James Robinson, the ancestor of the Plaquemines Parish Robinsons, came to America as a young man in the year 1849. He left his father John Robinson and sister Margaret “Peggy” Robinson Kelly in Ireland after having survived the worst of the Great Famine. County Galway had been particularly hard hit as had most of western Ireland. His family had not come through unscathed since James’s brother William, a priest in Kilmilkin in the rugged Connemara section of County Galway, died that same year. (Another brother Edward, also a priest, had died in 1842 at the young age of 24.)[ref]For more on the Irish Robinsons, see my essay “My Family Search in Ireland (June 1986).”[/ref]
There is a tradition in Ireland that James Robinson was training to be a veterinarian. But emigrating to the United States, he came as just another laborer with no real skills. Most likely he came over on one of the regular ships from Liverpool to New York City. Once in America he made his way to Albany, New York, where perhaps he had friends or family. Shortly thereafter on 16 May 1849 he enlisted for five years as a soldier in the Army of the United States of America. (I do not know where enlistment immediately entitled him to citizenship, but by the 1870 census he was listed as a citizen of the United States.)
His enlistment papers, preserved in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., reveal much about the man and his life in America. He was born between the years 1827 and 1830 in County Galway in Ireland. (His exact birth year is not known because the ages recorded in his papers are inconsistent.) His first enlistment papers record his age as 19 in 1849 and his occupation as laborer. His height was 5 feet, 8 inches; he had gray eyes, light brown hair, and a fair complexion. He was able to sign his name fluently, indicating he had some education, which was exceptional in County Galway at that time. He was interviewed by the recruiting officer about his parentage and declared that “he has neither parent, guardian or master.” The officer “also made diligent inquiry in the neighborhood respecting the said minor,” and confirmed this fact. James was completely on his own in America.
James Robinson became a career soldier and his life is revealed in the papers as he re-enlisted every 3-5 years. He was a Corporal by 1854 and rose to the rank of Ordnance Sergeant by 1860. In 1854 he was stationed in Texas on the Rio Grande border with Mexico and he would remain in Texas until the beginning of the Civil War.
To put military service in Texas at this time into perspective, Texas had gained its independence in 1836 and was annexed by the United States in 1845. The U.S. was at war with Mexico from 1846-48 and, by the subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States gained the land which became the states of California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. A dispute between the United States and Mexico over a railroad right-of-way led to the Gadsden Purchase in 1845. Disputes between Mexican liberals, led by Benito Juarez, and conservatives led to a civil war, known as the Reform War, between 1857 and 1860. The conservatives were finally defeated in 1860 after heavy fighting. Mexican-American relations were anything but stable in the 1850s; this instability forced the United States to maintain a substantial army on the Rio Grande in Texas.
James Robinson married Mary Burke, who was also from Annaghdown Parish in County Galway. Her parents, Patrick Burke and Mary Collins, married in Menlough Parish, County Galway on 18 December 1824 but had moved to Annaghdown Parish by the time Mary was baptized on 2 November 1835. It seems likely that this Patrick Burke may be the Patrick Burke who leased a house and land in Aucloggeen Township along with John Robinson. It seems fair to imagine that James Robinson would have known Mary back in Aucloggeen who would later become his wife but since she was only 13 when he left for America he is hardly likely they married before he left. Since I don’t have any evidence that Patrick Burke emigrated with his family to the United States, he seems likely that Mary herself later emigrated in order to marry James Robinson. When she would have done this is unclear but since her first child, William Edward Robinson, was born in Texas in 1856 that she emigrated some time before 1856. If she got married immediately upon arrival and got pregnant right away, one can imagine she emigrated in 1854 or 1855 when she was only 19 or 20 years old. Since James was already stationed in Texas by 1854, in addition to crossing the Atlantic, Mary would have to had journeyed to the Rio Grande border in Texas. How she did this is unknown, but hundreds of Irishmen ended up in Texas in the mid-1800s.
It was not normal for an enlisted man to have a wife and children, and especially not living with him at the fort. In fact, James needed a special dispensation from his commanding officer in 1860 to re-enlist. James and Mary’s first child, William Edward Robinson, was born in 1856 at Fort Davis, Texas (according to William Edward Robinson himself). In the 1860 census James Robinson was listed at the Ringgold Barracks near Rio Grande City, aged 40, an Ordinance Sergeant with real estate worth $3000, born in Ireland. His wife Mary was age 25, born Ireland. Their two sons, both born in Texas, were William E. age 4 and John age 2. James must have been a very industrious man because he seemed to have invested what savings he was able to accumulate into land. This was a practice he was to continue in Plaquemines Parish.
The story in the Robinson family, as told by William E. Robinson to his grandson James F. Mullen, is that James Robinson was in Texas when the Federal forts there surrendered to the Confederacy at the beginning of the Civil War. According to the terms of surrender, James was required never to raise up arms against the Confederacy. He was transported to Governor’s Island in New York City harbor where he was stationed for the duration of the war. The 3rd child of James Robinson and Mary Burke, James Michael Robinson, was born in New York City in 1861 according to his tombstone. I do not know where the youngest child, Samuel Joseph Robinson (born in 1863) was born.
From the re-enlistment papers we know that James was stationed in New Orleans by July 1864. New Orleans had surrendered to Union troops in April 1862 and was to remain occupied until 1877. The terms of the 1864 re-enlistment are very interesting. He re-enlisted under a special Act of Congress, approved 20 June 1864, that allowed pre-Civil War non-commissioned officers to re-enlist for a term of three years and entitled them to a bounty for doing so. (No bounty was paid to James Robinson for an undisclosed reason.) This act also set pay levels for non-commissioned officers and it is interesting that ordnance sergeants were by far the highest paid NCOs. (Sergeants of ordnance, sappers and miners, and pontoniers made $34 a month whereas Sergeants-major, the next highest paid, only made $26 a month.) Also, as part of the town quota system of the Union draft, career soldiers were permitted to give credit to a town of their own choice. James desired “to be credited to the town of Pawling, Duchess County, State of New York.” No other connection has yet been found between James and the town of Pawling. It is possible that he or Mary had some relatives living in Pawling.
By July 1867, James Robinson was stationed at Fort Jackson in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. He remained stationed there until 1872 when he officially retired from the Army as an Ordnance Sergeant. By that time he had already purchased a large tract of land on the east bank of the Mississippi River adjacent to Fort St. Philip, on the opposite side of the river from Fort Jackson where he was stationed.
Fort St. Philip, originally Fort San Felipe, was built in 1792 under the Spanish governor Baron de Carondelet. This fort played an important role in the Battle of New Orleans, repulsing a nine-day bombardment in 1815, which prevented the British fleet from joining General Pakenham’s land forces then attacking New Orleans. In 1822 work began on Fort Jackson, named after the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson. However, these forts were designed for an era when sailing vessels had to tack back and forth making their way up against the Mississippi’s strong current. During the Civil War, the forts were no match for the Union steamboats of Admiral David Farragut and, after the capture of New Orleans, the forts were abandoned by the Confederates. After the Civil War, Fort Jackson was used as a prison and later as a minor training base, but Fort St. Philip apparently was not used. Fort Jackson was modernized during the Spanish-American War and was used as a training base during World War I; nevertheless, after World War I both Fort Jacksons and St. Philip were declared surplus property and eventually sold. In 1960 the U.S. Department of the Interior classified Fort Jackson, and its sister Fort St. Philip, as national historical monuments. Today [this was written in 1986] Fort Jackson is maintained as an interesting historical park by Plaquemines Parish. However, Fort St. Philip, which has no access except by private boat, has totally deteriorated and its property is today occupied by a commune which raises food for third-world countries. It is possible to visit Fort St. Philip by hitching a boat ride with the commune members, when they make one of their regular trips across to the river to take their children to school, and someday I plan to do this.
James Robinson became quite a land speculator in Plaquemines Parish. He first purchased land in April 1866 and continued to buy and sell land along the left (east) bank of the Mississippi River until his death in 1875. I suppose that he was in an opportune position to make some good deals with his soldier’s pay and savings serving as hard currency at a time when hard currency was in short supply. Land along the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish at that time was measured in arpents, a linear measure inherited from the French equal to 192 English feet. This was just another example of the general French influence in Louisiana history. (This was especially true in the church when the early parish registers were written in French.) The tracts were generally sold in lots of one arpent wide along the river by forty arpents deep, a long narrow strip equivalent to about 34 acres. My best estimate is that, at the time of his death in 1875, James Robinson owned about 420 acres with 2400 feet of river frontage. According to the 1870 federal census, he owned $1500 worth of real property and $300 of personal property. He and his family must have tremendously increased the value of the land because the land purchased cumulatively for about $2000 by 1873 was worth well over $8000 by 1883.
The story told in the family is that James Robinson planted orange groves which the family continued to maintain until a hurricane in 1893 wiped out the trees. The land records show that after the land was distributed to the heirs of James Robinson in 1883, the property was sold piecemeal until all of the property was gone by 1910 (except for 74 36/100 acres discussed below). The story told me by my grandfather, John James Robinson, Jr., is that the Butler family got all of the Robinson land. Indeed, most of the Robinson land was either sold to Mrs. Sarah Amanda Butler, or else she got the land for taxes. The hurricane had a devastating effect on land values. Land worth $3600 in 1883 was sold for $650 after 1897. Much of the land was seemingly abandoned; land worth $500 in 1883 was picked up for taxes of $21 in 1902.
It does not appear that there was any administration of the estate of Mary Burke after her death in 1901 and all of her land was let go for taxes except for 74 36/100 acres that was a little upriver from the bulk of the Robinson land. The history of this particular tract is different from the others in that it is one piece of Robinson land that James Robinson never owned. Shortly after the death of James in November 1875, Mary Burke purchase this land from Patrick Callahan for $30. (Callahan reserved the right to pasture his cattle on the land.) It is not clear why Mary purchased this land but it was always maintained in her name even after her remarriage to Patrick Moran. It is also not clear why this land was not lost for taxes like her other lands. However, it remained in her name and was legally owned by all of her descendants until the 1970’s. This was revealed when an oil company decided to build an access road across the property and needed right-of-way permission. Mary Elizabeth “Mamie” Robinson, granddaughter of Mary Burke, prepared an affidavit of all of the descendants of Mary Burke, to help keep the property in the family. However, after Mamie’s death in 1975, interest waned and the property was let go for taxes.
James Robinson died on a trip to New Orleans in 1875. His obituary was published in the January 16, 1875, edition of the Daily Picayune:
On Thursday, January 14, 1875 at a quarter past 10 o’clock p.m., at the residence of Thos. M. Gilmore, corner of Victory and Mandeville streets. James Robinson, aged about forty-seven years, a native of parish of Annadown, County Galway, Ireland, and a resident of parish of Plaquemines.
The funeral will take place at 10 o’clock a.m., Saturday, January 16, from Mr. Gilmore’s residence, to steamboat J.F. Frazer, for final interment in Plaquemines parish. His friends and acquaintances are respectfully invited to attend.
New York Herald and Tuam (Galway) News please copy.
Obviously James had friends in New Orleans and must have made frequent trips there. Undoubtedly these trips were made by steamboat (like the J.F. Frazer) which carried mail, supplies, and people up and down the river. The Robinsons lived about 75 miles downriver from New Orleans and so the trip took the best part of a day. It is interesting that his friends knew exactly where in Ireland he was from, indicating he spoke of his origins and was proud of them. Probably most of his friends were either Irish, maybe even from County Galway. Somebody knew the obituary should be published in the Tuam News. (Unfortunately their are no extant copies of the Tuam News for that time period to confirm the obituary was printed in Ireland. It is not clear why they singled out the Tuam News, a newspaper only established in 1870, rather than the more established Tuam Herald, established in 1837.[ref]Hubbard’s Newspaper and Bank Directory of the World, Vol. II (New Haven, 1882) 1777.[/ref] I suspect that the request for the New York Herald to copy was because of family or friends that James or Mary had in New York.
James Robinson was buried in Plaquemines Parish on 17 January 1875, the day after the boat trip down. I do not know whether he was buried on his plantation or in a church cemetery. His burial is the first mention of the Robinson family in the Our Lady of Good Harbor parish register (written in French). The church is in Buras, Louisiana, very close to Fort Jackson and across the river from the plantation. I assume the Robinsons had been parishioners since coming to Fort Jackson, since it was closest church to their home.
Mary Burke remarried Patrick Moran on 28 September 1876 at Our Lady of Good Harbor church. In 1883 the property of James Robinson was divided between his heirs: his widow Mary Burke, and his sons William, James, and Samuel. Their sone John must have died sometime between 1870 and 1883. All of the boys had married by 1884 and their first children were born in Plaquemines Parish. However, they and their family’s future lay upriver.
A story told me by James F. Mullen is that William Edward Robinson was studying horticulture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1875, and was called home by his father’s death. (He would have been 18 at the time.) Apparently some of the Burke family had settled in Michigan and he was staying with them. William was also the first to leave Plaquemines Parish. Although his first children were born in Plaquemines Parish, he had met and married Catherine Cooney (born in County Mayo, Ireland), apparently in New Orleans, and may have lived in New Orleans a short while. He had settled in St. Louis by 1894 when his brother Sam sold part of his land in Plaquemines Parish. William worked for the Park Service in St. Louis and outlived both if his younger brothers, dying in January 1940 at the age of 84. His daughter Annette, who had been born in Plaquemines Parish in 1886, visited the old homestead in 1912 and found it “looking pretty dilapidated indeed, although it is still standing.”
James Michael Robinson married Mary Agnes Reed, born in Charleston, South Carolina, the daughter of a Confederate soldier Thomas Lorton Reed (who is said to have died during the Civil War) and Elizabeth Murphy of County Cork, Ireland. She was the stepdaughter of Thomas Henry who was one of James Robinson’s fellow sergeants stationed at Fort Jackson.
Samuel Joseph married a local girl, Catherine Brophy, daughter of James Brophy and Julia O’Hara, both from Ireland. Annette Robinson stayed with the Brophy family when she visited the old homestead in 1912. Samuel’s twins Marjorie and Myra were the last Robinson children baptized in Plaquemines Parish on 28 June 1900. Samuel was living in the town of Gueydan in Vermilion Parish in 1903. Both James Michael and Samuel’s families eventually settled in New Orleans. James Michael died there quite young, of tuberculosis, in 1906. Samuel lived until 1937 when he died of heart disease.
Mary Burke Robinson Moran continued to live in Plaquemines Parish until her death at the age of 65 on 4 September 1901. She had outlived both of her husbands. It is possible that Samuel continued to live in Plaquemines Parish until his mother’s death. I do not know if she was buried on her plantation or in the church cemetery, but no tombstone has been found. One of the most precious family heirlooms I have is a picture of Mary Burke and her daughter-in-law Mary Agnes Reed Robinson taken in New Orleans, probably in the 1890’s. It is unfortunate that nobody bothered to record her story as well, but these things are not thought of until it is too late.
The strong County Galway Irish heritage of the Robinsons was only imperfectly carried to the New World. Although the immigrant James Robinson was proud of his birthplace and maintained correspondence with his family in Ireland, after his death his family quickly soon lost touch with their Irish roots. James’s oldest son, William Edward Robinson, claimed the Robinsons were English. Some of the other descendants thought the Robinsons were Irish, some English. None of them knew from where in Ireland the Robinsons came. This seems to be typical of many descendants of immigrants who wanted to blend into American society and culture as quickly as possible.
The Robinson story is one of which Robinson descendants in America can be proud. It is not a typical immigrant story but is there really a typical immigrant story? James Robinson certainly had more education than most immigrants. As a young man with no real skills, he chose the steady work of the regular army, saved his money, and made some good investments in land. He retired from the army in Plaquemines Parish to be an orange planter but died soon after, leaving a wife and four sons well provided for. His descendants quickly blended into the great melting pot of America’s cities and became urban Americans. We, the descendants, are the great legacy of this story. This is our story.
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