Wasco County, Oregon

According to a family history written by his niece, 19-year-old James Anderson Robbins met his future wife Minerva Elizabeth Hamilton at a Methodist camp meeting in Decatur County, Indiana. Camp meetings, which were as much social as religious gatherings, were attended by hundreds of people from all around. Both the Robbins and Hamilton families were prominent in the county so it may be that James and Minerva were aware of each other before the recording meeting, but Kate (Sharp) Jones wrote down what Minerva told her in later years:

He was riding around on a big grey horse with a watermelon under his arm. Riding up to a table set underneath the sycamore trees he laid the melon on it and proceeded to carve it. ‘Now all you girls,’ he said, ‘range yourselves around this table and you will get a slice of the best watermelon raised this year in Decatur Co. I know because I raised it myself. And remember the prettiest girl gets the biggest slice of melon.’ I knew I wasn’t the prettiest girl there, but I did get the biggest slice of that melon. From that day on I saw Jim Robbins most every Sunday afternoon.

Minerva and James Robbins, with daughter

The two were married in 1845 in Decatur County and before leaving for Oregon in the fall of 1851 they were the parents of three children, Sarah Catherine (“Cassie”), Nancy Jane, and Alfred Newland Robbins, though Alfred died in infancy before the family left Indiana. Interestingly a grandson of James was named Alfred Newlin Robbins so it’s possible that the middle name of “Newland” for the first Alfred has been passed down incorrectly in the family. Minerva’s brother John Henry Hamilton was married to James’ sister Mary Jane Robbins in 1848. Both Minerva and John were children of James and Judy (Owen) Hamilton of Decatur County.

One of the few mentions of Indians during the family’s Oregon Trail trip involved daughter Nancy Jane. A Wasco County, Oregon, historian later told this story about the event:

Mrs. Murray [Nancy Jane Robbins] remembers, too, that there were many Indians always about and that one of the natives was determined to buy her. He offered her father [James Robbins] six ponies for her and followed the train of emigrants for a half day pressing the purchase. Finally her father seized a long whip and whipped the Indian so severely that he went away. Her grandfather, an old gray haired man [Nathaniel Robbins], came and said to her father: “Why did you do that? Now they will come tonight and massacre us all.” The Indians did come that night in war trappings, but the party was able to pacify them with gifts from their supplies, so that no trouble was experienced.

Kate (Sharp) Jones also told the story that when the Robbinses were trying to ford the South Platte River, in today’s Nebraska, James and his brother William along with father Nathaniel, scouted for a safe place to cross. The river was not deep but the river bottom hid quicksand that could easily trap a wagon. The cattle had to be whipped and goaded to cross and James’ team tried to turn around in mid-stream but he was finally able to get them across.

James and Minerva and their two children survived the journey, unlike several of his siblings and other relatives. The little family settled on a donation land claim in western Clackamas County in 1853, their land, nearly 328 acres, laying on the south side of today’s Homesteader Road and east of Stafford Road. There they lived almost up to 1870 and where several more children were born: Judith Amanda, Ellen, Nathaniel James (“Bud”), and Minerva Elizabeth (“Minnie”).

By 1870 the family was living further west in Yamhill County, but they didn’t stay there long because by 1872 they were already well established in The Dalles, the county seat of Wasco County, in north-central Oregon along the Columbia River. Why did they move from the verdant green of the Willamette Valley to the hot arid country of Wasco County? It’s not for the reasons that other family members moved east, hopes of better land, the chance to ranch or to mine for gold. This family lived in town, where James is first listed in a county payment warrant from January of 1872 where he was paid $2 for jury service.

The Dalles (Oregon) in 1884

A mixture of sources (family, county, and newspaper) indicate that James Robbins was elected as a Democrat to the office of county coroner in 1876 and 1880 and he reportedly established and ran the hospital in The Dalles. Wasco County warrant books list a wide variety of expenses for which James was paid, including: jury service, physician services, providing extra clothing to a pauper, serving as “judge of elections,” various “hospital purposes,” witness at a coroner’s inquest, and in 1874 he was paid $6 for digging a grave.

As coroner, James Robbins had some interesting duties. The local newspaper reported in February of 1884 that “Coroner Robbins received a postal yesterday from Hood River, dated the 21st. An Indian found a dead man hanging to a tree about 3 miles from that place. The coroner thinks the body is that of Henry Hoek, who has been missing for some time.” There was no report as to cause of death.

Despite being a physician, James found that he couldn’t keep his close family members from dying of disease, much as his father, a country physician, couldn’t on the Oregon Trail. In 1873, James and Minerva’s 16-year-old daughter Ellen died of “congestive fever.” The local newspaper reported that she was “a very intelligent young lady and beloved by all who knew her.”

JA Robbins funeral

Dr. James Anderson Robbins died on Monday, 15 November 1886, at his home in The Dalles. He had apparently been in poor health for a couple of years. He was 60-years-old and the funeral was held at the family home two days later. Sadly, while it is believed James was buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in The Dalles, no marker or other records survive which corroborates that.

Minerva Robbins continued to live in The Dalles, where in the 1897 city directory she was listed as a widow and milliner, and then later went to live with her daughter Minnie (Robbins) Whitby in La Grande, in northeastern Oregon. She would frequently visit other family members in the Willamette Valley where they would all reminisce about their previous life in Decatur County, Indiana, and their trek across the Oregon Trail in 1852. At such gatherings niece Kate (Sharp) Jones recorded the stories. Minerva outlived her husband by many years, passing away in 1920 at the age of 97. She too is said to be buried, unmarked, in The Dalles Pioneer Cemetery.

(Jacob Robbins-William Robbins/Absalom Robbins-Nathaniel Robbins/Nancy Robbins-James Anderson Robbins)

Among our cousins was a highly respected police chief in the eastern Oregon city of The Dalles. The subject of numerous newspaper articles about his exploits, including that of his marshal’s start stopping a bullet, Frank Heater is a family member we should know and honor.

The Dalles (Oregon) in 1884

Frank Heater was born in 1875 to Lorenzo Peter (“Pete”) and Judith Amanda (Robbins) Heater. His mother was born shortly after the family arrived in Oregon, and after marrying Pete Heater the couple moved to eastern Oregon, settling in The Dalles along the Columbia River.

As a boy, Frank herded the neighborhood cows to grass, then back home again in the evening. He earned 50¢ a month from each cow owner. He worked as a cowpuncher, a sheepherder, and a “buckeroo.” By 1910, he as operating a saloon with Frank Brown at 106 First in The Dalles. They had sawdust floors to catch the blood and falling bodies from the fights that broke out.

Chief of Police Frank Heater

On July 1, 1918, Frank Heater joined The Dalles city police force. The following year, after the city marshal had been killed by bank robbers, Frank assumed the position, usually referred to as “chief of police”, and held it until his retirement in 1946. He was highly regarded in The Dalles.

One of the more spectacular episodes of The Dalles history that Frank Heater participated in was the Chinese Tong War of 1921. The fight began when one group of Chinese heard that gunmen from Portland were coming to kidnap the leaders of their tong.

About 11 p.m., October 20, 1921, two railroad policemen stopped to interrogate one of the Chinese lookouts, who mistook the white men for the hired gunmen expected from Portland.

Reinforcements quickly came to the guard’s aid, and the railroad police, now joined by city officers, retreated along 1st street, between Court and Union, under a fusillade of fire. About this time Heater, who had been routed out of bed, arrived on the scene.

As Heater hurried along Court street toward the railroad tracks, a Chinese with gun in hand ran out of the alley, then ducked back in, firing at Heater as the marshal gave chase, shooting the latter in the chest. Another Oriental opened fire behind Heater and shot the officer in the left leg. A third shadowy figure moved and Heater shot him in the hip.

By this time all hell had broken loose and slugs from Lugers, revolvers and shotguns were peppering the fronts of the old McCoy garage, Williams’ second hand store at 206 Court Street and the old Baldwin saloon. A general alarm had been sounded on the fire bell and a large crowd of heavily armed white men appeared on the scene, but were later dispersed.

Not until cooler heads among the tong men realized the mistake being made did the firing cease. By that time Heater, a Chinese man and Robert Saunders, then a high school senior, had all been shot and rushed to the local hospital.

It turned out that Frank Heater had been shot twice, once in the leg and once in the chest. The bullet to the chest was stopped by his marshal’s star.

A bullet did not literally ‘lodge over his heart.’ Fired from a gun at close range the pellet struck the center of his metal star and would have gone through but for the fact its nose mushroomed and the metal of the star crumpled up around it. The point of the bullet went through the chest wall, just entering the cavity. Another inch now and this story wouldn’t be written today.

‘I knew I had been shot,’ Heater reminisced recently at police headquarters. ‘From the way the bullet walloped me I thought it was pretty bad and that I was done for. I don’t know when I was shot in the leg. I never felt that at all until later. There was too much excitement and shooting going on to notice it when it happened.

Heater’s granddaughter, in a biography for the Oregon State Archives, states that the damaged marshal’s star was given to The Dalles Police Department in 1966 by her mother, Charlotte (Heater) Proudfoot.

Another newspaper story, this one from 1933, reported “A bullet wound in his right hand, Fred Jackson, transient, was taken to The Dalles hospital this morning after attempting to flee from Police Chief Frank Heater on a downtown street. Heater shot Jackson when the latter failed to heed the officers warning to stop, after the itinerant had been discovered in possession of stolen property.”

The following year when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt motored by car (by her own hand) through The Dalles, Chief Heater offered her an escort through the city, which Mrs. Roosevelt refused.

City of The Dalles Police Department (Chief Heater sitting, far right) in an undated newspaper clipping

In an undated news article entitled “Jest-a-Minute” by “K.W.” the author writes:

“And why don’t we tell people oftener how much we think of them, and how much they have meant in our lives? I think today, I’ll throw a bouquet, in the direction of…

…Frank Heater—The best gosh darned chief of police this community ever had, who maintained law and order when everyone else thought The Dalles had to be part of the accent on the WILD West, and who still bears bullet scars to prove that he was afraid of nothing. Maybe he did always call me “Benny,” which never was my name. I always felt my family was safe, in the old days, with him on the job.

(Jacob Robbins-William Robbins/Absalom Robbins-Nathaniel/Nancy Robbins-James Anderson Robbins-Judith Amanda (Robbins) Heater-Frank Heater)

Robbins Roots

Sharing generations of stories…

James Anderson Robbins: Doctor and Coroner

Frank Heater: Police Chief