1905 History of Crawford County Kansas

George W. Robinson, carrier on rural free delivery route No. 1 out of Cherokee, where he is a resident, has lived in the state of Kansas for the past thirty-eight years, and has made a capable and worthy record as a citizen and man of affairs, and is also esteemed as one of the honored veterans of the Civil war.

He was a boy of eighteen years when he responded to the first call that went out for three-year men to put down the rebellion, and he enlisted at Taylorville, Christian county, Illinois, in August, 1861, in Company D, Thirty-third Illinois Infantry, under Captain H. H. Pope and Colonel Charles E. Hovey. From Bloomington, Illinois, this regiment was sent to the field of hostilities in Missouri, and most of his campaigning was done in that state and in Arkansas. He was at Pilot Knob until the spring of 1862, and then took part in numerous skirmishes and small engagements in southeastern Missouri. At St. Louis, Missouri, he was honorably discharged on account of disability, being afflicted with tuberculosis. He then returned to Illinois and as soon as his health permitted he engaged in farming.

Mr. Robinson was born in Shelby county, Illinois, February 9, 1843, the same year in which the birth of President McKinley occurred. He was a son of William Lang and Lydia Elizabeth (Strador) Robinson, father a native of Virginia and mother of North Carolina, and they were among the earliest settlers of Shelby county, Illinois, going there in 1826, when the country was wild and undeveloped, when game was plentiful in the woods and prairies, when the dwellings were log cabins heated by fireplaces, and all other things were primitive and uncouth. The father died on the Wabash river in 1852, at the age of fifty-six, but the mother came out to Kansas, where she died in 1879, at the age of sixty-nine. These parents were noted for their many excellences of heart and mind, and their generous hospitality was always in evidence, especially during their early life in Illinois, when the latch string was always to be found on the outside of the door, where friend and stranger alike might enter freely. There were thirteen children in their family, seven sons and six daughters, and two other of the sons were soldiers in the Civil war—John M., who died in 1876 and was a member of the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Illinois under General Logan, and P. P., who served on the western frontier.

Mr. Robinson was reared on the Illinois farm, where he was taught to work, but he received only six months' schooling in all his life, although home study and diligent application to the practical affairs of life have compensated for these early deficiencies. Shortly after the war he came to Kansas and settled in Neosho county, near St. Paul, where he was a resident until he came to Cherokee in 1899. He owns two excellent houses in the best part of town, and has made an excellent success in business and industrial affairs and is accounted one of the substantial men of the town and county, where he is very popular. He received his appointment as rural mail carrier on October 1, 1903.

Mr. Robinson was married at Neosho, Kansas, to Eliza Wilson, who became the mother of seven children, as follows: J. W., who is a successful contractor on cement work in Kansas City; Oscar W., who is a carriage painter; E. K., who is a soldier in the Eighteenth United States Infantry and has been in the Philippines for five years; Nettie Bennett, of Neosho county; Dora Williams, who died leaving four children: Leonard, who died at the age of twenty-one; and Pearl B., who died in 1897 at the age of sixteen. Mr. Robinson is independent in politics, and in religion is a Baptist.