to the Willamette Valley, while Melissa moved north to Ritzville, but by 1900 George was still in the general area working as a farm laborer.  He was also reportedly herding sheep in central Oregon, around the now-ghost town of Shaniko.  It was there that he supposedly carved a small smiling figure in a casket which has been passed down in my family.

By 1910, George Robbins was living with his brother Dow and his family in the small community of Long Creek, where at age 60 he did “odd jobs.”  When Dow sold out the livery stable, George reportedly took over a homestead near Hamilton and went to work for his neighbor Curtis Jackson.

After Dow’s death in 1916, George returned to the Willamette Valley where in 1920 he was living with his sister Nancy Adeline Ball in Tigard, Oregon, where, at age 70, he is listed as a “laborer farm helper.”  The last census he appeared in was 1930 where he was staying with his sister Artemissa Thompson, along with her sons Roy and Clarence.  A photo exists from 1928 which shows George Robbins along with his siblings with his siblings Artemissa and Adeline, until he finally passed away in 1940 at the age of 90.  He is buried in the Winona Cemetery in Tualatin.

At George Robbins’ death there was one remaining survivor of the 1852 wagon train:  sister Melissa (Robbins) Kauffman.  More about her in a future post.

(Jacob Robbins-William Robbins/Absalom Robbins-Nathaniel Robbins/Nancy Robbins-William Franklin Robbins-Benjamin Dow Robbins & George Henry Robbins)

 

I was finishing up some deed research in the Grant County, Oregon, courthouse one day, tired from handling the heavy deed record books, when I decided to take a look at a few miscellaneous record books the clerk had on a small dusty bookcase.  One of those was a small ledger titled Register of Married Womens Personal Property Book “A”.  Hmmm – looked interesting.  Leafing through the book I found that, of the few pages of entries, one page actually listed a Robbins family member:  Nancy C. Hinton.

Prior to 1839 in the United States, a woman’s property, her wages, her ability to enter into contracts, and more, was considered to be subsumed under her husband’s control.  This system came down to us through British common law.  Wikipedia quotes an Illinois Supreme court decision which stated: “It is simply impossible that a married woman should be able to control and enjoy her property as if she were sole, without practically leaving her at liberty to annul the marriage.”

As the nineteenth-century progressed this idea came under increased scrutiny and was considered, rightly, oppressive to women.  In 1839, Mississippi, not considered particularly progressive today, was the first state then to allow women to own property.  Other states followed suit and the western states, just as later they were among the first to give women the right to vote, began to pass laws allowing women to own property in their own right.

In Oregon there was a debate during the 1857 Constitutional Convention as to whether a married woman’s property act should be among its provisions.  Matthew Deady, later a conservative federal judge, was against the idea.  He said the act made “two persons of the husband and wife,” and caused “family alienation.”  Delazon Smith retorted that it was not ownership of property that led to divorce, it “was the want of affection—the want of marriage of the heart.”  The best response was Frederick Waymire who said “If we should legislate for any class it should be for the women of this [Oregon] country.  They worked harder than anybody else in it.”  The upshot was that the provision protecting women’s property was included in the constitution.

Unfortunately, it took a while, and a number of court cases, for the intent of the provision to become permanent in law.  In fact, in 1866, the legislature passed a new law that said women could only register personal property, not real estate.  A woman was encouraged to register her personal property and if she didn’t, in the event of a dispute, the property would be considered her husbands.

Which leads us to Nancy Hinton’s registration of her personal property in 1895.  Why it took her 22 years after her marriage to register her property is unknown, but on 16 April 1895 she appeared before M. M. Brierly, Justice of the Peace in Grant County, and listed horses and cattle that she owned prior to her marriage to her husband John J. Hinton.

Further she made the following statement:

I Nancy C. Hinton being duly sworn, depose and say, that the foregoing list of personal property is a true list and description of the cattle and horses owned by me

That the cattle therein described were owned by me prior to and at the time of my marriage with J J Hinton

That the horses therein described were acquired by purchase of A. C. Frink and that I am now the owner of all of the above described personal property.

Nancy was the daughter of John H. and Mary Jane (Robbins) Hamilton, pioneers of Grant County, and a granddaughter of Nathaniel and Nancy Robbins.  Since Nathaniel served on Oregon’s Constitutional Convention, one might ask what his view was on the question of women’s ownership of property.  Would he have supported his granddaughter’s property rights or not?  We have no way of knowing today for sure, but it might be noted that Nathaniel was a Democrat and a probable supporter of fellow southern-leaning Democrat Matthew Deady – the opponent of women’s property rights.

Thus, a little-known record source, while not answering any particular genealogical question, does provide a look into the property owned and registered by a frontier woman in the 19^th century.

This post relied upon an article entitled “Late Nineteenth Century Married Women ‘ s Property Law: Reception of the Early Married Women ‘s Property Acts by Courts and Legislatures” by Richard H. Chused, which appeared in The American Journal of Legal History 29 (1), 1985.

(Jacob Robbins-William Robbins/Absalom Robbins-Nathaniel Robbins/Nancy Robbins-Mary Jane (Robbins) Hamilton-Nancy Catherine (Hamilton) Hinton)