San Francisco County
Biographies
MILTON HOLLEY ROBBINS, JR.
ROBBINS, MILTON HOLEY, JR., Vice
President, Union Ice Company, San Francisco, California,
was born at Lakeville, Connecticut,
January 27, 1871, the son of Milton H. and Anna (Bostwick) Robbins. His father’s family was among the early
settlers of Connecticut, where
some of them subsequently engaged in the iron business and became especially
prominent during the war of the Revolution as manufactures of cannon. They also had the distinction of having made
the anchor for the frigate Constitution.
It was a cousin of the family, Alexander Holley, Governor of Connecticut,
who brought to this country the process of making Bessemer
steel. Mr. Robins; bother is the night
Samuel Robins, and the old farm in Connecticut
has never been out of the family.
On
August 24, 1895, he was married in New York
to Miss Annie E. Stayner. The children
of this marriage are Sally S., Mary E., and Isabelle Robbins.
From 1877 to 1887
Mr. Robbins attended private schools in Lakeville and for two years was a
student at Lehigh University. He then entered Yale
University, whence he was graduated
with the class of ’91.
After his graduation
from Yale he spent some months with the banking house of Robbins, Burrall &
Co., but left this to enter the shops of the Elevator Company. Here he turned to account his scientific
education in mastering the mechanical details of the business, and for four
years devoted his energies to this end.
Until 1893 he was established in the East, chiefly at Boston
and Springfield, Massachusetts. He was then sent to Chicago,
but in 1899 returned to Massachusetts and for a year
again resided in Boston. In 1900 he was at Kansas City;
from 1901 to 1904 at New Orleans; 1904 to 1906 at Houston,
Texas, whence in the latter year he went to California. From these various points he traveled all
over the United States,
covering the field over and over again, attending to the building of factories
and extending the enterprise. After
having tried four years of this mechanical side of the business, for which his
schooling had equipped him, he found himself better qualified for executive and
administrative work.
During these
years Mr. Robbins has focused his energies on the work in hand, conducting it
with the same zeal as if it were entirely his own, and thereby becoming a very
important factor in the growth of the business. From his San
Francisco office he controlled the trade in all the Pacific
Coast States, as
well as Nevada, Idaho, Arizona
and the Hawaiian Islands.
Mr. Robbins is
now Vice President of the Union Ice Company, with headquarters at San
Francisco. He
resigned from the Otis Elevator Company to accept his present position during
December, 1911. He is virtually the head
of the Union Ice Company, as E. W. Hopkins, the President, is now retiring from
active work. His office is one of the
most important in business on the Pacific
Coast. The Union Ice Company is a corporation of
immense capital, with valuable properties scattered over the greater part of California. It supplies ice to a population of more than
2,000,000 in an iceless country, and the manufacturing and transportation
problems are endless.
As an outgrowth
of his business interests and of his shifting environment, Mr. Robbins has become
deeply interested in the growth of cities and civic improvement. Especially in San
Francisco he has taken an active part in the public
matters of this nature. He has not been
long in the city before he was elected President of the Merchants’ Association,
and when the principal civic bodies were consolidated, in what is now known as
the San Francisco Chamber of
Commerce he was made the President.
While in this
important office he was naturally one of the prime movers in every public
movement, The Chamber of Commerce, and he as its president, was responsible or
much that is good in the reconstruction of San Francisco and particularly for
the arousing of that spirit which has made it possible for the earthquake
stricken city to almost completely recover from its calamity.
Partly for
information in his own business, and also as a relaxation from the exacting
routine, he reads much, chiefly along technical lines. His other forms of recreation are tennis and
chopping wood. Beyond these activities he
has not had time for a variety of interests, and his club life is confined to
his membership in the Pacific-Union Club, the Union League Club and the
Commercial Club, of which last his is vice president
Transcribed
by Pat Seabolt.
Source: Press Reference
Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page
598, International News
Service, New
York,
Chicago, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2007 Pat Seabolt.
California Biography Project
San Francisco County
California Statewide
Golden Nugget Library