James Boardman ROBINSON

                                                                      JESSE HENDRIX ROBINSON

From Charlene Conklin, wife of Dwight E. Conklin grandson of Jesse Hendrix Robinson, we have the following:  Robert and Frances (Little) Fergusons grandchild, Jesse Hendrix Robinson, was born September 13, 1851 in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.  Jesse was the first born of their daughter, Sarah and her husband, James Boardman Robinson.  Paternal grandparents were David and Mary (Boardman) Robinson.

Later when Jesse was four and his brother Robert F. was two, his parents moved west to a farm in Henry Co. Iowa, near New London where nine more Ferguson-Robinson grandchildren would be born. When Jesse was eleven, the family left the farm.  His father, James B. age 34 father of six children under 11 and a seventh to be born the following Spring, answered Iowas call to Save the Union on August 7, 1862 at New London for three years and was mustered into the 25th Regiment Iowa Infantry Company K at Mt. Pleasant on September 27.  His mother, Sarah F., bought in her own name a smaller acreage on the edge of the county seat, Mt. Pleasant

Jesse became the man of the house.  In 1931 he related some of those experiences to his granddaughter, Cletis Conklin.  An essay she wrote for freshman English was printed in the school section of the Griswold American.
Friday and Thirteen
Many, many people are afraid of Friday and  the number thirteen.  O course, there in nothing true about it.
The thing that makes me sure of it is a story that my Grandfather tells about himself.  My Grandfathers name is Jesse Robinson.  His name contains thirteen letters.  He was born on September the thirteenth, in 1851.
Grandpas father enlisted in the Civil War and left Grandpas mother home with seven children, Grandpa being one of them.  The farm was more than they could manage so Grandpas mother bought a small acreage at the edge of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.
The acreage was sowed with parsnips.  It is a superstition that parsnips growing the second year are poison, but Great Grandmother and her family lived on them and thrived.  They were having a hard time as Great Grandfather was away at war.
This acreage contained thirteen acres of ground.  On this thirteen acres there was an old-fashioned open or windlass well.  When Grandpa was thirteen years old, he went to the well to get a drink for his brother, Robert.  Losing his balance, he fell in.  There was enough water in the well that he would have drowned if he hadnt hung on to a rock on the side of the well.  His mother let a rope down to him and helped him out.
On a Friday in the year of 1873 Grandpa married Amy Cummings.  At the time of his marriage there were thirteen in his family including his father and mother.
Grandpa is past eighty years old now and says he feels that the number thirteen and the day Friday have been a lucky number and a lucky day in his life.   Cletis Conklin.

In May, 1863 James B. was reported as absent with leave from his unit at Youngs Point.  It can be presumed that he was able to go home to see the family and to meet his fifth son.  Upon rejoining his regiment, Robinson participated in the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi under Major General U.S. Grant.  The name James B. Robinson is on a monument in that national military park.

Much of the time Robinson was a nurse in the regimental hospitals.  His own hospitalization kept him from continuing with his unit and making the March to the Sea led by General William T. Sherman.  From December 2, 1864 to April, 1865 J.B. was a patient at the military hospital at Keokuk, 50 miles south of Mt. Pleasant at the tip of Iowa on the Mississippi River.  Jesse and the rest of his family would have surely been able to visit.  He was discharged without rejoining his unit, which participated in the Grand Review in Washington, D.C. and was mustered out on June 6, 1865. He returned to his family and they to their farm near New London where two more girls were born.

Prior to the next childs birth they moved on west, but in Henry County Jesses father has been memorialized.  A grateful citizenry had the names of all the men from their county who served in the Civil War engraved on two bronze plaques, 15 feet wide and 5 feet high.  On the walls of the corridor just
inside the main entrance of the Court House in Mt. Pleasant is the name James B. Robinson.

They were living in Montgomery Co., Iowa near Red Oak by November 5, 1872, the birth date of Jesses fourth sister.  They had moved 200 miles straight west across the state following the route made by the Latter-day Saints upon their leaving Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846.  The 1880 census shows the Robinsons living in the next county north, Cass, in Pleasant Twp. where James B.s brother David had been one of the earliest settlers, arriving in 1856.

Four of James B. and Sarah F.s children were not enumerated in the household at that time.  David having left home on horseback in 1876 at age 16 was in Los Angeles driving horse-drawn streetcars.  Charlie left in January of 1879 and was working in Oregon where his sister Mary was teaching.  Robert, married in 1877, was living near Red Oak.

Jesse had gone on to Nebraska, but had returned to Pleasant Twp. where he met Amy Cummings.  They were married on September 19, 1873 in Lewis, the county seat.  This was just east of the point at which the Oregon and Mormon trails converged.  She was born May 11 1857 in Rock Grove Twp., Floyd Co., Iowa near Nora Springs, the daughter of Samuel Andrew and Martha (Caton) Cummings.

Samuel Cummings was a native of Maine and family legend has it that he was a cousin of Hannibal Hamlin, vice-president during Lincolns first term.  Martha Caton was from New York State.  Her Fathers brother was the first attorney to practice law in the village of Chicago.  The Samuel Cummings family had followed the building of the Transcontinental railroad and operated a tent store for the workers.  They were present at the driving of the Golden Spike at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869.  Amy is thought by family members to be the girl standing in the foreground of the famous photograph of the event that hangs in the State Capitol at Sacramento.

Amys mother died in childbirth on November 1, 1870.  The stillborn child was buried in the mothers arms in one of the oldest cemeteries in the area, Mewhirter, which lies in Waveland Twp. just over the Cass-Pottawattamie Co. line.

The first three years of marriage Jesse and Amy lived back in Henry Co.  Jessie Alphares was born there June 15, 1874.  The other 8 children were born on the farm in Pleasant Twp. Cass Co.  They are: Lillian Amy b. Nov. 21, 1877;Theodore Marion  b. Sep. 3, 1879; Charles Edwin b. Dec. 6, 1881; James Andrew b. Sep. 23 1885; George Walter b. Nov. 6, 1887; Leslie Warren b. June 30 1890; Luella Mae b. July 6, 1894 and Sarah Pearl b. Aug. 30, 1897.

Four of the seven children who grew to maturity were addressed by their middle names: Jessie was Al; George was Walt; Sarah was Pearl and Luella was Mae.  the latter related that her big brothers started calling their baby sister Lou, but their mother said, I already have had six boys.  Ill not have her called Lou.  Shell be Mae.  Father Jesse had dropped his middle name after a crime was committed by the family friend for whom he had been named.

In 1879 the land Amys father, Samuel Cummings, farmed (four and three quarters miles west and 4 miles north of Jesses place) was sold.  His corn field was plotted for the new town of Griswold and the first house was built in November.

Jesses father, James B., boarded a train on April 9, 1883 in nearby Elliott, Iowa, destination Oregon for a reunion with Charley and Mary, then on to Washington Territory.  The journey to San Francisco was over tracks that Jesses wife Amy as a child had seen built.

The journal J.B. kept describes a sunset on the ocean aboard the Queen of the Pacific bound for Portland; a long walk across three bridges and down to the falls of the river on the north side. . . in all its grandeur (Spokane Falls).  He climbed a high mountain in the evening to ask God to bless my family and especially my daughter that I parted from this morning.  Each Sunday he commented on the Church he had attended and the sermon.  Nonetheless, on the return trip through San Francisco, an expenditure was noted, but first prefaced, Water so bad I can not drink it. . .Wine25 cents.

Jesses father arrived back in Elliott on June 29.  That year he, Sarah F., and all their family in Iowa, except those of their two married sons, Jesse and Robert, moved on west to eastern Washington Territory.  They took up farming and it was there that Sarah Ferguson Robinson died, April 24, 1894.

Jesse visited the family in Lincoln Co., then the state of Washington in 1889.  There were occasional visits back.  In Round Robin letters which Jesse started in 1937, the year before he died, Frances wrote, In 1898 Father and I visited Jesse and Robert in their homes in Iowa.  Sister Jennie wrote, I know why our Father came to Washington.  His health was poor and this climate helped him here.

The cousins knew each other only through letters and post cards.  In 1911 Essie I. Franklin (daughter of Sarah Jane Robinson), wrote Mae (Jesses daughter) from Spokane: A week ago this evening I was over to hear President Taft speak...I sat about thirty feet from him and enjoyed his speech very much.

Two of Jesses own children, Al and Lillie, moved West.  In 1901 the tragic word came from Denver that 22 year old Lillian, working in an office in Denver, came back from lunch, hung up her hat, and  dropped dead.

Seven year old sister Maes memory was of hearing the chapel bell tolling in Lowman Cemetery as the funeral procession made its way the mile and a quarter west and the mile south from their home.  Lilly was laid to rest in the family plot beside her brothers, 10 month old Theodore and 3 1/2 month old Charles.  Her epitaph lovingly reads:

                           A precious one from us has gone
                            A voice we loved is silent
                            A place is vacant in our home
                            Which never can be filled.

Jesse and Amys oldest son, Al, had married Harriet Robertson, b. March 18 1880, in  Atlantic, the Cass County seat, on November 18, 1896.  They lived on the farm next to his parents.  Their two children, Vernon born three days after his Aunt Pearl and Adelbert, five years later, were more like brothers than nephews to their aunts.  But they, too, moved on West and Al was raising sugar beets near Brush, Colorado when Laura Bernice, was born on April 7, 1904.   This proved to be a difficult year at the one-room school which Mae and Pearl attended.  The school, which the older children had attended and where Jesse was a director, had closed.

In 1979 the following was reprinted in the 75-Year Ago items of the GRISWOLD AMERICAN: June 8, 1904.  Nearly every pupil of Wax School during the past six months has had mumps, scarlet fever, chicken pox or measles.  Mae was absent much of fifth grade with what was diagnosed as rheumatic fever.

Wax was on Seven Mile Creek, 1 mile east of the Robinson home.  In addition to the school were the Evangelical Church where the Robinsons were members,  a store, a house and a post office.

September 18, 1909 Jim married Lela May Houghman.  They lived near Red Oak and later in Des Moines where he worked at Drake University.  In 1941 they moved to Los Angeles to work in a defense plant.  He died of a heart attack the following year.

Walt had married Myrle Frances Petty on February 27, 1908. They lived on a farm to the east in Edna Township near Cumberland and he was a rural mail carrier.

Jesse and Amy made the decision to move to Griswold.  Al came home for his parents sale and left with the premonition that he would never see them again.  On January 25, 1909 moving his family, livestock and possessions by rail from Colorado to Oklahoma to seek a drier climate for his wifes health, Al, Jesse and Amys first child, was killed in Phillipsburg, Kansas in a rail car switching accident.  He was buried in Lowman Cemetery.  His family returned to Colorado.

In November, 1909 Jesse purchased a cream station and poultry business in Griswold.  When the buyers came from Omaha to pick up the cream, they brought ice cream packed in  dry ice.  Jesse would hang a sign in his window and people passing by knew layered blocks of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla were available.

The spring of 1911 a sale bill announced: As I am going to Florida I will sell at my home in the N.E. part of Griswold, on  Saturday, July 1st...3 head of Good Horses...Charter  Oak wagon...walking plow...1 1/2 acres extra good potatoes..cook stove...3 bedsteads...2 good mattresses...Will also offer for sale the building on Main Street now occupied by the Griswold Produce Company.
Mrs. JESSE ROBINSON.  A July 5th item in the paper read: The sale of Mrs. Jesse Robinson, on the east side, was fairly well attended and the property offered for the sale brought fairly good prices.  The sun was too hot for the people to stand around in it.  Mrs. Jesse Robinson and daughters departed Wednesday morning for their future home in Florida.  These are excellent people and they leave a host of friends behind who wish them well in their new home.

Land promotions were numerous the early years of the century.  Jesse and a friend had left in March with high hopes.  Amy and the girls waited until school was out; Mae spent her
17th birthday riding a train through Tennessee.  Their destination was Arcadia, the county seat of DeSota County, Florida.  Son Walt would come to look in the Fall.  Jesse had bought 50 acres outside of Limestone, DeSota County, Florida.  Mae went to Arcadia to take the teaching exams.  She secured a position at the two teacher school at Crewsville as this letterhead attests:

G. E. CHILDERS PRINCIPAL                     MRS. L. MAE ROBINSON ASSISTANT

   Crewsville Public School

CREWSVILLE, DESOTA COUNTY, FLORIDA

In Crewsville there was the school, a church, a store, a few houses and little else.

On November 27, 1953, Pearl wrote to Mae: I wished you   could have been with us today.  We drove from Sarasota to Arcadia then on to Limestone.  Arcadia looked much as I remembered it and the country around there.  (The town older).  Limestone was completely changed.  The only building left there that I recognized   was the old store...The house Pa built is gone.  I visited with the Gore (Mr. Gore was the depot agent in 1911)  daughter at the P. O. and she said she remembered her mother talking about the Robinsons and Cordemans.  The old artesian well gave out.  It is still wet and swampy.

Jesse had two bouts of malaria.  Pearl contracted typhoid fever shortly after arrival.  In a letter to Mae at Crewsville on October 23 she wrote: They let me sit propped up in bed for about 10 minutes today.  They nearly starve me to death..I just asked the folks for a cracker.  Pa says, Mae is hunting for a Florida Cracker. ha ha.

The November 16, 1911 issue of the Griswold American reported:  Returned From FloridaMr. and Mrs. Jesse Robinson and daughters returned to Griswold Friday morning  from Florida.  Mrs. Robinson was not pleased with the country and one of the daughters had been very ill.  Mr. Robinson thought  it best to return to Iowa.  They will occupy their residence on the east side as soon as they can get possession.

Jesses grandson, Dwight E. Conklin, M.D. who has had a second home in Florida since the 1970s, understands his grandmothers feelings:  Grandmother Robinson would not have liked Florida for multiple reasons.  The houses in 1911 had no screens on windows or doors.  The daily temperatures in summer rose to the high 90s or low 100s, cooling down at night to the mid or high 80s.  There was electricity in few homes, there were no fans or air conditioning.  There would have been daily afternoon rains during the entire summer period.  Humiture readings would have been 120 to 130.

Water stood everywhere; mosquito control was in the distant future.  Clouds of insects covered the landscape each night.  Aunt Pearl told me that the water was not good on