Calaveras
County
Biographies
WILLIAM T. ROBINSON
The ancestors of Colonel William
Thomas Robinson of Mokelumne Hill, Calaveras County, California, came from
England to New England. His
great-grandfather, John L. Robinson, of Virginia, was a captain in the
Revolutionary army under General Washington and afterward settled in Kentucky,
where he was a friend and companion of Daniel Boone and was with him on many a
desperate fight with the Indians. His
son, John L. Robinson, the father of Colonel Robinson, was born at Lexington,
Kentucky, in 1788, and was married at St. Louis, Missouri, to Miss Elizabeth
Bryan, who was a daughter of Dr. Jack Bryan and an aunt of Hon. William
Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee for the presidency in 1896 and
1900. Colonel William T. Robinson was
born at Fredericktown, Madison County, Missouri, September 7, 1839, one of ten
children of John L. and Elizabeth (Bryan) Robinson, born in Missouri.
In 1849 the family crossed the
plains to California. Colonel Robinson,
who was only ten years old at the time, remembers that the whole family had the
gold fever and that one of his brothers, who was only fourteen years old,
quietly outfitted himself with crackers and sugar and started on ahead of the
others, filled with an ambition to reach the gold fields first. The party was made up of Madison County
people and numbered one hundred and twenty-five men, women and children. The Sioux Indians gave them much anxiety and
at one time a party of them formed in front of the emigrant train and demanded
tribute. They were given flour and sugar
and the emigrants were permitted to go on.
Emigrants who set out for California in 1849 loaded themselves down with
provisions to such an extent that they were obliged to throw them away and they
were left to decay or to be utilized by people who needed them more. Buffalo were numerous on the plains, large
herds of them were seen frequently, and the emigrants were in some danger of
being trampled down by them if the animals should happen to be stampeded in
their direction. After a hard journey of
seven months, the Robinson’s arrived, September 7, 1849, at Potter’s ranch on
Deer Creek, near the site of the present city of Chico. The family located at Sacramento City, but
was driven out by the flood which came soon afterward and went to Plumas on the
Feather River, where they settled on land which afterward became known as
Plumas ranch. There Mr. Robinson died in
1851, aged sixty-three years, and his wife died two weeks later, aged
fifty-five years, and there two of their daughters also died. The farm consisted of a section of land upon
which some improvements had been made by this time, and the family, kept
together by Jesse B. Robinson, the eldest son, remained there for a time. Jesse B. Robinson, now aged eight-two years,
lives at Upper Lake, Lake County, California.
Soon after the
arrival of the Robinson’s in California, Colonel Robinson and his brother next
older leased a placer mining claim at Mormon Island, on the American River, and
in two months cleaned up two thousand dollars. They were lucky enough one day to get seven
hundred dollars. In 1850 they went to
the present site of Nevada City, where they took out about an ounce of gold a
day each. They returned home before the
death of their parents and at the request of the latter went back to Missouri
to complete their education at Arcadia, that state, making the trip by way of
the Isthmus of Panama. They remained at
school until 1855, when Colonel Robinson was fifteen and his brother seventeen,
and then started to cross the plains alone with pack animals. At the Platte River they were overtaken by
their brother, Frank, who was returning from a trip east, and after they
reached to Humboldt River they were followed for several days by a party of
Indians, but saved their scalps by sleeping in the dark a mile or two away from
the fire by which they had cooked their supper, night after night, until the
pursuit was abandoned. As they boys had
guns and the Indians had no weapons of longer range than bows and arrows the
latter did not dare venture too near in the daytime.
At Soda Springs, on Bear River, they
met Captain Grant of the Hudson Bay Company, who told them to go to a certain
point where they would find one Adams and his two sons in charge of a store,
where they could procure supplies; but when they arrived there they found that
the three men had been killed by Indians and they had to subsist on fish until
they reached the trading post of Sam Black further on. There they got provisions and went on by way
of Donner Lake and Downieville, and when they arrived at Plumas ranch they
found it still in charge of one of their brothers. Colonel Robinson and his brother John took up
land adjoining Plumas ranch and started a wood yard and sold wood to passing
steamers and mined from time to time with varying results, as opportunity
presented. Later John returned to
Missouri and in November, 1859, Colonel Robinson went to Old Mexico to operate
the Nacacharama silver mine in Sonora, in which he had became a
stockholder. Eventually he sold his
interest in this property and bought another mine, which he operated on the
Mexican plan and in a year and a half had a profit of eight thousand
dollars. While in Mexico he acquired a
good knowledge of that country and its resources and of the habits and customs
of various tribes of Indians. This
knowledge he embodied in a book of one hundred and ninety-two pages entitled
Sonora, which was copyrighted and published in 1861 and came to be recognized
as an authority on the subjects treated.
While he was yet in Sonora a party of Californians, of whom his friend
Judge David S. Terry was one, passed through there en route to Texas to join
the Confederate Army. He quickly disposed
of his interests there and joined them at Mazatlan. They traveled by way of Durango and Monterey
to Texas, and from there they went on to Tennessee, where Colonel Robinson
joined Company B, Eighth Regiment, Texas Cavalry, popularly known as the Texas Rangers,
attached to Bragg’s Army, which was at that time retreating from Stone River to
Chattanooga.
After the battle of Chickamauga,
where Colonel Robinson received a wound in the right hip, which disabled him
for four months, the Confederate secretary of war ordered him to report to
General Magruder, commanding the department of Texas, and he was given command
of the Partisan Rangers with headquarters at Bastrop on the Brazos River. In December, 1863, he was ordered by the
secretary of war to proceed to the frontier of Arizona and New Mexico and there
organize a cavalry regiment for the Confederate service. At Chihuahua he learned that thirty-two
Californians had come from San Francisco to Mazatlan and wanted to join the
Confederates. He swore them into service
and marched them to the Arizona border and thence to Chihuahua, where he met
with the President of Mexico, who expressed sympathy for the Confederate cause
and received him with great hospitality.
On January 21, 1864, Colonel
Robinson and his thirty-two recruits from California fought a party of Indians
at Sivello, near Del Norte, and were repulsed and he was wounded in the right
side. His men retreated, his horse was
shot under him and he fought so desperately on foot that he won the title of
“the demon.” One of his men returned on
a big mule to rescue him, and he mounted behind the soldier and the latter was
shot dead as the mule dashed forward.
Colonel Robinson held the dead soldier before him on the saddle, and as
he urged his mule forward to rejoin his men he was shot in the side by the gun
of an enemy hidden in the bushes, the muzzle of which almost touched him and
the powder from which burned his flesh around the wound, and when he reached a
place of safety he found that his overcoat had fourteen bullet holes in
it! They escaped to the desert, but
other troubles followed fast. Treatment
for his wound was necessary and he remained with an escort of four men and sent
the rest of his command to Fort Clark. Eighteen
days after the fight at Sivello, he and his guard were captured by the Mexican
imperial army, charged with being spies, and might have been punished as such
but for the intervention of the Confederate consul at Monterey. The capture was a mercy to them, however, as
they had previously been in an almost starving condition and Colonel Robinson
had saved their lives by killing his horse, on which they had subsisted for
fourteen days. It was not until thirty
days after the battle that they reached Fort Duncan, Texas, and at that time
Colonel Robinson was barely able to report for duty. In 1865 he surrendered to General Andrews at
Shreveport, Louisiana, the last Confederate officer to lay down his arms, and
received his parole of honor and transportation to St. Louis, Missouri, where
he had relatives living.
At St. Louis he met Dr. Tweddle and was employed by him to go to New Brunswick and
report on a copper mine there. After
spending four months in New Brunswick he went to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and
accepted the superintendency of the mines of the Pittsburg & Sonora Mining
Company in Sinaloa, Mexico. War in
Mexico put a stop to mining for the time being, and he returned to California
and thence to the Comstock in Nevada.
Next the White Pine excitement claimed his attention until he was drawn
into the Diamond-mine excitement, and was one of the twenty-one picked men sent
out by the promoters of the Diamond-mine swindle to endure the hardships of a
trip with pack mules through Colorado and New Mexico and into the Arizona
desert. In 1883, while exploring between
Rio Puerco and the Little Colorado River, in Arizona, he discovered a petrified
forest and took several tons of petrified wood to San Francisco, specimens of
which are on exhibition at the Academy of Sciences. Next he became the superintendent of the celebrated
Mono mine, at Dry Canyon, Utah, which in eighteen months paid dividends
amounting to six hundred thousand dollars and was sold for as much more.
Returning to California, he worked
mines in this state and in Nevada, with more or less success. In 1879 he was one of the purchasers of the
Esperanza or Boston mine, in Calaveras County, California, which he operated
for some time. In April, 1892, he was
elected the superintendent of the Alaska Coal Company, whose mines are on
Kachamack Bay, Alaska. Within three
months after his arrival there, he loaded the vessel by which he had gone out
with fourteen hundred tons of coal, which was the first brought from Alaska to
San Francisco. Since then he has been
the superintendent of the Esperanza mine, the mines of the Hexter
Gold Mining Company and the mines of the Emerson Gold Mining Company, with
headquarters at Mokelumne Hill.
Colonel Robinson, as he is
familiarly known, was promoted from a captaincy to the office of lieutenant
colonel for desperate valor in the field of battle and those who know how
faithfully he served the Confederate cause know how well he earned his
honorable title. His whole command had
been either killed or captured and he had been shot in the breast and left on
the field for dead, but he recovered consciousness during the night and with
great difficulty made his way to the headquarters of General Bragg, to whom he
gave information which saved his army from defeat. In politics he is a Democrat, influential in
party councils, and he is a prominent Mason.
He was married March 23, 1873, to
Miss Pauline H. Conway, a daughter of Dr. Conway, of San Francisco, who like
Colonel Robinson’s father was a “forty-niner,” and brought eleven children to
the Golden State, but who also brought a slave girl named Melvina,
who at the Doctor’s death chose to live with Mrs. Robinson and has since been a
faithful servant in the Colonel’s family.
Mr. and Mrs. Robinson have had six children, two of whom died in
infancy. Their son Bryan, who died at
the age of twenty years, June 7, 1900, was a young man of much promise and
popularity. The surviving children are
William Thomas, Jr., Mae Belle (Mrs. William Werle), and Ida, who is a member
of her father’s household. Mrs. Robinson was born at Los Angeles, California,
in 1852. The family has a pleasant home
at Mokelumne Hill and is held in high esteem by a wide circle of acquaintances.
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
“A Volume of Memoirs and Genealogy of Representative Citizens of Northern
California”, Pages 74-78. Chicago Standard Genealogical Publishing Co. 1901.
© 2010
Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's Calaveras County Biographies